The recent Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) election for party chair was an excellent reminder of how far out of the mainstream the KMT truly is. Former KMT legislator Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) was elected by the party rank and file over lifetime meh politician and former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), who was strongly supported by party elites and powerful local factions.
Cheng stated that the KMT’s main political goal should be to “gather mainstream public support within Taiwan.” Like the people who ran against her during the chair election, she said she would be willing to meet with People’s Republic of China (PRC) dictator Xi Jin-ping (習近平). Note that the leaders of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) would also be happy to meet Xi, but won’t because of PRC demand that Taiwan subordinate itself to the PRC.
As longtime Taiwan watcher Sense Hofstede pointed out, “mainstream public opinion” is a favorite code-phrase of Xinhua in describing the situation in Taiwan. Scholar Sanho Chung (鍾燊豪) chimed in on Cheng on Bluesky, observing of her voter base that in 2016 the KMT waived annual fees for older and poorer party members. The ratio of waiver members has grown since then, “making them decisive in party elections.” They turn out in droves, and are closer to China, he noted.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
The predominant emotion among supports of Taiwan appears to be that her election was a good thing. She is wildly out of the Taiwan mainstream and will only further marginalize and isolate the KMT. For example, she claimed that “Taiwan is a part of China, and mainland China is surrounding Taiwan today by deploying security units to protect Taiwan, maintain law and order in Taiwan and keep foreign forces that want to take over Taiwan away from Taiwan.”
These are PRC positions. No one can win election at the national level in Taiwan making such noises.
CLANS AND FACTIONS
Another interesting monkey wrench she has tossed into the KMT machine is its relationship with local clans, who have become quite influential. The Chang faction, based in the south, perhaps the most powerful local machine in the nation, backed her rival Hau, a clear sign of the faction’s desire to move closer to the mainlander elites at the core of the party.
Seen from that angle, in some ways this election reprises the 2005 KMT chairmanship election between Taiwanese politician, power broker, and Taiwanese KMT leader Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and future president and mainlander elite Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). Party elites backed Wang, a pragmatic and skilled politician, while the rank and file swooned for Ma. As ETTV news reported in 2005, Ma had “the overwhelming endorsement … from the hard-core mainlander community, especially the massive Huang Fu-hsing party branch for retired soldiers.”
The March 2016 chairmanship election featured Chiayi’s Huang Min-hui (黃敏惠, currently the mayor of Chiayi City) against another fiery hardcore pro-China mainlander uttering PRC platitudes, Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱). Hung won despite having been removed as the party candidate in the run-up to the disastrous 2016 presidential election, and despite Huang’s support from party elites, because she had backing of the party rank and file, among whom she had rock-star status.
After the 2005 election, the relationship between the KMT elites and the Taiwanese factions and legislators in the KMT became fraught. When Ma became president he sponsored two trade pacts with China that threatened local businesses, especially the services pact. Local faction legislators, protecting local businesses and local organized crime, brewed up a revolt. Many KMT legislators refused to vote for the services pact. Ma kept them in line by threatening to withhold party support for local legislators. Legislators who might have left the party were compelled to remain because there was no other place for them to go. Ironically the “reforms” the DPP and KMT had passed to change the way legislators were elected and reduce the number of seats, intended to eliminate small parties, left rogue legislators no room to start a new party or run as independents and still gain a seat. In other words, one effect of the reforms was enforcement of party discipline that cost the big parties nothing.
In those days Taiwan was still a place where local businessmen could make money and small and medium-sized businesses played a major role in the economy. It was their screaming, after all, that forced local KMT politicians to oppose the destructive services pact. It is hardly surprising that as local business viability has suffered in the wake of the pandemic and the rise of real estate as the domestic economy’s driver, local politics have shifted away from the DPP.
The 2016 election again exposed these deep rifts in the KMT between the Taiwanese factions and the party elites. As Hung’s candidacy loomed in May and June of 2015 several KMT legislators left the party, and many others threatened to. An existential crisis loomed. KMT insiders warned of the “New Party-ization” of the KMT (the threat of the hardcore, pro-China, non-mainstream faction taking over the party). Hung was pulled from the election and the KMT lost in a blowout. Hung became chair and was a major factor in the recovery of the KMT: it was she who found the cash to keep the party going.
REPLAY OF MA-HUNG YEARS?
Once again, with Cheng Li-wun, who was a DPP member until 2002 and joined the KMT in 2005, is a far-right nationalist who won over the rank and file in defiance of party elites who have close connections to local factions. Many observers are wondering if we will have another replay of the Ma-Hung years, when local faction politicians repeatedly threatened to leave the party. This seems doubtful. The faction environment is much different than it was a decade ago. A few local factions have metastasized and now operate at the regional and national level, while other local leaders, such as Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) of Hualien, appear to be attempting to. Indeed, some observers are already contending that Fu and Cheng will inevitably clash, a feeling strong enough that Fu publicly stated he would work with her.
But another issue is: will it matter? In March of 2000 James Soong (宋楚瑜) started the People First Party (PFP), taking a clutch of legislators out of the KMT. After the 2001 election it was the number three party in the legislature, by 2008 it held a single seat. Many of its politicians rejoined the KMT. It is now a memory. The Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU), established by former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) in August of 2001 by taking politicians out of the KMT, is now also a memory.
There are always more local faction politicians out there, hungry for a place at the subsidy table. Hence, the rise and demise of the PFP and TSU are not object lessons for studying Cheng Li-wun and the KMT, but rather, for Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), another party composed of numerous ex-KMT politicians, run by a pan-Green turncoat now mouthing anti-DPP propaganda stances.
Notes from Central Taiwan is a column written by long-term resident Michael Turton, who provides incisive commentary informed by three decades of living in and writing about his adoptive country. The views expressed here are his own.
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