While Hon Hai Precision Industry Co chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) enters the rancorous political arena free of any political baggage, he could yet find himself weighed down by connections to Beijing forged during his pragmatic commercial rise.
Gou, 68, on Wednesday announced that he would contest next year’s presidential election, seeking to represent the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
After building the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturer from scratch over the past 40 years, Gou’s connections reach as high as Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and other senior Chinese officials.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
His US$40 billion empire has an extensive Chinese footprint of factories producing components for Apple.
Gou’s network also includes extensive US connections, including a friendship with US President Donald Trump.
However, ties with Taiwan’s key political and security backer are likely to be overshadowed by his ties to a Chinese leadership that refuses to renounce the use of force to unify with Taiwan, some analysts and political figures say.
“Because he has a lot of wealth in China ... China has some control over him,” said Shane Lee (李憲榮), a political scientist at Chang Jung Christian University. “So I think the US government would have to be very cautious about him running for political office.”
Many ordinary Taiwanese are fearful of the intentions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) toward democratic Taiwan.
Tensions were highlighted again on Monday as Chinese bombers and warships conducted drills around the nation, prompting Taiwan to scramble jets and ships to monitor the Chinese forces.
Some analysts believe that Gou’s ties with Beijing could turn off ordinary voters.
“He’s one of the smartest businessmen in Taiwan,” said John Brebeck, a senior adviser at Quantum International, a capital markets advisory firm. “The problem is that, with so much of his business enterprise in China, it may prove a liability for him with the voters, as they may not be sure where his priorities lie.”
While most Taiwanese trace their ancestry to China, there remains a clear distinction in society between those who consider themselves ethnic Taiwanese and those whose ancestors came over more recently, most in a wave of refugees who fled to Taiwan at the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949.
Gou’s parents were born in China and are part of that generation, although he was born in Taiwan.
The Chinese government has not commented on Gou’s decision, which has been widely reported in Chinese state media, although mostly citing Taiwanese reports.
However, on Thursday, the Global Times tabloid, published by the CCP’s official People’s Daily, welcomed Gou’s bid for power.
“If Terry Gou becomes the leader of the Taiwan region next year, tensions between the two sides will ease and the situation in the Taiwan Strait, in the short term, is likely to reach a turning point,” it said in an editorial.
The KMT developed closer ties with Beijing when it last held power, focusing on developing business ties.
Under President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), ties have cooled as China suspects Tsai is pushing for formal independence.
Tsai has said that she wants to maintain the “status quo” with China, but would defend the nation’s security and democracy.
Gou met Xi in 2014 in Beijing, and he was quoted by Taiwanese media in 2017 describing Xi as a great leader.
In an interview last year with the People’s Daily to mark China’s 40th anniversary of reforms, Gou said that he was happy to have witnessed the changes.
He talked about how his father was from Shanxi Province and mother from Guangdong, and how he had first visited China in 1987 to trace his family’s roots, the “first time I had stepped foot on the soil of the motherland.”
“While on the road I saw the scene of reforms and opening up, which made me extremely excited,” he said.
Gou also cited Xi in his interview.
“Xi Jinping has pointed out that it is necessary to promote the deep integration of information technology and the real economy... I think the general secretary’s point of view is very far-sighted,” he said.
Some in the Democratic Progressive Party are already eyeing Gou’s China links as a weak spot.
Yao Chia-wen (姚嘉文), a senior adviser to Tsai, said that he thinks Gou’s bid could create problems, given his business.
“He’s very pro-China and he represents the class of wealthy people. Will that gain support from Taiwanese?” Yao asked.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching