It looks like more of the same at the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), with former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) now firmly in place as DPP chairman after garnering 50.47 percent of the vote in a five-horse race to take over leadership of the party on May 27.
Immediately upon being elected, Su said he would be willing to meet President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) if the timing were right, that he would reopen a DPP focus group to re-evaluate cross-strait relations and that he would be willing to visit China as DPP head if China set no preconditions.
As soon as Su made these comments, pan-green commentators scrambled in a giddy rush to point out how open-minded the new DPP chair was, how he was more magnanimous than his Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) counterpart, or officials across the Taiwan Strait, and how he would set a new tone of cross-party and cross-strait cooperation.
However, what Su said was nothing new. Former DPP chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) also said on numerous occasions that she was open to dialogue with Ma under the right circumstances, she also established focus groups on China relations and she did not rule out visiting China as long as Beijing did not set preconditions.
What that amounted to for Tsai was not all that much, and Su is unlikely to reap any greater benefits.
By saying he would meet Ma if the timing were right, Su was basically saying that he would not meet Ma under any circumstances, because who can guess what Su would regard as the right timing? Just after being elected, Ma called to congratulate the new DPP chair, but was apparently rebuffed because it was not the right time. Like a good lawyer, Su can now use that escape clause to reject any proposed meeting with the KMT chair, making sure intra-party relations remain stale and intractable.
What about the China-related focus group, the DPP’s Department of China Affairs and the establishment of a Chinese affairs committee? This could be a positive development, or it could amount to nothing. The department and the committee could be only as good as their staffers and nothing so far leads anybody to believe Su is capable of a breakthrough in cross-strait relations.
Just look at his proposal for a visit to China to get an idea of what kind of “olive branch” Su has in store for the country. Saying he would visit China if Beijing didn’t impose preconditions in practice amounts to saying he would not visit China at all — of course China would set preconditions; that is what China does. China loves its preconditions, and will never give them up unless the Chinese Communist Party falls, internal problems make them a moot point or the outside world forces Beijing to give them up.
Nobody is expecting Su to run to the Presidential Office hat in hand, come up with a revolutionary new cross-strait strategy that appeals to voters or rush off to Beijing.
However, some realistic expectations of what Su can and will accomplish as DPP chair would go a long way to preventing further disillusionment with the party. After all, disappointment in a past DPP heavyweight, former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), because of his inability to meet overblown expectations was one of the main reasons swing voters turned away from the party.
In the US’ National Security Strategy (NSS) report released last month, US President Donald Trump offered his interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. The “Trump Corollary,” presented on page 15, is a distinctly aggressive rebranding of the more than 200-year-old foreign policy position. Beyond reasserting the sovereignty of the western hemisphere against foreign intervention, the document centers on energy and strategic assets, and attempts to redraw the map of the geopolitical landscape more broadly. It is clear that Trump no longer sees the western hemisphere as a peaceful backyard, but rather as the frontier of a new Cold War. In particular,
When it became clear that the world was entering a new era with a radical change in the US’ global stance in US President Donald Trump’s second term, many in Taiwan were concerned about what this meant for the nation’s defense against China. Instability and disruption are dangerous. Chaos introduces unknowns. There was a sense that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) might have a point with its tendency not to trust the US. The world order is certainly changing, but concerns about the implications for Taiwan of this disruption left many blind to how the same forces might also weaken
As the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) races toward its 2027 modernization goals, most analysts fixate on ship counts, missile ranges and artificial intelligence. Those metrics matter — but they obscure a deeper vulnerability. The true future of the PLA, and by extension Taiwan’s security, might hinge less on hardware than on whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can preserve ideological loyalty inside its own armed forces. Iran’s 1979 revolution demonstrated how even a technologically advanced military can collapse when the social environment surrounding it shifts. That lesson has renewed relevance as fresh unrest shakes Iran today — and it should
As the new year dawns, Taiwan faces a range of external uncertainties that could impact the safety and prosperity of its people and reverberate in its politics. Here are a few key questions that could spill over into Taiwan in the year ahead. WILL THE AI BUBBLE POP? The global AI boom supported Taiwan’s significant economic expansion in 2025. Taiwan’s economy grew over 7 percent and set records for exports, imports, and trade surplus. There is a brewing debate among investors about whether the AI boom will carry forward into 2026. Skeptics warn that AI-led global equity markets are overvalued and overleveraged
RSS