Yesterday, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), once the dominant political party in Taiwan and the historic bearer of Chinese republicanism, officially crowned Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) as its chairwoman. A former advocate for Taiwanese independence turned Beijing-leaning firebrand, Cheng represents the KMT’s latest metamorphosis — not toward modernity, moderation or vision, but toward denial, distortion and decline.
In an interview with Deutsche Welle that has now gone viral, Cheng declared with an unsettling confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “not a dictator,” but rather a “democratically elected leader.” She went on to lecture the German journalist that Russia had been “democratized for many years,” and insisted that one cannot simply “slap on a label” like “dictator” when someone has come to power through elections.
Putin’s regime has eliminated opposition candidates, weaponized the media, rewritten constitutional term limits and jailed, poisoned or exiled dissenters. His war of aggression in Ukraine has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions. Yet to Cheng, none of this disqualifies him from the ranks of democratic leadership. Her logic is simple: ballots were cast, therefore the man is legitimate. Never mind the prison cells, the rigged results, the murdered journalists or the fear.
Such thinking reveals not merely a personal lapse in judgement, it reflects a deep moral and intellectual corrosion at the heart of today’s KMT. The party that once fought communism with blood and steel, that once claimed to protect “free China,” now flirts with relativism so extreme it sees no difference between tyrant and elected leader, so long as a vote took place.
Votes alone do not constitute democracy. Democracy requires pluralism, free speech, fair competition and most of all, the right to dissent without dying for it. If Cheng does not understand that — or worse, understands it and deliberately blurs the line — then her leadership of the KMT is catastrophic.
Taiwan cannot afford a major opposition party whose leader cannot distinguish dictatorship from democracy, whose moral compass spins with such reckless abandon that it points toward Putinism and calls it “elected legitimacy.” In a world where authoritarian regimes are emboldened and liberal democracies are under siege, Taiwan must be clear-eyed about its values and its enemies. If Cheng believes that Putin is not a threat to freedom, what would she say about Chinese leader Xi Jinping (習近平)?
That a major political party in Taiwan is now led by someone who calls Putin a democrat should alarm us all. This is not a gaffe. It is her worldview — one that distorts history, undermines our democratic identity, and dangerously blurs the line between free societies and those who murder dissent.
The KMT might believe it has chosen a fighter; someone loud, combative and media-savvy. However, what it has chosen is far worse: a leader who confuses strength with bullying, who mistakes autocracy for mandate, and who threatens to drag the party, and the country’s discourse, into a dark abyss.
Cheng’s declaration in the same interview — that Beijing “does not want Taiwan to be another Hong Kong” — is a masterclass in political self-sabotage, managing to insult both logic and Beijing’s narrative in a single breath. Is she suggesting Hong Kong is a failure? If so, she directly challenges Beijing’s official triumphalism and mocks the words of Beijing’s top official in charge of Taiwan policy, the Chinese Communist Party’s fourth-ranked leader Wang Huning (王滬寧), who recently reaffirmed “one country, two systems” as the “best path” for Taiwan.
More pressingly, by what measure of privileged access does she presume to know Beijing’s true intentions? Or is she simply inventing policy on the fly? Such a claim is the hallmark of a leader who is politically tone-deaf and fundamentally unserious — a loud mouth mistaking volume for vision.
Taiwan deserves better. To survive, democracy requires at least two sides — government and opposition — grounded in reality, in ethics, and in a shared understanding that dictatorship is the enemy of democracy, not just an alternative form of it.
Today, one cannot help but grieve not just for the KMT, but for the quality of our national debate. When the leader of a major party calls Putin a democrat, the damage is not just to the party, it is to the very idea of truth.
John Cheng is a retired businessman from Hong Kong now living in Taiwan.
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