The Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) nomination last month of New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) as its presidential candidate does not seem to have galvanized the party as a whole.
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co founder Terry Gou (郭台銘) is not yet convinced he is out of the game. As Hou has always kept the KMT’s deep-blue faction at arm’s length — a group consisting of generations of waishengren (外省人), or those who fled China with the KMT after 1949 and were given important positions, privilege and power by the regime — he has so far received tepid support from party members.
Given the mistrust and antagonism between benshengren (本省人) — people who came to Taiwan in the centuries preceding World War II — and waishengren in the party, Hou needs the endorsement of two KMT heavyweights: former Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) and former legislative speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平).
KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) once said that Hou, having started out as a police officer, would “do his job right.” While the remark might sound like a compliment, this has proved to be Hou’s Achilles heel within the KMT’s party culture. Civil servants working under the KMT’s autocratic rule were trained to carry out orders from the top and evade responsibility.
Hou is a classic example of this. He lobbed a groundless accusation that the Democratic Progressive Party called military personnel, public servants and public-school teachers “parasites.” Before attacking others, the KMT should have put its house in order first. It seems to have forgotten how its former directorate-general of personnel administration Chen Kang-chin (陳庚金) and Han once publicly encouraged civil servants to be “salary thieves.”
US expert on China affairs Bonnie Glaser has said that as Beijing does not know much about Hou, except that he bears some similarities to the late president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), it is “uneasy” about him winning the presidency. However, as all three main presidential candidates are benshengren, this has been an irksome fact for China and the KMT.
In terms of leadership, vision and experience, Hou cannot hold a candle to Lee, and he is under the thumb of the KMT’s higher echelons. KMT representatives sent to visit China have always been the pro-China waishengren faction in charge of cross-strait affairs. The idea of having a benshengren in the Presidential Office does not sit well with the deep-blue faction.
Gou’s supporters and anti-Hou factions have something in common: the waishengren-benshengren complex. Finding a replacement is out of the question, with memories of the humiliating defeat following the replacement of former KMT chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) in the 2016 presidential election still fresh in the mind.
The only way to save Hou’s failing campaign is to “unite” the party’s waishengren and benshengren. As one of the most influential waishengren factions in the party, Han and his loyal “Han wave” supporters have always seen themselves as the “booster” that can give any candidate a leg up in the campaign. Unfortunately, as Hou and Han have had a few rifts in the past, Han and his supporters are still waiting for Hou to extend the olive branch.
On Hou’s part, he is bent on garnering support from the deep-blue faction, vowing to undo the DPP’s cutting of pensions for retired military personnel, public servants and public-school teachers. Wang is the leading figure of the benshengren faction in the KMT. However, the politically savvy former legislative speaker has declined to be Hou’s campaign director and only agreed to provide assistance from the sidelines. As Hou’s hallmark of “blue skin and green bones” is now working against him, Hou needs the waishengren faction to help his campaign. However, as the higher echelons in the KMT have shown, waishengren are used to being the king themselves, not kingmakers.
With one leader awaiting Hou’s sign of goodwill and the other turning down Hou’s offer, pundits are having a field day with Hou’s falling support ratings and less than satisfactory performance. From the most popular candidate that secured a landslide victory in last year’s local election to the desperate nominee begging for support, Hou is in for an uphill battle. As cunning as Chu is, he cannot escape the fate of stepping down once Hou loses the election and the KMT falls into disarray again.
James Wang is a media commentator.
Translated by Rita Wang
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
During the “426 rally” organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party under the slogan “fight green communism, resist dictatorship,” leaders from the two opposition parties framed it as a battle against an allegedly authoritarian administration led by President William Lai (賴清德). While criticism of the government can be a healthy expression of a vibrant, pluralistic society, and protests are quite common in Taiwan, the discourse of the 426 rally nonetheless betrayed troubling signs of collective amnesia. Specifically, the KMT, which imposed 38 years of martial law in Taiwan from 1949 to 1987, has never fully faced its
When a recall campaign targeting the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators was launched, something rather disturbing happened. According to reports, Hualien County Government officials visited several people to verify their signatures. Local authorities allegedly used routine or harmless reasons as an excuse to enter people’s house for investigation. The KMT launched its own recall campaigns, targeting Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers, and began to collect signatures. It has been found that some of the KMT-headed counties and cities have allegedly been mobilizing municipal machinery. In Keelung, the director of the Department of Civil Affairs used the household registration system