The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Sept. 4 held a televised debate between candidates for its chairperson election.
The four candidates for the vote, to be held on Saturday next week, represent a wasted opportunity for the KMT, which continues to be out of touch with public opinion on key issues, particularly on the nation’s sovereignty and the identity of Taiwanese.
During the debate, the four candidates emphasized relations with China, with former Changhua County commissioner Cho Po-yuan (卓伯源) claiming that he would invite Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to visit Taiwan and hold a cross-strait political summit, assuming the party wins the presidency in 2024.
Chinese military threats toward Taiwan have over the past year increased to such a degree that they have become the focus of international policy discussions in Japan, the US, Australia and throughout western Europe.
The KMT could not have picked a worse time to propose friendliness toward China. If the party has the delusion that a majority of Taiwanese would welcome such a policy, it needs look no further than a Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation survey on June 24, which showed that public support for the KMT had declined to 18.4 percent, despite support for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) reaching a five-year low of 22.6 percent.
There are two possible reasons for the decline in KMT support: the party’s continued emphasis on the so-called “1992 consensus” and its opportunistic criticism of the DPP for criticism’s sake, even when facts negate its claims.
For example, when Medigen Vaccine Biologics Co’s domestically developed COVID-19 vaccine was given emergency use authorization, the KMT claimed that the government was using the public as “guinea pigs” to test an “unsafe” vaccine that had only completed phase 2 clinical trials.
However, according to WHO standards, the safety of a vaccine is determined during phase 2 trials, while its efficacy is determined during phase 3 trials.
The KMT has also made dubious claims about the levels of residue of the feed additive ractopamine in meat products imported from the US, despite the Ministry of Health and Welfare having imposed limits.
However, by far the biggest issue of contention is the KMT’s insistence on Taiwanese being “Chinese” and that Taiwan must remain friendly toward the Chinese Communist Party.
During the debate, Sun Yat-sen School president Chang Ya-chung (張亞中), another candidate, said that if elected, he would seek a peace treaty with Beijing, should the KMT win the presidency.
Such a promise smacks of the delusional assumption that China sees Taiwan as an equal belligerent in an ongoing war, which could not be further from the truth. Beijing sees Taiwan as a breakaway province that it threatens to forcibly annex. A “peace treaty” could only mean Taiwan’s capitulation.
This is the KMT’s core problem — its fundamental inability to detach itself from China, despite majority public opinion. In a survey conducted by the Taiwan Thinktank on Dec. 11 last year, 84.9 percent of respondents identified as Taiwanese, and only 8.7 percent said they were Chinese. The KMT chairperson candidates might win over hardline supporters with their cross-strait rhetoric, but they will not appeal to the general public — which is what they must do to win in 2024.
If the KMT is to ever win the presidency or at least be a viable opposition party, it must rethink its views on China. It might not like the idea of renaming the nation “Taiwan,” but even if the Republic of China were again to be recognized by a majority of nations, it would not hold any more territory than what is currently administered from Taipei.
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