President William Lai (賴清德) campaigned on continuity with the two terms of his predecessor Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文). In government, he has kept his word, and has continued her policies and picked some familiar faces from the Tsai administration to be in the new cabinet. While he may be carefully preserving her legacy in government, he has taken a torch to one of her key legacies inside the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) that could potentially destabilize the party.
In the previous two columns we looked at how individually, Lai’s cabinet picks are mostly worthy people. However, when looked at in aggregate, problems appear. The cabinet is packed with old men at a time when women are doing very well at the ballot box. That so many of them are elderly is also an issue, all four democratically elected presidents previously served in the cabinet, but with an average age of 62.5 most of these cabinet members will have little to no time to develop a future career in leadership, which is bad for both the country and Lai’s own DPP.
HOW TSAI BROUGHT PEACE TO THE DPP
Photo courtesy of the Tainan City Government
During her eight years in office much changed under Tsai, but what is less commented on is her transformative legacy within the DPP. Prior to her becoming party chair in 2008, the DPP was often shaken by bitter feuds between the factions, which often played out in very public ways that gave the party a public image of chaos, disunity and infighting. If you are unfamiliar with the factions, two previous columns explore them in depth: “The powerful political force that vanished from the English press,” April 23, 2024 and “Introducing the powerful DPP factions,” April 27, 2024.
Within a couple of years press coverage of factions in the local press became less frequent, and disappeared entirely from the English press. While at the local level the factions were still battling it out, at the national level they had stopped fighting each other.
Doing some math, it became clear what Tsai had done, and it was ingenious. She would assign party and government positions to each of the factions according to a formula, so they all had a pretty good idea of what they were going to get, and nothing to gain by embarrassing the party by complaining in the press.
Photo: Hua Meng-ching, Taipei Times
That formula was 30-40 percent for the powerful New Tide faction (新潮流系統, usually abbreviated to 新系), 20 percent for Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA, 正常國家促進會, usually abbreviated to 正國會) and 10 percent each for the Taiwan Forward (湧言會, also often referred to as the Ocean Faction, 海派), the Su Tseng-chang faction (蘇系), named after the former premier, the Green Fellowship Association (綠色友誼連線, sometimes written as 綠色友誼系統, also often referred to as the Sunny Bank Gang, 陽信幫) and the Ing faction (英系) named after Tsai Ing-wen, but not founded or led by her. The Vital Spring of Democracy (民主活水連線, English translation mine) faction is too new to have been included in Tsai’s formulation.
LAI APPOINTEES BY FACTION
To determine if Lai as party chair was continuing to rule the party on Tsai’s formula, I researched 42 top figures in the presidential office, Executive Yuan and the semi-governmental Straits Exchange Foundation. This is not an easy task, as the factions are quite opaque, especially since the party formally banned them in 2006. Some people are widely known to be in specific factions, others are assumed to be because of who they associate with, some are openly unaffiliated to any faction and some…no one knows.
Not all local analysts agree on whether people are in certain factions or not. For example, Credere Media (信傳媒) recently described DPP legislative caucus convener Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) as having unclear factional ties, but other media outlets and resources I have examined in the past tied him to the Su faction, and possibly Ker even having his own subfaction within the Su faction. Widely known to be close to William Lai and his team, it was widely assumed Tainan Mayor Huang Wei-che (黃偉哲) was New Tide, until one day in frustration he held a press conference to explain that he was not in any faction, he was just friends with people who happened to be New Tide.
Although after the election Lai stated he was resigning from New Tide, I have continued to include him in that camp, because his appointments suggest a continued loyalty to that faction. I have also distinguished between New Tide and what the local media has identified as his clique or “gang,” as some less friendly media outlets describe it. The Lai clique are mostly people who worked for him when he was Tainan mayor, but some come from other sources. Any or all of the Lai clique could be New Tide currently or in future, or could potentially be associated with Vital Spring of Democracy, which is openly pro-Lai, but curiously did not want to join Lai’s New Tide subfaction.
As best as I could determine, of the 42 total 11 are almost certainly New Tide with another 11 either Lai clique or described by the media as “friendly to New Tide.” Ten are unaffiliated technocrats, three are Ing faction, three are Ing clique, two are Su faction and Vital Spring and TNCPA. One name that surprised a lot of people that was not included in these 42 people was former Keelung mayor and interior minister Lin Yu-chang (林右昌) of the TNCPA, but he was given the powerful post of secretary-general of the DPP instead.
Even if my numbers are not 100 percent correct, they are in the ballpark. So what do they tell us?
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
There are different ways to look at this. It could be claimed that Lai is relying heavily on those he knows and trusts to ensure that the government is in capable hands Or it could be claimed that Lai is making a power grab within the government and party and packing the Lai regime out with his cronies.
Pan-green supporters not affiliated with other factions will likely view it closer to the first viewpoint. Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chair Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), many in his party and the pan-blue media will see it through the lens of the second viewpoint.
In reality, there is likely some truth to both viewpoints. It is natural for a successful leader in a new position to want to bring in team members who helped build his success in the past, are competent, trustworthy and easy to work with. Many of the others in the cabinet from different factions he has also worked with before, especially when he was premier, so Lai is likely confident he has a good team in place.
However, it is important to remember that Lai is a politician and New Tide a faction, and neither can rise to the top without a deep understanding and desire for power. New Tide is all about power, and not just political power. They extend into the business world and academia.
Within six months of Tsai being elected president in 2016, New Tide figures were appointed to run three state-owned enterprises, Taiyan, Taiwan Sugar Corporation, CPC Corporation and later even Chunghwa Post was added to the list. A prominent New Tide figure, Lai Chin-lin (賴勁麟), was approached by electronics distributor Senao to be their CEO, and later he moved to be CEO at green energy firm J&V Energy and their 19 subsidiaries and affiliated companies. Taiyan has recently been in the news due to a green energy subsidiary being run with what at best could be described as gross incompetence.
Last year, political opponents of the DPP accused Lai Chin-lin of a vast scheme to enrich himself and New Tide via government green energy contracts and using his daughter, then lawmaker Souichi Lai (賴品妤), to help get bills written and passed that were beneficial to himself and New Tide. Some of the accusations did not hold water — for example, Souichi Lai voted party line on these bills, and had been on record long before her father had anything to do with green energy as being strongly pro-environment. However, while nothing outright illegal was ever proven, the movement of money between the elder Lai, his companies and politicians mostly associated with New Tide did look bad and had more than a whiff of sleaze about it, though this kind of thing has been going on since at least when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) arrived after World War II, and probably even during the Japanese colonial era.
TWO BIG POTENTIAL RISKS
There are two potential risks going forward. One is by throwing out Tsai’s formula, the factions now have incentive to struggle against each other again. Perhaps Lai thinks that the factions are not as strong as they once were and the party culture has changed. That may be the case, but if he is wrong he may find that he has lost control of the party.
We may have a chance to see which way the wind is blowing at the DPP National Congress next month. First, it will be interesting to see if anyone has the audacity to challenge Lai. Second, they will be electing the 30-member Executive Committee, which will in turn elect the powerful 10-member Standing Committee. Of the non-ex officio open seats, it will be very interesting to see how it breaks down factionally.
The other big potential risk is corruption. With so many people in government now either New Tide or Lai clique, or both, this means a lot more opportunity for them to appoint heads of state-owned enterprises and other state-funded entities like think tanks. If one or more of them were to get greedy it would look bad for Lai, though it could likely be portrayed as one or two bad apples.
If a group of them form to engage in corruption and cover each other’s back, that would be disastrous for both Lai and the DPP, and would likely be severely punished at the ballot box. By appointing an already incestuous bunch Lai has, probably inadvertently, significantly raised the risks of this happening.
If both come to pass we know what it might look like: The chaos and demoralization in the DPP in the late Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) era and the triumphant return of the KMT with the landslide victory of Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
Donovan’s Deep Dives is a regular column by Courtney Donovan Smith (石東文) who writes in-depth analysis on everything about Taiwan’s political scene and geopolitics. Donovan is also the central Taiwan correspondent at ICRT FM100 Radio News, co-publisher of Compass Magazine, co-founder Taiwan Report (report.tw) and former chair of the Taichung American Chamber of Commerce. Follow him on X: @donovan_smith.
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