Hon Hai Precision Industry Co founder Terry Gou (郭台銘) on Wednesday said he would seek the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) nomination for next year’s presidential election.
New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜), for many the top choice to run for the KMT, has been in the media spotlight for prevarication over whether he would throw his hat in. Since the Lunar New Year holiday, Hou has been acting as if he were under pressure to “take the crown.”
His behavior is reminiscent of another KMT member four years ago. After Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) was elected Kaohsiung mayor in 2018, he enjoyed a rapid ascent to stardom, and the KMT picked him as its presidential nominee.
Hou soon fell from grace. He lost the presidential election and was recalled as mayor.
The KMT has apparently not learned its lesson. Had it left Han as Kaohsiung mayor instead of having him enter the presidential race, things would be different.
To be president, candidates need to make solid cross-strait policy proposals, but Hou’s cross-strait experience is limited. He was invited by the Straits Exchange Foundation to participate in the investigation of the 1994 Qiandao Lake kidnappings of Taiwanese in China and was director-general of the National Police Agency from 2006 to 2008, with some of his work requiring cooperation with China.
However, his experience stopped when he became New Taipei City deputy mayor in 2010.
For Hou, questions about China and cross-strait relations are not easy. If he, without any preparation and guidance, were to go head-to-head against Vice President William Lai (賴清德), the Democratic Progressive Party’s presidential nominee, in a debate of those issues, the outcome would not be pretty.
The History of Ming says that Zhu Yuanzhang (朱元璋), the founder of the Ming Dynasty, accumulated military power and surrounded himself with talented people, but refrained from making a bid for the crown when he was building his kingdom. Hou should learn from Zhu’s example.
Shih Ya-hsuan is an associate professor in National Kaohsiung Normal University’s Department of Geography.
Translated by Rita Wang
After more than a year of review, the National Security Bureau on Monday said it has completed a sweeping declassification of political archives from the Martial Law period, transferring the full collection to the National Archives Administration under the National Development Council. The move marks another significant step in Taiwan’s long journey toward transitional justice. The newly opened files span the architecture of authoritarian control: internal security and loyalty investigations, intelligence and counterintelligence operations, exit and entry controls, overseas surveillance of Taiwan independence activists, and case materials related to sedition and rebellion charges. For academics of Taiwan’s White Terror era —
On Feb. 7, the New York Times ran a column by Nicholas Kristof (“What if the valedictorians were America’s cool kids?”) that blindly and lavishly praised education in Taiwan and in Asia more broadly. We are used to this kind of Orientalist admiration for what is, at the end of the day, paradoxically very Anglo-centered. They could have praised Europeans for valuing education, too, but one rarely sees an American praising Europe, right? It immediately made me think of something I have observed. If Taiwanese education looks so wonderful through the eyes of the archetypal expat, gazing from an ivory tower, how
After 37 US lawmakers wrote to express concern over legislators’ stalling of critical budgets, Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) pledged to make the Executive Yuan’s proposed NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.7 billion) special defense budget a top priority for legislative review. On Tuesday, it was finally listed on the legislator’s plenary agenda for Friday next week. The special defense budget was proposed by President William Lai’s (賴清德) administration in November last year to enhance the nation’s defense capabilities against external threats from China. However, the legislature, dominated by the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), repeatedly blocked its review. The
China has apparently emerged as one of the clearest and most predictable beneficiaries of US President Donald Trump’s “America First” and “Make America Great Again” approach. Many countries are scrambling to defend their interests and reputation regarding an increasingly unpredictable and self-seeking US. There is a growing consensus among foreign policy pundits that the world has already entered the beginning of the end of Pax Americana, the US-led international order. Consequently, a number of countries are reversing their foreign policy preferences. The result has been an accelerating turn toward China as an alternative economic partner, with Beijing hosting Western leaders, albeit
RSS