The playing field for next year’s presidential election is getting crowded once more, with Vice President William Lai (賴清德) entering the race for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) for the party he founded.
The three are anything but neophyte candidates — even the least experienced Ko has had eight years of experience, while the old-timer Lai has had 27 years. Until the presidential election next year, the candidates’ past and current remarks and endorsements will be closely scrutinized as indicators of their future leadership.
However, a political disease seems to have stricken the presidential hopefuls in recent campaigns: foot-in-mouth syndrome. The candidate with the worst symptom is none other than Ko, a loose cannon known for making insensitive and outlandish remarks. Loose cannons tend to misfire, and Ko’s gaffes have ranged from sexist remarks to backpedaling and the ill-mannered act of calling presents given by foreign lawmakers “garbage.”
Hou, who started out as a police officer and benefited from the KMT’s past authoritarian regime as a member of the establishment during the White Terror period, is nowhere near as impetuous as Ko. However, the KMT’s party-state mindset still lingers in him. Having received firsthand the KMT’s spoon-fed patriotism of accentuating the sovereignty of the “Republic of China” (ROC), or “anti-Taiwanese independence,” Hou is still repeating the same obsolete slogans and values in his campaigns.
During 38 years of martial law, despite its proclamations of “safeguarding democracy,” his party was the sole culprit in cracking down on other parties and press freedom, introducing literary inquisition and blacklisting, as well as the establishment of long-serving representatives and taking away people’s right to vote for the president directly and hindering the re-election of the national legislature. With full knowledge of the party’s history, Hou has apparently no shame, as he said: “Democracy and freedom is written in the KMT’s DNA.”
If Hou’s proclamation were true, should the KMT not have welcomed the late democracy activist Deng Nan-jung (鄭南榕) with open arms, instead of regarding him as a monkey on their back in 1989? If the party had “democracy written in it,” it would have found it unbecoming not to reward Deng for advocating freedom of speech, let alone ordering a raid that resulted in Deng’s self-immolation.
Furthermore, for one who takes pride in his party’s DNA, Hou would have to be reminded that after the retreat of the KMT to Taiwan, it is the party’s strategies and policies — from former president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) “gentlemen and thieves cannot coexist” to his son Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) three noes of “no contact, no negotiation and no compromise” and former president Lee Teng-hui’s (李登輝) “special state-to-state relations” — that have kept Taiwan and China separate and individually governed.
Hou’s stance of “safeguarding the ROC, defending Taiwan’s democracy and freedom, and maintaining cross-strait peace” seems to be well-rounded, but as the Chinese Communist Party would never agree to such terms, it is high time that Hou put meat on the bones and elaborate on his cross-strait policy.
In contrast, in June 2014, when Lai, then the mayor of Tainan, attended a forum at China’s Fudan University, he touched upon taboo topics like the Tiananmen Square Massacre and elucidated on why China needs to understand Taiwan’s pursuit of independence as a result of its history and development.
So far, Lai’s conduct aligns with his self-proclaimed stance of being a “pragmatic Taiwan independence activist.” The pro-China politicians who shout “Long live the ROC” at campaigns, but become as quiet as a mouse when in China, can never hope to hold a candle to Lai’s character or leadership.
Chang Kuo-tsai is a retired National Hsinchu University of Education associate professor.
Translated by Rita Wang
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 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
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
RSS