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Pro-China Mayor Is Picked to Run Against Taiwan’s President Pro-China Mayor Is Picked to Run Against Taiwan’s President
(about 3 hours later)
Taiwan’s main opposition party on Monday picked a populist, pro-China mayor as its candidate for the 2020 presidential race against an incumbent who is often sharply critical of Beijing. TAIPEI, Taiwan — The populist pro-China mayor of the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung won the opposition party’s nomination to run against President Tsai Ing-wen, who has been sharply critical of Beijing’s attempts to pressure the island into unification.
The Nationalist Party chose Han Kuo-yu to run against the incumbent, Tsai Ing-wen, in the January election. He defeated Terry Gou, the former chairman of Foxconn Technology, which makes Apple products, in a party primary. The nomination of Han Kuo-yu, who survived a challenge from Terry Gou, the founder of the world’s largest iPhone assembler, will offer Taiwan’s voters a stark choice in January’s election between governments leaning toward Washington or Beijing.
Mr. Han, the mayor of the port city of Kaohsiung, was supported by 45 percent of respondents in telephone opinion surveys over the last week, the party said. Mr. Gou was second with 28 percent. Three other candidates also sought the nomination. Ms. Tsai, the incumbent from the Democratic Progressive Party, drew sharp condemnation from China last week when she visited New York and spoke at Columbia University. The speech underlined the warmest ties between Washington and Taipei in two decades.
Mr. Han has vowed to make peace with China. In March he signed deals with four Chinese cities to sell $165 million worth of Taiwanese agricultural products. [Han Kuo-yu, the new star of the opposition, has galvanized older Taiwanese.]
He was elected mayor of Kaohsiung, normally a stronghold of the governing Democratic Progressive Party, in November, on pledges to improve the local economy. Mr. Han was selected based on the results of public opinion and phone surveys taken over the last week that showed he was backed by 45 percent of respondents compared with 28 percent for Mr. Guo.
Ms. Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party suffered a major setback in the November local elections amid voter dissatisfaction with her management of the economy. “Han’s primary victory was quite convincing,” said Austin Wang, an associate professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who studies Taiwan politics. “The gap between Han and Gou was huge.”
She has since rebounded in popularity with a tough stance against China, which has ratcheted up pressure on the self-governing island to reunite with the mainland. Mr. Han has accused Ms. Tsai’s government of failing to improve people’s lives, while suggesting that some recent authoritarian East Asian leaders offer a model for Taiwan, which democratized in the early 1990s after nearly four decades of brutal martial law.
China and Taiwan separated during civil war in 1949, but Beijing still claims sovereignty over the island and occasionally threatens to use force to take it if necessary. At a large June 1 rally in Taiwan’s capital, Taipei, Mr. Han singled out three political figures for praise: Chiang Ching-kuo, the former Kuomintang dictator of Taiwan; Lee Kuan-yew, the authoritarian ruler of Singapore; and Deng Xiaoping, who initiated economic overhauls in China but was responsible for the Tiananmen massacre.
Mr. Gou’s candidacy attracted interest in overseas business circles, as Foxconn churns out iPhones and other consumer electronics as a contract manufacturer for Apple and other brands. Mr. Han visited China earlier this year, where he met with top Communist Party officials in the former British colony of Hong Kong and the former Portuguese colony of Macau. Both territories are administered by Beijing under a “one country, two systems” framework that, in theory, allows a high degree of local autonomy in all areas aside from diplomacy and national defense.
China’s Communist Party claims self-ruled Taiwan as its territory. In January, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, urged Taiwan’s 23 million people to choose peaceful unification with China under a “one country, two systems” arrangement. In the same speech, Mr. Xi also said he would not rule out war as a means of bringing Taiwan under Beijing’s control.
Mr. Han has promoted the view that Taiwan and China belong to the same country, and had offered a view that closer ties with China would lift Taiwan’s economy. His tone has changed, however, in the wake of the recent wave of large protests in Hong Kong, where residents have demonstrated against a bill that would allow extraditions to mainland China and against police abuses during the protests.
In June, shortly after one of the biggest protest marches in Hong Kong, Mr. Han said that if elected president, Taiwan would only become subjected to rule under China’s “one country, two systems” proposal “over my dead body.” Despite the remarks, the pro-China news media in Taiwan has continued to support his candidacy.
Mr. Gou has been critical of the support Mr. Han has received from what many Taiwanese call the “red media,” led by local outlets belonging to the Want Want Group, which has often been critical of the outspoken tycoon.
There has been widespread speculation that Mr. Gou may begin a presidential campaign as an independent. Although he appears to have lost convincingly to Mr. Han, the nature of the public poll, which also surveyed nonparty members, led to suspicion that supporters of Ms. Tsai said they backed Mr. Han, viewing him as a weaker opponent for Ms. Tsai than Mr. Gou.
In addition to a possible independent bid by Mr. Gou, Taipei’s independent mayor, Ko Wen-je, may also announce his candidacy for January’s election. Should they both join the race, it would most likely benefit Ms. Tsai, since they, along with Mr. Han, are seen as more China friendly than Ms. Tsai, and would very likely split voters who favor closer ties with China.
Despite his victory, Mr. Han faces challenges within his own party, the Kuomintang. Having campaigned as the “president of the common people” and promising to make Taiwanese get rich — without offering details on how he intends to do so — he will now need to win over the party elite.
“Well-educated Kuomintang elites may not want to openly support Han,” Mr. Wang said. “He needs to focus on issues that those elites will want to work on with him.”