During the Global Views Leaders Forum in Taipei on Tuesday, the host asked the participants — Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) and Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — about their presidential aspirations, and whether they might stand in the 2024 presidential election.
All three mayors dodged the question, as politicians always do, although you could not blame the host for asking.
Ko had been expected to stand last year, and both Hou and Cheng are popular mayors.
Hou, in particular, is seen as a rising star in a party lacking obvious candidates in its next generation of potential leaders and, certainly with the debate over the referendums on Saturday next week, he has distanced himself from, or at least not umbilically tied himself to, the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) stance espoused by former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) regarding restarting construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮).
If Ko is thinking about a presidential run in three years’ time, his involvement in, and performance at, the Taipei-Shanghai forum held virtually on Wednesday last week showed him to be a less deft hand than Hou.
In the opening speeches at the forum, Ko said that “conducting exchanges is better than disrupting exchanges,” that “dialogue is better than confrontation,” and that “rapport is better than animosity.”
It is difficult to argue with those sentiments. Unfortunately for Ko, his counterpart in China, Shanghai Mayor Gong Zheng (龔正), made clear his own agenda for the forum when he spoke of how “We on both sides of the Taiwan Strait ... are all Chinese,” “people on both sides of the Strait are one family,” and “we also expect our two cities to compose a new chapter of mutual cooperation and jointly create a bright future to realize the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, which is the greatest dream for the motherland.”
This is how the forum is used in the propaganda battle.
Ko had come under criticism for using the phrase “people on both sides of the Strait are one family” during a previous Taipei-Shanghai forum, and referenced this in his opening remarks this year, saying how “in Taiwan, there are people who want to latch onto this five-word phrase and sully it. It’s better to just not say it.”
This was symptomatic of the political peril of participating in the exchange that he acknowledged, but has no real chance of evading.
The next day, China’s Global Times published an opinion piece hailing the forum’s success “despite the Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] authorities’ frequent provocative acts,” and how it shows China’s “kindness” and “the goodwill for peaceful development of the Chinese people cross [sic] the Straits.”
The article then quoted a Chinese academic as saying “the DPP authorities regard the mainland as an enemy” and that it is “incapable of completely restricting exchanges” with China.
Taiwanese are well aware of why the government considers Beijing to be an enemy; that the DPP is “incapable of completely restricting exchanges” is known as adherence to democratic freedoms.
Beijing certainly could restrict exchanges like this, and yet it chose not to. This is because they serve a purpose and that purpose is propaganda as part of its “united front” agenda.
Ko is either intentionally signalling his pro-Beijing credentials or is unwittingly allowing himself to be used as Beijing’s propaganda tool.
The hapless mayor seems unaware that it is not the five-word phrase that has been “sullied,” it is his political reputation. Gong’s words will likely come back to haunt Ko if he ever decides to stand for president.
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