The woman hoping to be the next vice-president is a self-proclaimed “cat warrior” who says she will be able to deliver the “global vision” needed to tackle tensions with China.
The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) hopes that Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴), who until November was the Taiwanese envoy to the US, will be able to convince voters to back the DPP in the high stakes presidential election on Jan. 13.
A political veteran, Hsiao, 52, came up with her own nickname when she was sent to Washington — with her four cats — in 2020.
Photo: Lin Cheng-kung, Taipei Times
The moniker was her response to Beijing’s aggressive “wolf warrior” style diplomacy, which was becoming increasingly combative at that time. Like a cat, Taiwan’s diplomacy would be agile, flexible and comfortable in narrow spaces, she said. The animals are lovable but also independent.
Born in Japan to Taiwanese and American parents, Hsiao’s own life reflects the desire felt by many in Taiwan to forge a distinct Taiwanese identity.
She grew up in Taiwan speaking Mandarin, English and Taiwanese (also called Hoklo). Her family traveled widely; when she was a teenager, they moved to the US where she went on to study political science at Columbia University; she reportedly successfully fought to have a Taiwan stall at the university’s international festival, against the opposition of students from China.
Photo: Yao Kai-shiou, Taipei Times
She chooses to use the Taiwanese version of her given name, rather than the Mandarin version or her English second name, Louise. In the words of her father, who wrote an article about her in 2020: “She wanted a name that would embody her unique background.”
Her identity as a mixed-race woman illustrates the gulf between politics in Taiwan and China. She was Taiwan’s first female envoy to the US and, if elected, would be the second female vice-president.
In Beijing, the Communist party chief Xi Jinping (習近平) last year revealed an all-male politburo, meaning that for the first time since 1997 there are no women in the party’s leadership committee. And the prospect of a mixed-race politician in China is vanishingly remote in a system that emphasizes ethnic purity as central to its idea of nationalism. Some see her as a contrast to the laolunan (老綠男, “old, green, male”) style of politics that has traditionally dominated DPP politics (the party’s color is green).
Photo courtesy of Hsieh Hsi-yang
Hsiao argues that her extensive contacts in Washington on both sides of the aisle will help Taiwan to preserve its status quo — even if that comes at the cost of dialogue with Beijing. China imposed sanctions on Hsiao in 2022 and last year, meaning that she and her family members cannot enter mainland China, Hong Kong or Macau.
PEACE IN THE STRAIT
All three of the main parties are arguing that their candidate can preserve peace and stability for the self-governing island. For the incumbent DPP, that offer to voters comes in the form of a ticket headed by William Lai (賴清德), the current vice-president, and his running mate, Hsiao.
Although the DPP does not formally support a declaration of independence, it is widely seen as the party that would try to put the most distance between Taipei and Beijing. Lai has previously described himself as a “pragmatic worker for Taiwan independence.”
The main opposition party, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), argues that more dialogue, as well as economic and trade links with China, will help reduce cross-Strait tensions. And the relative newcomer, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), claims to offer a middle way for voters, although its candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) has supported increased links with China.
Hsiao, however argues that Taiwan needs to bolster its defenses against the “constant pressures” from China. The DPP hopes she will be able to convince the country’s 19.3 million eligible voters it is the party that can boost Taipei’s standing on the world stage.
“She is very international,” says Bonnie Glaser, the managing director and Taiwan expert at the German Marshall Fund, a thinktank. “That is part of what the DPP wants to portray itself as, as a party that is connected to the world.”
Soon after graduating in the US, Hsiao returned to Taiwan to join the DPP, becoming the party’s head of international affairs at the age of 26. In 2002, she renounced her US citizenship in accordance with laws about civil servants.
Before being appointed to serve in Washington in 2020, she was a member of Legislative Yuan, and served for a decade in the east-coast county of Hualien, which has a large Indigenous population — an experience which her supporters say boosts her credentials outside the Taipei elite.
In Monday’s televised vice-presidential debate, Hsiao said that there were three main issues facing Taiwan: the economy, geopolitical uncertainties and global challenges such as climate change.
But the question of how to negotiate the relationship between the US and China is dominating the race. In a recent interview with The Economist, Hsiao summed up her, and the DPP’s, approach: “Cats have the ability to tread softly but firmly … You can’t force them to do things they don’t want to. You don’t command cats. You’ve got to be nice to them, and cats will repay your kindness with warmth.”
June 2 to June 8 Taiwan’s woodcutters believe that if they see even one speck of red in their cooked rice, no matter how small, an accident is going to happen. Peng Chin-tian (彭錦田) swears that this has proven to be true at every stop during his decades-long career in the logging industry. Along with mining, timber harvesting was once considered the most dangerous profession in Taiwan. Not only were mishaps common during all stages of processing, it was difficult to transport the injured to get medical treatment. Many died during the arduous journey. Peng recounts some of his accidents in
“Why does Taiwan identity decline?”a group of researchers lead by University of Nevada political scientist Austin Wang (王宏恩) asked in a recent paper. After all, it is not difficult to explain the rise in Taiwanese identity after the early 1990s. But no model predicted its decline during the 2016-2018 period, they say. After testing various alternative explanations, Wang et al argue that the fall-off in Taiwanese identity during that period is related to voter hedging based on the performance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Since the DPP is perceived as the guardian of Taiwan identity, when it performs well,
A short walk beneath the dense Amazon canopy, the forest abruptly opens up. Fallen logs are rotting, the trees grow sparser and the temperature rises in places sunlight hits the ground. This is what 24 years of severe drought looks like in the world’s largest rainforest. But this patch of degraded forest, about the size of a soccer field, is a scientific experiment. Launched in 2000 by Brazilian and British scientists, Esecaflor — short for “Forest Drought Study Project” in Portuguese — set out to simulate a future in which the changing climate could deplete the Amazon of rainfall. It is
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on May 18 held a rally in Taichung to mark the anniversary of President William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20. The title of the rally could be loosely translated to “May 18 recall fraudulent goods” (518退貨ㄌㄨㄚˋ!). Unlike in English, where the terms are the same, “recall” (退貨) in this context refers to product recalls due to damaged, defective or fraudulent merchandise, not the political recalls (罷免) currently dominating the headlines. I attended the rally to determine if the impression was correct that the TPP under party Chairman Huang Kuo-Chang (黃國昌) had little of a