The awkward race to be Taiwan’s next president

As Tsai Ing-wen’s two-term as president draws to a close, a avuncular cop, an autistic surgeon and the former “golden child of Taiwanese Independence” will vie for Taiwan’s top job in 2024

There will not be another Taiwanese president like Tsai Ing-wen. Certainly while surveying the candidates being offered up for Taiwan’s top job by the main parties, there isn’t anyone who threatens to match her mix of cool charisma and ability to thread the diplomatic needle.

According to the latest polls, the three top candidates up for the 2024 presidential elections roughly split the vote like a wobbly three-legged stool. Vice President Lai Ching-te of Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is in the lead at 26.6 percent. However, his closest rival, Hou You-Yi of the Kuomintang (KMT) is right behind at 24.7%. In third place is Ko Wen-je of the upstart Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) at 21.1%. It’s not just too close to call, it’s also too complicated, with pundits already sketching out strategic voting schemes that can see Hou or Ko absorb enough of the other’s voters to prevail over Lai.

The “how pro-China vs pro-Independence are they?” question is going to be the top-of-mind outside of Taiwan, and understandably so. But I don’t think it’s really possible to answer that question in a simplistic way without knowing who the candidates are more holistically. And I hope to steer the reader away from simplistic conclusions such as “if the KMT wins it means Taiwan is becoming more pro-China.”

Without further ado, let me give you my personal impression of each candidate, their beliefs, their party, and ending with an analysis of the possible “dump-save” vote strategy.

Lai Ching-te: The once “Golden Child of Taiwanese Independence”

The current veep Lai Ching-te can say he won’t declare Taiwanese independence until he’s blue in the face, and he won’t necessarily be believed because of his past. This is because Lai came to political prominence as the popular DPP mayor of the Pan-Green stronghold of Tainan and in that capacity he really said some shit and on video too. Oh look: here’s a tape of him in Shanghai’s Fudan University opining freely first on Tiananmen Square, then on Taiwanese independence, apparently blessed with a total inability to read the room. His strident views plus his popularity at the time earned him the moniker “Golden Child of Taiwanese Independence” (台獨金孫).

Eight years later, Lai has to sing a different tune. To inherit Tsai’s mantle, he’s also adopted her pragmatic formulation on the issue of Taiwanese independence, to wit, there is no need to declare Taiwanese independence because Taiwan is already an independent country. But he doesn’t do it with her verve and conviction, and he makes the Americans nervous. The fear is his lip-service will slip and he will go full pro-Independence at some point, triggering China to invade.

Lai’s political succession following Tsai is complicated in another way: he tried to primary her during her low-ebb of popularity for the 2020 presidential elections. You come at the queen, you best not miss. Lai was humiliated and at one point was reduced to begging Tsai to call off her supporters from dragging him online. Tsai eventually made him her veep under the “keep your enemies closer” principle, but you can bet your bottom dollar she wanted one of her mentees to carry on her legacy, not him. Alas, they all turned out weak or scandal-stricken. Lai was the only choice, though his own popularity is not what it was.

Angelica’s take: Lai is one of those people who manage to throw off a very cool exterior while remaining a bit unpredictable, dare I say independent, in spirit. You sense that he was at his best as the Mayor of Tainan where he was able to be more authentic. As a national-level figure he’s had to be reasonably disciplined. It does not appear to come naturally to him like it does to Tsai, the born diplomat.

Ho You-Yi: The avuncular cop of the KMT

I have to give the KMT credit just for nominating Hou You-Yi. You see, for many in the party, Hou would never truly be “one of them.” Despite the fact that we are generations away from Taiwan pre-democracy where the KMT openly favored “waishengren” who followed Chiang Kai-shek to Taiwan from China and looked upon the local Taiwanese population they found (“benshengren”) as uncouth bumpkins, there is still a separation. And Hou is not just benshengren, he is very, very “local” coded. To the point some wonder if he is “blue” at all despite his party affiliation.

At a Brookings Institute forum, China affairs scholar Bonnie Glaser suggested that Beijing might be “uneasy” with Hou because they don’t know much about Hou, who was Taiwan’s top cop before becoming the popular mayor of New Taipei City. They might see in him the shadow of former president Lee Teng-hui, another benshengren member of the KMT who really was secretly “green” and declared his support for Taiwanese independence after he left office.

As far as the Taiwanese are concerned however, the problem with Hou is more that he’s a local politician who is out of his depth on national and international affairs. He’s really good at fobbing off hard questions with folksy aphorisms that don’t ultimately say anything. On nuclear energy, for instance, his stock reply is “there is no nuclear power without nuclear safety.” On cross-straits issues, he might say “I’ve always been against Taiwanese independence…but I am equally against ‘one country two systems.’” His lack of a clear point-of-view has earned him the monitor HoHoGPT. Even his language ability came under the microscope when a grammatically-questionable tweet made national news. It doesn’t matter that it’s a social media manager who was responsible for the tweet…Hou’s English really isn’t that good.

Angelica’s Take: Hou’s genial warmth and crossover appeal surely made him the smart pick for the KMT as a candidate. Unfortunately, the longer he hangs out in the public eye under the heightened scrutiny of a presidential campaign, the more he fails to look presidential. With Lai we might question if he really believes what he says he believes. With Hou, we might wonder if he actually believes in anything at all.

Ko Wen-je: The Autistic Surgeon turned political Third Force

Even most casual followers of Taiwanese politics knows that the political spectrum doesn’t go from left to right, it goes from blue (pro-China) to green (pro-independence). KMT is the ‘blue’ party. DPP is the ‘green’ party. But what about the people who are just sick of all of this blue-green nonsense and would like Taiwanese politics to be re-oriented towards competence in bread-and-butter issues?

Enter emergency medicine surgeon Ko Wen-je. He was first elected as mayor of Taipei city as an independent in 2014. “Taiwan’s biggest problem is the dysfunctional and divisive blue-green partisan politics,” said Ko. His message resonated deeply with young people who just want better lives and grew up frustrated with with the apparently intractable nature of orienting every issue in politics around cross-strait relations. The “color” that Ko chose for his Taiwan People’s Party (TPP)? White.

Ko is openly autistic and this has been used by his supporters both as a superpower and an excuse for when their leader says horribly sexist things in public. They don’t seem to have hurt his popularity that badly. He’s seen as somebody who doesn’t know how to say things the politically correct way, rather than someone with genuinely problematic views.

Ko the independent politician started his career as someone who is deeply “green” aligned, but that all shifted over time. The TPP is now seen as a party that is more definitely “pan-blue,” despite the fact that Ko draws from both “light blue” and “light green” voters. Polling at 21.1% is impressive for a third party. When the chips are down though, Ko’s TPP is seen as not having the same depth of support as the two traditional parties when it comes to turnout.

Angelica’s Take: I really like the idea of a party that breaks free from Taiwan’s unproductive blue-green dynamics but there’s a lot I personally don’t find charming about Ko. Could be the way he says things like "if it weren't for their glands, the status of women would be even lower." I also don’t think it’s acceptable to say “well he’s autistic” to erase gaffes: whether it’s fair or not, the ability to communicate well is part of the job of the commander in chief.

“Dump/Save”

In a “three-legged stool” election like this one, strategic voting comes into play. This dynamic is usually described as “dump/save” in Taiwanese politics. In the case of the 2024 presidential election, the “green” camp only has one candidate: Lai. The “blue/white” camp has two candidates: Hou and Ko. The theory is, once one of the two candidates visibly fall behind, they would be “dumped” and their votes would go to “save” the other candidate.

In reality, it’s more complicated because even though the TPP is seen more as a pan-blue party, it does truly absorb votes from light-green as well as light-blue voters. Nevertheless, it’s reasonable to assume that Lai’s lead is slimmer than it looks. If Ko collapses more in the polls, more of his votes would probably go to Hou than Lai.

The 800lb Gorilla to the west

Of course, it’s impossible to talk about the 2024 Taiwanese elections without considering the issue of China. But it’s also important to remember that the Taiwanese will have a lot of other considerations. Amongst them the simple fact that for many people, democracy means letting the other party have a go every once in a while. After 2 terms under Tsai’s DPP, some voters might simply think it’s time for a change.

This is hard to imagine for many outside of Taiwan, who find it hard to conceive that there can be any other issue besides Taiwan/China.

I can only say that Taiwanese politics is already deeply warped by cross-strait relations, resulting in the green/blue divide. But it is simply impossible to be a functional country and only be focused on just one issue. The KMT for their part, did not pick former Foxconn founder Terry Guo to be their standard-bearer, someone I consider to be far more proactively China-friendly than Hou.

At this point, all three candidates are in it to win it. Fortunately for Taiwan, I don’t consider any of them an unacceptable option.

Unfortunately, I also don’t consider any of them in the league of President Tsai. When she leaves, it will truly be the end of an era.