Hon Hai Precision Industry Co founder Terry Gou (郭台銘) on Wednesday said he would seek the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) nomination for next year’s presidential election.
New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜), for many the top choice to run for the KMT, has been in the media spotlight for prevarication over whether he would throw his hat in. Since the Lunar New Year holiday, Hou has been acting as if he were under pressure to “take the crown.”
His behavior is reminiscent of another KMT member four years ago. After Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) was elected Kaohsiung mayor in 2018, he enjoyed a rapid ascent to stardom, and the KMT picked him as its presidential nominee.
Hou soon fell from grace. He lost the presidential election and was recalled as mayor.
The KMT has apparently not learned its lesson. Had it left Han as Kaohsiung mayor instead of having him enter the presidential race, things would be different.
To be president, candidates need to make solid cross-strait policy proposals, but Hou’s cross-strait experience is limited. He was invited by the Straits Exchange Foundation to participate in the investigation of the 1994 Qiandao Lake kidnappings of Taiwanese in China and was director-general of the National Police Agency from 2006 to 2008, with some of his work requiring cooperation with China.
However, his experience stopped when he became New Taipei City deputy mayor in 2010.
For Hou, questions about China and cross-strait relations are not easy. If he, without any preparation and guidance, were to go head-to-head against Vice President William Lai (賴清德), the Democratic Progressive Party’s presidential nominee, in a debate of those issues, the outcome would not be pretty.
The History of Ming says that Zhu Yuanzhang (朱元璋), the founder of the Ming Dynasty, accumulated military power and surrounded himself with talented people, but refrained from making a bid for the crown when he was building his kingdom. Hou should learn from Zhu’s example.
Shih Ya-hsuan is an associate professor in National Kaohsiung Normal University’s Department of Geography.
Translated by Rita Wang
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
Sasha B. Chhabra’s column (“Michelle Yeoh should no longer be welcome,” March 26, page 8) lamented an Instagram post by renowned actress Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) about her recent visit to “Taipei, China.” It is Chhabra’s opinion that, in response to parroting Beijing’s propaganda about the status of Taiwan, Yeoh should be banned from entering this nation and her films cut off from funding by government-backed agencies, as well as disqualified from competing in the Golden Horse Awards. She and other celebrities, he wrote, must be made to understand “that there are consequences for their actions if they become political pawns of
RSS