Taiwan’s 2024 Presidential And Legislative Elections: What Happened And What It Means

>> Well, I guess that's our signal that we can begin, right, Kharis. I'm Larry diamond. I'm a senior fellow here at the Hoover Institution and also at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. It's my great pleasure to be co-chairing for some time now this program on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region with Admiral Jim Ellis, who's been our partner in building out this program and continuing to engage Taiwan.

And who co-led our delegation to Taiwan in August of 2022 as the horizon of the January 2024 elections in Taiwan began to loom. And to have with us our manager and research fellow in the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region, namely Kharis Templeman. Kharis is political scientist, a comparativist whose research and writing is focused principally on Taiwan politics, but also on democratization, elections and election management, party system development, and politics and security issues in Pacific Asia.

We've now co-edited together two books with the late Yun-han Chu on the presidential administrations of Chen Shui-bian and then Ma Ying-jeou. And now that Tsai Ing-wen is soon going to be an ex-president, Kharis, we've gotta roll up our sleeves and think about the third volume in that sequence.

But anyway, Kharis, it's great to have you with us. Our second speaker will be Steven Tan. He's managing director of international Policy Advisory Group, which is a Taipei-based consulting firm which provides its corporate clients with solutions to issues relating to geopolitical risks, strategic planning on supply chain. Which, as you know, Stephen, we did a lot of thinking about when we produced our recent report on the global trade in semiconductor silicon shield, regulatory policy, government relations, and so on.

He was president of the Cross-Strait Policy Association for six years, a visiting fellow at Brookings, a partner of Baker McKenzie, a previous board member of the American Chamber of Commerce, Taiwan. And although Stephen, you can't be with us in person, we see you very clearly. I'm sure we'll hear you very clearly, and it's our honor to have you with us.

And then our third speaker is a PhD candidate in applied physics at Stanford. So maybe you're gonna give us a more scientific analysis of this election. She is Tiffany Chun-An Wang. Her research interests focus on novel material synthesis for electronics and energy applications. And to even read that sentence in one of our gatherings on Taiwan is itself a novel experience.

She currently serves on the board of directors of the North America Taiwanese Engineering and Science Association and was the president of the Stanford Taiwanese Student Association. And I think it's probably more in those capacities that she's joining us here to speak today. If I may, I'd also like to introduce a longtime friend of mine who has the distinction of being the only person in this room who's actually been democratically elected as a president of a country.

So we have the former president of Mongolia, Elbegdorj Tsakhia. He's someone who's actually had to face the challenge as the president of a democratically elected country, of dealing with a neighbor like the People's Republic of China. And I know he's very interested in the democratic politics of Taiwan because he frequently asks very insightful questions about it, and I'm sure he will today.

So how long did we say each of the speakers would speak, Kharis?

>> Kharis Templeman: 10 to 12.

>> Larry diamond: Okay, well, you're going first, so you be a good citizen and set the model. And then we'll turn to Stephen, and then we'll turn to Tiffany, and then I may add a couple of thoughts or reflections, and we'll open it up.

Go ahead.

>> Kharis Templeman: That's great. All right, so thanks, everybody online and in person for joining us today. I should note all three of us, and Stephen, in fact, were in Taiwan during the election, the run up, and the day of the election. And so some of my remarks and my colleagues' remarks will draw on some firsthand experience being there.

My role today is just to kinda set the stage and make sure everybody understands what happened in Taiwan over the last couple of weeks. So, first off, let me just talk briefly about what was at stake in this election. The election was Saturday, January 13th, and it decided who both the next president of the Republic of China on Taiwan would be and the legislature.

They're both elected at the same time for a four-year term. Taiwan has a unicameral legislature with 113 seats up for stake, and they're elected at the same time, serve a similar term. In 2020, the last time this happened, the Democratic Progressive Party, or the more China skeptical party on the political spectrum, retained the presidency when Tsai Ing-wen, the incumbent president was reelected, and she defeated a KMT challenger.

This time around, she's term limited out. And so her vice president, Lai Ching-te, was nominated by the DPP to be her successor. And so the DPP was vying for a third consecutive term in office. And this is, as we know from our own country, kind of a sneaky, hard thing for a ruling party to pull off, this transition from one president to another, and to win three consecutive terms in a row.

And this race was complicated a little bit by the fact that there was not only a KMT challenger, but a third party challenger, Ko Wen-je. So let me talk a little bit about the presidential candidates. First off, Lai Ching-te, who's the sitting vice president, longtime DPP member, came up through local politics in Taiwan as the mayor of Tainan and then became premier under Tsai.

He faced off against the KMT's nominee, Hou Yu-ih, who is the current mayor of New Taipei City, which is the most populous municipality in Taiwan. And then we had a third-party candidate, Ko Wen-je, who's the former mayor of Taipei, and also the founder and key figure in the Taiwan People's Party, or Minzhongdang in Chinese.

And he was very clearly angling to try to place himself between Lai and Hou on a lot of different issues. So he was deliberately running a kind of centrist campaign. I think this audience probably knows the DPP is the more skeptical party in the spectrum here, the KMT is the more China friendly party, and Ko Wen-je is somewhere in between those two.

It was never very clear how far to the Green left or the blue right he would ultimately be, but at one point, he actually flirted with the idea of a joint KMT TPP ticket. And so although he started out his career closer to the green end of the spectrum, he's really drifted more towards the blue end in recent years.

Major issues in the campaign. The issue that most foreign observers focus on is the relationship with the People's Republic of China across the strait. This campaign was no different. That was an important issue. Notably, however, all three candidates actually converged on a lot of issues related to cross strait relations and defense and security issues.

And so Hou Yu-ih, for instance, although he was the candidate of the KMT, actually visited the US and sounded quite hawkish on relations with China and emphasized his own party's willingness to support increases in the defense budget and to maintain at least a one year conscription requirement. On the DPP side, Vai Chingde pledged to follow Tsai Ing wen's very moderate path in cross strait relations as well.

And so both candidates kind of converged and were arguing, arguing about very small differences in their cross straight policy. And then Ko Wen-je one day would sound a lot like Lai Qingda and the next day would sound a lot like Hou Yu-ih. And so he was kind of trying to move between the two within a very narrow band.

Another issue that came up repeatedly in the campaign was the quality of life, cost of living, and job opportunity issues. So Taiwan has soaring housing costs right now, but has not had significant increases in the median wage, so those increases have not kept pace with the rising cost of living.

And so increasingly, especially among younger people, those under 40, the burden of trying to buy a house and start a family and move out of the place where you grew up has become greater and greater. And that is contributing to a lot of kind of youth discontent with both of the major political parties in Taiwan.

So this was a major issue in the campaign. All three candidates pledged to do more to support families, people with young children, to raise the minimum wage by a little, to a lot, and otherwise try to provide more support for people at the lower end of the income spectrum.

Third issue. Ultimately, this didn't end up affecting the vote too much, I think. But earlier in the year, Taiwan was actually technically in a recession. And so that's not a fun place to be if you're an incumbent party asking for a third term from the voters. And I do think the DPP's prospects were hurt a little bit by this downturn earlier in the year.

 

>> Larry diamond: Don't show that to Bud.

>> Kharis Templeman: The last major issue that bubbled up, that I think was probably where there was some difference, actually, between the candidates, was on energy issues. Both the TPP and KMT candidates vowed to extend the life of Taiwan's remaining nuclear plants. The DPP has long taken an anti nuclear stance and has been shutting down Taiwan's nuclear plants as they reach the end of their expected lifespan.

And that's created a kind of energy and electricity crunch in Taiwan. And so there's a heated debate about what's the best way to transition to greener sources of energy without hurting Taiwan's overall economic competitiveness and without becoming increasingly dependent on fossil fuels. And so that issue did come up consistently in the campaign as well.

But overall, I have to say, I've been in Taiwan for four different presidential election cycles now, in 2000, 820, 1620, and 2024. And this one was by far the quietest, I thought. There was not a kind of polarizing candidate in the race. Unlike 2020, it did not feel like just a decisive referendum on the Tsai era, unlike, say, 2008 with Chen Shui bian, or 2016 with Ma Yingzhou.

And a lot of voters, when you talk to them, didn't see a whole lot of difference between the major candidates. And in some cases, we're talking about just not voting at all or we're just disinterested in this. And so the contrast between the way it felt on the ground in Taiwan and the way it was framed by the foreign media coming to Taiwan was really stark.

There were about 500 reporters on the ground from outside of Taiwan, and their editors back in their home bureaus were all pushing them to frame this as Taiwan's existential choice. This may determine the fate of Taiwan going forward. This may determine Taiwan's, the fate of its democracy.

>> Larry diamond: Is Lai going to declare independence?

 

>> Kharis Templeman: Is Lai going to declare independence? And actually on the ground. Most Taiwanese did not kind of buy into that framing at all, then. Another curious thing about this election was that the polls were actually pretty stable for months. If you looked back in July of last year, once the candidates were decided, Lei Chingda was clearly in the lead.

Then the polls were showing him pulling anywhere from 35% to 40% of the vote. In the end, he got 40% of the vote. So you could have predicted with a high degree of accuracy who was going to win this election six months ago. And the real question was whether Ko Wen-je and the KMT's Hou Yu-ih would actually team up on the same ticket or not.

The real only significant movement in the polls came right around the registration deadline, when they actually declared that they did. They were going to run a joint ticket, and then in a couple of days, that fell apart and they declared that they weren't and were going to run separate campaigns.

And so from that point forward, we clearly had a three candidate race with Lai in the lead, Hou Yu-ih second, and Ko Wen-je third. And that's actually how it ended up on election day. So let me just show you the results, and I'll put this in some comparative or some kind of context with previous elections.

So in 2016, the DPP won a very large win, a very large victory with over 56% of the vote. In 2020, Tsai Ing wen won re election with 57% of the vote. In 2024, Lai won, but with only 40% of the vote. So he was down 17 points from where Tsai Yung one was in 2020.

The KMT hasn't broken 40% since 2012, so it's been a long time since the KMT has actually. He won a majority of the vote in a presidential race, and this election was no different. They were down at less than 34% of the vote. And the big story, the new thing, the new kind of person on the scene here is Ko Wen-je and his Taiwan People's Party, which did manage to win over a quarter of the vote as a first time candidate.

Which in Taiwan, by historical standards, is quite impressive for Taiwan. The other elections were for the legislature. Here, some context. The DPP actually had a majority going into this election cycle. They had won about 53% of the seats in 2020. That was down from 2016, but they held the majority this time around.

They had a lot of vulnerable incumbents in districts, especially in Central and Northern Taiwan. The KMT is no longer very competitive in Southern Taiwan. And it's just when you go through race-by-race, it's kind of a wasteland for them. They didn't win a single seat south of Chiayi. But in Central and Northern Taiwan, they were competitive.

And in fact, they picked off over a dozen DPP incumbents in Northern and Central Taiwan. Ultimately including, I would say, a friend and certainly an acquaintance of ours, of this program, Lo Zhejiang, who's running in a difficult district in New Taipei. He lost, yeah. There's also a question about KMT-TPP coordination.

The KMT struck a deal with the TPP to yield a couple of seats in the districts in return for the TPP not running candidates anywhere else. That turned out to be a really good deal for the KMT, because they yielded unwinnable seats. And in the rest of the seats, the KMT candidate won.

The competitive seats that the KMT candidate won, they won in part because there wasn't a TPP candidate around to split the vote. The KMT, actually, despite kind of narratives about the KMT's long term decline, the KMT still has a lot of talent at local levels and ran what I thought were some pretty decent challengers in competitive districts.

To the point where they did knock off a significant number of incumbents, including Kao Chia-yu in Taipei City. She lost to a KMT counselor who was a challenger there. And then finally, small parties in the last two election cycles have made a lot of noise, particularly on the party list.

This time around, no party, no small party actually won a single seat. And so the Shihtai Liliang or New Power Party in particular, just fell flat in this election cycle. And it looks like they may be dead at this point. So I'll go through this quickly. But there are three electoral tiers in Taiwan.

There's the bulk of the seats. About two-thirds are elected from single member districts. The DPP lost ten of these. They dropped from 47 to 37. In the PR tier, the DPP and the KMT both won 13 seats. They won exactly what they won four years ago. So there was very little change in the party list vote.

The only big change was the new power party dropped out. They didn't cross the 5% threshold, and the Taiwan People's Party increased their seats from five to eight. So they improved quite a bit on their previous performance. And then in the indigenous seats, there are six of those.

The DPP has traditionally not done well in these seats, but they now have two incumbents, one in both the lowland and Highland districts. And they held onto those two, and so there was no net change there. So to give you an idea of what this means in comparative context, in 2016, the DPP had a comfortable majority of 68 seats.

In 2020, they were down to 61, but still had a majority. 2024. KMT is actually now the largest party in the legislature again. And the two nominal independent candidates up there are actually blue. So they will vote with the KMT most likely on critical votes. And so the KMT effectively has a 54 seat plurality.

But critically, the Taiwan People's Party is in the middle and is everyone's preferred coalition partner. And so what the TPP decides to do will go a long way towards determining how the legislature goes over the next four years. Final takeaways on the legislative election. DPP has lost its majority.

It will now have to build coalitions with either the KMT or the TPP to get stuff through the legislature. The KMT is now the largest party. They have already put forward Han Guoyu, the 2020 presidential nominee, as their choice for legislative speaker. They're trying to convince the TPP now to support Han Kuo-yu as speaker in return for I don't know what yet, but there is some ongoing negotiations over that issue right now.

The TPP obviously now holds the balance of power in the Legislative Yuan. And there are some interesting incentives that may pull this TPP in different directions. So there are a couple people who joined the TPP fairly recently from other parties. You note on the right there, that's Huang Kuo-chang, who was a key figure within the New Power Party in the last two election cycles.

He's now part of the TPP, I think has ambitions either to hold a role in the central government, perhaps minister of justice, or to run for, say, mayor of Taipei or New Taipei in the future. And so his ambitions may come up against Ko Wen-je's ambitions to run for president again in 2028.

And so this is something to watch closely over the next couple of years. Finally, I already noted this, but the new power party has shut out of the legislature. They're probably dead at this point. They got less than 3% of the party list vote and no other small parties, not even the Taiwan state building party, which was kind of the new hot thing on the block four years ago.

We're even close to crossing the 5% threshold or to winning a district seat. And so we're really in an environment where there's the KMT, DPP, and TPP, and that's it at the central government level. Final thought here. To me, the biggest surprise of this election was Ko Wen-je's remarkably good performance.

He, to my mind, represents something new in Taiwan politics. He did especially well among young people, among well educated people, and among male voters. There is a significant gap between his support among male and female voters. And so it's important to understand what Ko's appeal was to get a sense of where the TPP might be headed.

And whether this is a kind of something unique to Ko Wen-je himself or whether there's a broader movement afoot that will become a kind of permanent piece of the Taiwan partisan landscape going forward. So with that, I will stop and turn it over to our next speaker.

>> Steven Tan: Thanks, Karas.

And thanks for having me at the Hoover Institute here virtually. Karas, you made a great presentation laying out all the details. So, just following you, I will just say a few things about how I reflect on the process and outcome of the election. And focus on a few particular things, including the perspective governance and governance style of the President-elect Lai Ching-te.

And what many people have been very interested in learning about Ko Wen-je and TPP, and also some of the comments and thoughts on the perspective cross regulation. With that, I think I agree, Charis, with you, that the outcome of the election is very predictable and not a surprise at all.

A couple of days before the election, we actually ran a model for the last time on our prediction and forecast. And it turned out to be that we were very, very close, we predicted 40% on Lai Ching-te vote, and that was actually exactly 40%. Ko Wen-je,, we predicted as 23%, 23.5%, but Ko Wen-je, got 26.5%, which is 3% higher than our forecast.

And Hou Yu-ih, we predicted as 37%, and he got 33.5%, which is 3.5% lower than our prediction. And as far as the ally seats, that's also very well predicted, with only a margin of two to three seats differential between the DPP and KMT. But you have to know that the vote differential in at least 5 districts between the DPP candidate and the KMT candidates were within 5000 votes.

So, within a margin of 2 to 3 seats differential, that with no party could be able to get a majority, and it would be somewhere between 50 to 54 seats. And in the outcome, it's very, very close to what we predicted earlier, primarily because of the fact that this is.

I think this is one of the elections in the short democratic history of Taiwan that, a couple months before the election, save for the joint ticket drama, everything was so well predicted. And we got data, we get all the information that's proven in the end to be quite correct, and partially because of the predictability, the process of the election was extremely smooth.

On Monday, January 15th, right after the date of election, everything went back to normal and folks seemed to forget about what we just had, a major general election over the past weekend. And I take it as a big success for the democracy of Taiwan and for the Taiwan people.

And China is also relatively calm, I will talk about that a little bit later. So in terms of the governance, a lot of people between the date of election and now have been talking a lot about that Lai Ching-te will be facing severe challenges on both domestic and foreign policy.

Simply because of the fact that the DPP in its third term does not control the ly. I would argue that yes and no, because I would say that President Elect Lai Ching-te has a lot to work, indeed to try to see the common grounds. But there are a lot, healthcare reform, education reform, infrastructure update, public safety, cybersecurity, resilience, just to name a few.

There are lots of things that both KMT and TPP legislators will be on board with the DPP's third administration under line. And even on the crossrail issues, all three major parties have more commonalities than differences. For example, all three parties endorse the concept of their Republic of China as an independent sovereign state.

And all three parties denounce the so called one country two system as proposed by Beijing. And all three parties agree on strengthening indigenous defense capabilities, and the list can go on. So I think they're more common than different, that it takes political skills and some capital to put things together and to try to find a commonality.

And from the political tactics perspective, if you look at this landscape as Charis just laid out, KMT now get 52 seats plus 2 independent blue lane seats. But those are very delicate and fragile. If you look into some of the legislators' background and all that, and you know that there would be some potential swing votes on some of the critical of bills and very important policy platforms to proof through.

With DPP continues to operate executive branch of the central government, it is probable to guess some of those swing bills from the Bruke camp for some of the critical bills in the upcoming session, but we'll see. But they may not happen in the upcoming election of the speaker and vice speaker on February 1st.

I will predict that the votes for the speaker and vice speaker on February 1st would just go through the party line. And TPP may not just go in alliance with either blue camp or the green camp. So with that, let's just talk about TPP a little bit. TPP itself is not a mature political party, someone mentioned earlier that it's a one-man party, it's a Ko Wen-je's party.

Well, after the election on January 13th, it may not be just a one-man party, but it is still a young, immature party. Ko Wen-je changes his mind from time to time, but he now knows that his growing constituents, which Which are mainly young voters. Voters under 40 would not allow this party to get too close to KMT, and would not allow his party to go too close to China.

So post election, Kilwinger and his party, I would say, will start to turn back to be more greenish than blueish. Remember that when he started his political career, he was deep root and rude and then deep green and then light green and then sort of light root. So that what is called the white tower.

But it's actually eccentric, and then it's shifting towards left and towards right conveniently from time to time until up to this point. I think he himself is debating as to whether he will be more at this juncture, shifting a little bit towards the greenish, which I predict he will.

Plus, his two main deputies, home as Carl just mentioned. Will very likely be running for a Taipei City mayor and new Taipei City mayor in 2026, that's right. And so his party wouldn't and shouldn't be getting too close to KNP for electoral reasons or concerns. So with that tactical point of view, I would say that in terms of the governance of the BPP's third term under Lai Ching-Te.

There might be a way that he will be able to be on the case by case, issue by issue, bill by bill basis. To work along with both Cohen Zhi and his party and some of the KMT members to try to get things done, but we'll see. On the cross trade issue, my understanding is that Lai Ching-Te has no intention to deviate from President Tsai's policy platform on cross trade issues.

It will follow the Republic of China's constitution, constitutional practices and legal regulatory frameworks as guiding principles for cross trade policy making. So I believe during his tenure, there will be no constitutional amendments or any other legal amendments or policy directives that may be construed. Even implicitly to be moving towards this joint dependence.

And on the other side of the Strait, Beijing so far seems to be unusually restrained on Lai's election and DPP's third term. First, the brief remark in a very soft tone in the international press conference on the evening of January 13th, that seems to receive a preliminary welcome by Beijing.

And second, for the past few days, there appear to be some preliminary positive signs on Beijing's possible confederation to resume the track 1.5 to track two dialogues with Taiwan, think tankers and scholars. And even considering lifting some of the trade sanctions on out of coercion. It is true, then that will be a great start to resume some effective communications or at least some nice gestures between the two sides of the Strait.

And as you all know, Washington continues to encourage cross Strait dialogue without any political precondition imposed. So I remain cautiously optimistic about the prospects of crossrail relationship because both sides of the Straits have sufficient incentives to de-escalate and to avoid a derail. And also, Washington's one China policy continues to serve as a critical stabilizer in this region.

So I do not foresee that the equilibrium change in the next couple of months. So I end with a positive note here and looking forward to take some of the questions, thank you.

>> Larry diamond: Great, well, that's a lot to chew on, but next we go to Tiffany.

>> Tiffany Chun-An Wang: So thanks, Kharis, and thanks, Larry, for having me here.

So I have been asked to reflect on my personal experience of casting my vote and staying in Taiwan the week before and a few days after. And so it may not be so structured and it is subjective to my personal experience and also as a part of the younger generation.

The problem is that I hope my parents is not listening here. And if, dad, you're here, just say, hi, Webnar, and I know you're here. But anyway, I will be honest on what the younger generation sees about the election. So it's actually quite fun this year because Kohenzhi or TPP is quite new.

So this year's election is no longer the boring to rivalry type of competition. So there are something new to see, and I see that all the news media kinda in Taiwan is also finding this exciting. So the night before the election, my family and I were just watching TV.

And all of the channels in Taiwan, they have their kind of party alignment. So some channels we know are DDP channels and some are more pro KMT. But the night before the election, all channels were reporting on. So he got a lot of media coverage, and I think this kind of the most obvious reason that this is something new and it would get attention.

So media wants attention, and kind of the party alignment comes second. I would say that's kinda a little shocking to us because we're fighting for the TV, and then we just see everywhere. We don't know what to say there's no discussion on that, we're just quiet and watching TV.

And so the kinda some discussion between my family and I. So it crosses multiple generations, so I have some relatives in their 70s, 80s. My parents are in their 50s, 60s, and I'm in the 20s, I always say 20, 30 group. And so the older, older generation, their argument is always that when I have dinner or lunch with them, they'll always say, do you really want war?

You guys are the generation are going to war. So if you vote for anything non KMT, you are going to war. And that's Argument is kind of to us, it's as still as the Statement that DPPI is being selling. So, for us I think we really want to have a chance to focus more on what we can do rather than these kind of selling, kind of fair type of argument.

So, I think this is one of the main reason why TPP is so popular now among the younger group because I'm not judged, I'm not gonna say who I voted for, I'm not gonna make analysis. I'm just saying TPP can be perceived as a valid third option because they're not trying to sell this kind of fair thing.

And so one more thing I can noticed is that we have been voting or less based on just single issue voting. I'm not sure if this is kind of naturally the case or it has always been like this so it is for this year but single issue voting has been kind of the way I'm voting for most presidential election, less so for Lee Fai or the UA.

But what is the single deciding factor and what each party represents kind of changes over time and there are kind of different groups. I see there one group who this single issue is the party. So no matter what candidate, how terrible they are or how great they are, they just vote for the party.

So, the party is a single issue for them. They're also another group where the, I think the majority is that the national security and national identity is the single issue. It's just based on your agreement you vote for the president that represents your belief. So there are the dominating issue, observe is national security and relationship with China and then also for our age group is the housing right.

And then diversity, equity, inclusion, it's a big thing and also the possibility of war. So we actually wanna vote for someone who can start conversation and then deescalate. And also the future of Taiwan's development like childcare, support, new technology, investment, those are also very concerned. So domestic issues matters more to voters who stayed in Taiwan and have been living in Taiwan has no plan of living abroad.

And so for me, I have been living in the US for quite an extended period of time. So, for, I think my peers, we care, would naturally care more towards Taiwan's place internationally. So we naturally pay attention to those issues. So those will be our kind of single issue to consider.

And in the past, we don't really have option choosing beyond that single issue for president because it's for to be honest for younger group it's very hard for us to vote for KMT, it is very not appealing. So, but this year, even though Cohen, just as Kairis already mentioned he has been kind of dancing on different arguments of his opinion on Taiwan's relationship with China and his plans forward.

But that's also a good thing because he's ambiguous about it. So now he's acceptable for both sides. I'm not saying this is a good thing, I'm just saying we always hope for the best. So we kind of just, okay, now because he's ambiguous, so we can accept him which is kind of weird but he's ambiguous.

So now we have a chance of moving on to the second issue. No longer single issue. We can have, we can start voting for other, based on other issues, let's say. I think housing right is definitely one of the biggest things because KMT and DPP has been perceived as.

I don't know why, but they are perceived as and then that becomes a reality they perceive as the kind of the cause for the rising housing market. They are like Chao Fang, I'm not sure what, how can I translate it? Chao Fang is that you purchase a lot of property and then, yes, so they are often perceived as profiting from that.

So TPP kind of grab that and then have tons of, I would say, pretty good housing policies out on the table. So that's one thing that's appealing to the younger group. And there are two things that observe that are true across different generations and across different parties. So one thing is we kind of all question and dissatisfied at why DPP holds the legislature and presidential like position for eight years and hold like the majority in legislature and then it's there.

I have not received any advertisement or information or analysis on what they have achieved with such big power. So I'm not their spokesperson. So I'm not gonna actively collect information to prove that they did achieve something. But just say as a voter, I'm not receiving or perceiving anything that's proving that they have achieved anything with such a big power.

So that's kind of a bad thing for DPP. As a voter, I'm not completely rational, I perceive them as this. Then naturally that's a big question mark among many of the voters and this is true across DPP supporter across campus are so happy. Like they say, hey, eight years they are not doing anything.

So that's their main argument. And then for TPP supporters, this is also something that they kind of attack TPP on. And also the second thing is Xiaomi Qing as the Vivi Xiaomi Qing as a person, everybody has good words to say about her. No matter which party they support, they think Xiaomi Qing is a good person.

And I don't know if you observed that this election has been portrayed as like the vice president election because the president is just so not fun and then the vice president has a lot of personality. Nobody understand why Wu Xinyin is a. We're just kind of puzzled. And then Xiaomi Qing is great.

And then Zhao Shao Kang has a tv show show and he's on the tv show. He's like an actor ish. So he has a lot of personality. And then we perceive him a certain way that I'm not gonna say which way but he's very perceived as. Yeah, I'm not gonna say what I perceive him as, but that's the two thing I think that came across kind of we all commonly accept.

And I think lastly, I will touch on why TPP is so appealing among the young people. I think I already kind of mentioned it. First is the possibility of we now can vote beyond single issue. And the second is that co is controversial. That makes him very popular because some people perceive him as the crazy person that can finally break the bureaucratic system and have some fresh air in the government.

And he always advertises like Su Ren Zheng Zhi seven. Su Ren can be good as he advertised like he will be, as he said, less corrupt, like less corrupted and less bureaucratic. But that may not necessarily be true. But he said it, and that's his argument. And a lot of people like it.

And then those who dislike him mainly is because his public statement on women right, it sometimes comes out as very, I guess, a misogynist-

>> Larry diamond: Sexist is the word.

>> Tiffany Chun-An Wang: Sexist, yes. And then that's really hard to accept as that you have a person, okay, kinda that's my personal opinion.

And then his statement is ambiguous, contradicting. And also, yeah, both him and VP are kind of Sudan like. So with all the above reason, a lot of the Ko Wen-je supporters, these kinda doesn't matter to them because we want a new opportunity, like somebody new in the government.

I think that's a common feeling. That's true kinda worldwide-ish. Everybody wants some fresh air in the government. So also, I think I just pulled on my Instagram, and I noticed that Ko Wen-je has 1.2 million followers on Instagram, Lai Ching-te has 203k, and Hou Yu-ih only has 99k.

So that kinda tells you that, this doesn't necessarily mean popularity, but it definitely means that Ko Wen-je can get his message out much more easily and effectively, and then it's more received. The young people can see what Ko Wen-je just says more easily than what Lai Ching-te said, we almost never see what Hou Yu-ih said on Facebook or Instagram.

So I think Ko Wen-je really strike the young people as more accessible and more transparent because his argument can be found on the Internet and he has a YouTube channel that you can go watch. And if you just simply Google Ko Wen-je's argument, you can find many of what his point on, like more domestic issues.

But if you Google Lai Ching-te, Hou Yu-ih, you can't really find that much on the Internet. So the young people actually like this accessibility and transparency of TPP. So I think I will leave it there. Thank you.

>> Larry diamond: Okay, well, Tiffany, if you decide not to complete your physics PhD and wanna come over to the political science department, I think they will welcome you because you gave a very astute analysis.

I'd like to make a few comments of my own, just to kind of mix things up a little bit, and then we'll have a discussion. So I'll speak to about five points. The first one is the margin of William Lai's victory. And here, Steven, I'll put a different spin on things than you did, and I'll very much welcome your reaction and insights to what I'm going to say.

And different from what Kara said as well. So if you take the final distribution that you showed, Karas, 28.5% for the DPP, sorry, 39.6% sent, what was it for the DPP?

>> Kharis Templeman: For the presidency?

>> Larry diamond: Yeah.

>> Kharis Templeman: It was 40.05.

>> Larry diamond: 40.05. Okay, and 28.5 and 18.9, something like that.

And the final where they wound up.

>> Kharis Templeman: Yeah, it was 40, 34. 26, roughly.

>> Larry diamond: That's not what I got from your figures. In any case, we'll go back, or you might wanna go back. It looked like the DPP was gonna win in a landslide. Why don't you go back and show the last public opinion poll that you showed, not the final result.

Right, so leave that up. If you take 39.6, and that was the last public opinion poll cuz there's a moratorium on polling in the last ten days, that adds up to 87%. Then if you do what pollsters typically do, it's an assumption that could be wrong, but you kinda redistribute the 13% who said they haven't decided or more likely won't say, more or less equally among the candidates, you wind up with Lai at 45.5, KMT at 32.7, and TPP at 21.7.

Now, I have a couple of points here. One is that, obviously, the race narrowed at the end. That's what I'm going to say. That's what I am saying right now. Number one, this is my sense of things. It was the sense of a lot of political scientists I talked to.

We actually, we had a pool over lunch, nobody put any money in it. But the expectation was this was a very close race. The predictions were among, I think, informed political scientists in Taiwan, that Lai would get somewhere between 36 and 40% of the vote. But the only person at the table who thought he'd win by as much as four percentage points was, and this is not unusual, by the way, the one person at the table who was representing a point of view that was not a political science point of view, but the opinion of a prominent businessman in the country.

So it was the businessman, this probably won't surprise you, Steven, that anticipated the result better than the political scientists. But my second point is, after the election, someone, I can't say who, I can't say what organization, shared with me a daily tracking poll of a three-day rolling average of the polling which they were doing in the last ten days, which couldn't be publicized cuz it was against the law.

And this showed the race narrowing very dramatically, and then a widening again in the last few days. Now, here's what I'm gonna say, this may be very controversial. I'm gonna say it without comment. I'll leave it to others to comment. Two things happened in the last few days of the campaign, and this tracking poll showed definite movement the day after each of these two things happened and in the days that followed.

On Tuesday, what was it, January 8th? I think it was the 1st or January 9th, because it was my first full day there. My phone starts ringing off the hook. You know what I'm talking about? I have a picture. And when my phone starts ringing off the hook, the hotel phone starts ringing as well.

And not just ringing, but screaming!. And then I look at my phone and I see a message saying, missile flying over Taiwan from PRC, use your discretion as to what to do. It was January 9th. Okay, January 9th, Tuesday, Wednesday, maybe, whatever. And it was January 9th and kind of duck for cover if you think you may need to.

And later, much later, it turns out it was a satellite flying over the island, not a missile, and potentially an innocent mistake. I will tell you, the political opposition in the country, feels it wasn't a coincidence. And there is some evidence from the tracking poll that there may have been some voters for whom the cross rate issue had a little more salience who might have been swayed by that.

Anyway, there was a-

>> Kharis Templeman: Which way, though?

>> Larry diamond: To the DPP.

>> Kharis Templeman: To the DPP?

>> Larry diamond: Yeah, unmistakably.

>> Kharis Templeman: Okay.

>> Larry diamond: Two days later, January 11th, the former president of Taiwan, Ma Ying-jeou, has an interview with Deutsche Welle. Goes fairly well, Mr. President, I think you know how traps can be laid by journalists.

And at the end of the interview, the Deutsche Welle interviewer asked the former president something like, you probably, each of you know the exact language of the interview. Well, how can there really be negotiations? The two sides don't trust one another. And President Ma says, well, if you're gonna have negotiations, they have to be based on trust.

And do you know the exact language? It was something like, we need to trust President Xi. It was some reference by President Ma to saying that, you need to trust President Xi. And out goes another two percentage points in the tracking poll of support for the KMT. So, I think this is a plausible explanation, at least from one perspective, as to why Lai won by six percentage points in the margin between the DPP and the KMT, rather than the two percentage points that at least many people I was talking to were predicting.

Second, why did the DPP not do better? I think you all, particularly Kharis, spoke to that very well. I just wanna underscore two points. One is, it's kinda unusual across presidential democracies with a two term limit for a ruling party to win a third consecutive term. It rarely happens in the United States.

It rarely happens in Brazil. And it wasn't generically kind of widely expected in Taiwan. It's never happened in Taiwan since it became. So there's a natural cycle that you would have expected, all of the things being equal, that it would lose. And as Kharis said, and others, I think, mentioned as well, there really was no existential issue.

The cross rate issue didn't have the same salience. And then I wanna say something about Ko, and I try very hard to be nonpartisan. I'm saying this as a political scientist. I think Ko Wen-je meets the classic definition of a populist politician. And I'll just say it as a description in terms of his appeal being built heavily on personality and image making.

He's almost completely lacking a party organization around him, him being anti-institutionalist, I don't think anti-democratic, but anti-institutionalist. And I will say, in the interaction we had with him, you were there, Jim, having actually quite a lot of contempt for political parties as institutions, in his view that a modern day political party could be run like a corporation.

Beyond that, I didn't even know this until the end. I had no awareness of it all. But what Tiffany said, kind of politely, is a very present view among a lot of women in Taiwan, that there's a long history of sexist statements by this man. And I actually went back and googled this, and I can't even repeat some of them.

I certainly would be embarrassed to do so in this setting. So he's not alt-right or radical left. The irony is he's a populist of the center. He's in the middle. But there's a lot of the character of populism. And so my final point now about policy challenges, which I think Steven spoke to very insightfully.

I'll mention three bullet points, and then we'll have about a half hour for discussion. On cross trade relations, the eye roll that I think Kharis and I go through is when very thinly informed journalists and policy observers say, is Taiwan gonna declare independence now that William Lai, who once said, in my heart, I'm a worker for Taiwan-

 

>> Kharis Templeman: Pragmatic worker for Taiwan independence.

>> Larry diamond: Yeah, thank you. Now that William Lai has been elected, and the obvious answer is no. We've met this man. He's very intelligent. He's very prudent. I think he's been sobered by the progression of the challenges that Taiwan is facing. And as Steven said, I really need to reiterate what Steven said.

It is safe to assume that on Saturday night, October 13th, when William Lai walked out to the international media in the tent outside DPP headquarters and gave his acceptance speech to that throng of reporters. Before he then went out and spoke to the much larger throng of DPP supporters and a few international observers, that the army of Taiwan watchers, that is, in terms of size, on the mainland, were watching every word and facial gesture.

And I believe that they were looking for a few things, three in particular. Number one, that he would reaffirm his commitment to the ROC constitution. And as Steven said, it's very important that he did that. I think you can look to him to do that again on May 20th, when he's inaugurated.

Number two, that he would reaffirm his Commitment to the status quo, no changes. We're gonna do the same. Our posture will be the same. And he did that. And number three, that there wouldn't be anything else he said that would be demonstrably provocative, and there wasn't. And number four, he did say, I realize I only won 40% of the vote.

We're going to broaden our government. My government will not be only made up of my party people. So one question I might pose to some of you is, what does that mean? Is he gonna try and form a coalition government? But the irony is that Taiwan has elected someone who I think most people assume is a little bit more pro-independence and less pragmatic than Tsai was.

But Beijing expected him to win, he won. They're watching him very carefully. And if he sticks to this posture, I think Stephen is absolutely right. The irony is we may see some kind of decompression and opportunities for informal dialogue. And I think one reason why isn't generosity on the part of Beijing.

But Xi Jinping has a lot of headaches now. He doesn't need the Taiwan issue to be hot and front center right now. The second thing I wanna say about, I know one of Jim's favorite subjects, energy. I think if a presidential candidate had wanted to make an interesting statement and maybe a suicidal statement in the election campaign, the way Walter Mondale said in 1984 when he said, Philip, you'll remember this.

Everybody knows we're gonna have to raise taxes. The difference between President Reagan and myself is that he won't say it, and I just said it. And of course, Reagan didn't really, but then George Herbert Walker Bush did. But the point I'm making is if you talk to experts, I will just say, everybody knows Taiwan just can't hold out against the possibility of a chinese blockade if it closes down all of its remaining nuclear power plants.

Nobody will say it, but I just said it. The third thing is about defense. This is my last policy issue that you can comment on, and that is that, well, Matt Ponger is gonna produce, release a book for us before too long. I mean, Taiwan isn't even close to being ready to do what they need to do.

And I think a lot of people who are close to the issues know it. And, again, most people won't say it because it's very difficult for the society to absorb. But Xi Jinping is kind of backing off now because the economy is bad. He's got a lot of problems.

You know, three or four years from now, he may not be backing off. So I'm gonna give you each one or two minutes, that's all, to just respond to anything, and then we'll have Q&A. Go ahead, Karas.

>> Kharis Templeman: Wow. All right, that's a lot to chew on.

>> Larry diamond: We'll just chew on some of it.

 

>> Kharis Templeman: Okay, yeah, I guess, so let me take up this point about the polls and how accurate they were in the last week. So there's a ten-day polling blackout in Taiwan where people can poll privately but not publicly. And there is a lot of private polling going on.

And you hear people will pass along things. They heard specific polls that a campaign did or candidate did or a polling company, including this one that was continuing to do internal polling. What was striking to me about that, though, was that there wasn't a consistent pattern in those polls.

And it may be because I was getting different polls at different times, but some people were suggesting that the race was narrowing in those ten days. But then I heard from other people that it was actually widening.

>> Larry diamond: And who you heard it from might be related. So I don't know.

I need to think more about this. But I'll tell you what I predicted. Given this and just the last ten days on the ground without seeing any additional polls, I thought Lai would win 40%, I thought Ho would win 35%, and I thought K would win 25%. And the thing that surprised me was not that Lai was so far ahead of Hou, but that could actually done better than I had expected and appeared to hurt Hou more in the end.

And I thought there was a lot of downside risk for Ko, actually, because of who made up his voting base, right? It's young voters. It's kind of people who aren't completely committed to a political party, who are kind of casual. They dabble in politics maybe, or they're not paying much attention, but Ko seems to be kinda new and exciting and different.

And so that's not the voting block you wanna build a movement on, right? When the going gets tough, they just don't show up to the polls. And so I was expecting him actually to underperform where the polls were showing him rather than overperform. And I think he's significantly overperformed.

And so that, to me, is the single biggest, to the extent there wasn't a surprise at all. That's the single biggest surprise and the one that I think we all need to chew on a little bit more. Okay, Stephen?

>> Steven Tan: Okay, well, just a quick reaction. Well, Larry just say that the president Ma Ying-jeou's interview on the DW and also the alert that the Defense Department send out.

There is no proof, because we haven't done an analysis and I haven't seen the exit polls and all that. But I've talked to many people right after elections on what would those impacts of those two incidents be in the next couple of days prior to the election. Collectively, in which I agree that in terms of the defense alert on the satellite/missiles, I think that even out.

Because there were some voters that go either way, and then that doesn't seem to be having an impact, either positively or negatively on either candidate. But President Ma Ying-jeou's interview, this seems to have an impact eroding some of the Hou Yu-ih's voters. But then those votes This didn't seem to go back to Li Qingda, that seems to go to Ko Wenzhou.

And again, there's no proof, but that seems to be consistent with the gaps or the surge in the next couple of days of Kilinjie's vote and the decline in a few percentage point of Huyou Yi's vote. The second point I'd like to make is that people talk about, quote unquote, coalition government, whatever that means, whether that applies to Taiwan's presidential politics.

I would say that last administration tend to invite some of the political figures, and he probably will, that are not that political, not that greenish, but may or may not be a party member of TPP or KMT. That seems to be the trend and he will probably be looking at that.

But that is by far nothing to do with the party coalition or working with the TPP. And TPP may not be able to form anything, either alliance or otherwise, with the ruling party, and it seems to be that it will be more on the case by case bill by bill basis as it moves along.

But I would, as I just suggested, that I think PPP going forward, at least in the next section of the Legislative Yuan or two, it would be very hard for TPP to go back to work with KMT. Again, his constituents would not allow him to do that and his party will have political agenda in the next 2 years.

So that pretty much prohibit him from doing so, and also his party members, the A members of the Legislative Yuan will probably not want to do that. But we'll see and maybe a couple of months later we'll have another session of discussions like this and we can reflect on that, thank you.

 

>> Larry diamond: Okay, Tiffany.

>> Tiffany Chun-An Wang: I think I have three quick comment, the first is the missile thing that on, I think the ninth January, I was actually at Danshui, which is near a military base. I was just having fun on the, yeah, and then some message comes. So it's actually quite a scary experience, but I was immediately puzzled because the message was unclear.

And so if there's any policymaker that's listening to this, I think if you were to send out any warnings, first, you shouldn't puzzle people who get the warnings.

>> Tiffany Chun-An Wang: What should I do? What am I gonna do? And then the next thing I do is I try to google where is the shelter, right.

That's a natural thing that you would do. And then what comes up is that there are two restaurants named shelter.

>> Tiffany Chun-An Wang: There's no shelter, so I don't know what to do. So I think it's very concerning that nobody's trained and then we have no basic idea or it can be a good thing because we are not actually under imminent war threat.

So it can be taken both sides, but I think I'm a little concerned over this, that if anything actually happens, we are under prepared in this sense that we don't know where to do and or what to do. The Wanan Yanxi is like you pause everything for 10 minutes and people just stand there and the car stop and that's it.

I don't think that's sufficient Yan Xi, and I think the second thing is about the populist. Immediately after the election, there are a lot of Ko Wen-je supporter on the social media come on and say the election is stolen. Probably that sounds familiar to many of you, but it's kind of reassuring to see that that argument was immediately attacked by the majority that's on the Internet.

Because we used the kind of very old voting way of you have to physically be there to cast a paper vote. So there's no digital system and everybody can apply to be an observer at the polling station. So it's actually very, very hard to cheat on the vote, the counting the vote because my friend actually did apply to be the observer.

And then at each station people will raise your vote and then yell, kind of yelled who this vote voted for. And everybody can see it. So it's quite transparent. So, it's actually very hard to fix. So most people in Taiwan know this and even though there are some claim of the election is stolen, but it's not kind of gaining any momentum on the Internet.

So that's, I think a good thing that it's not gonna be so disastrous even if there's a populist kinda movement. And the third thing is Taiwan's energy, problem that's kind of more related to my profession and what my research is on. I think the short thing I can say is DPP's go green, the energy policy.

It's, to be honest, kind of unrealistic because going green needs transition. It's not like I wanna go green and I shut down all the nuclear plants, and why is nuclear plants not green? But anyway, you shut all the nuclear plants and you're hoping that solar panel or other renewable energy works.

But it's not how it works. It takes some time to transition. I agree if the majority of the people don't trust nuclear energy, but you shouldn't shut down that quickly. You should just kinda plan it in a realistic way. And a lot of times when kinda I argue this with others, the counterargument I get is, you want nuclear energy, then do you want nuclear waste at your home?

If you have support of nuclear energy, just put nuclear waste at your home that you should, where's the nuclear waste gonna go? I think that's a very unhealthy kind of discussion. I agree that a lot of the things still needs to be discussed, but there needs to be a discussion.

And I hope that in the future there can be more public discussion on these matters.

>> Larry diamond: Great, okay, well, let's take a few questions. I will keep looking behind me. Okay, we'll go with Frances and Keogh and raise your. I'm gonna ask the three of you to take notes on these questions and then answer the ones you feel comfortable with.

Frances.

>> Frances: So I wanna pick up on two things that Tiffany raised in her comments. One, Tiffany, is your observation that for young people, it was refreshing to be more than a single issue voter, and that you were observing that a lot of folks in your generation were motivated by DEI issues.

So I wonder if you or other folks, Steven Karas, if you have something to say on this point to elucidate what that would mean, issues of inclusion in a specifically Taiwanese context. And two, mostly directed at Tiffany, being a Taiwanese person who lives abroad who went back to vote, was it ever a question for you about whether you were going to make that journey?

Or was it always in your mind that you were going to go? And among your peer group of people of Taiwanese descent who are. Able to vote in the Silicon Valley area. Were you observing that this was an urgent election for people, where many people felt motivated that they had to go over when they wouldn't have otherwise planned to?

And how many people in your peer group or folks that you know actually did make the 14-hour trip back to cast the ballot?

>> Larry diamond: Great, so keep those in mind, Kio.

>> Kio: Great, thank you for the very insightful, informative session. So, it's clear that the candidate's stance on China, the cross trades relationship has strong impact on this election.

I'm wondering if you could comment a little bit on their relationships with the United States and also Japan, if you could. Because people in Japanese media are very excited that the winning ticket had two people who have very deep relationships with Japan. So if you could comment on those relationships and their impact on the election, that would be great.

 

>> Larry diamond: Yeah.

>> Speaker 7: I was wondering if you could explain why the missile possibility and the possibility of war might have swayed voters towards the DPP rather than towards the KMT, given their friendlier stance on cross trade relations.

>> Speaker 8: Thank you, Jim for this great conversation, I was wondering if you felt the international coverage of this election was accurate, and how is this covered in the United States or in Europe?

And do you think it reflected directly on what you presented here today?

>> Larry diamond: Great question. Okay, thank you, any other questions for our panelists? Yeah, go ahead, Jim. Can there be more elucidation as to why the two minority parties were able to reach a mutually advantageous agreement on the legislative election.

 

>> Jim: And they were not able to reach a mutually advantageous agreement on the presidential election? You could see-

>> Larry diamond: I look forward to the answer to that question.

>> Larry diamond: Okay, so, I think we can now close with the answers to these four excellent questions. Why don't we go in reverse order, since especially the first question was to you, or whatever you wanna answer, Tiffany, but we'll start with you.

 

>> Tiffany Chun-An Wang: So, thank you, Francis, for the question, I guess I will go with the easiest one. Is that, so, I booked my ticket actually, I think, almost a year ahead, because I already planned to vote. This is for me. And then the majority, almost most of my friends went back to vote, so I would say it's a very high voting rate.

And overall, I think this year was about 70% voting rate, we have always been kinda above 70. And then with, I think the tie in when first got elected, it was 80 something percent. So I would think everybody's still have hope and certain, still think that their vote can change something.

So I think that's a good sign, that people are still willing to go back to vote and make the trip. And I think your second question is DEI in Taiwan's context. So, Xiaomi Qing has long been working in the DEI for Taiwanese community. So she's very, very popular in terms of, she's a woman, and then she supports minority rights, she supports transgender and all those issues.

And I think if I say in a kind of opposite point of view, like, KMT candidates are very, very just, they show no effort in their choosing of their president, MVP, and also their legislative, how do you call it, the district legislator. They just show no effort in the Shenzhu Gong bao.

So we have a physical prints of everybody's statement mailed to home, and me and my mom kind of just go through all of them, and they just show no effort on that. So I think in Taiwanese context, first is definitely women's rights, and then child care support, those issues, I think DPP really did a good job on putting that on the table.

So it's very kind of, obvious. Yeah, and then, I think I can answer the why missile doesn't push people to KMT but to DPP part. Okay, it's also very hard to answer, it just naturally-

>> Kharis Templeman: I don't think it's obvious.

>> Tiffany Chun-An Wang: Yeah.

>> Larry diamond: I'll tell you what is the most interesting thing, and maybe one of the more important things said in this session is that when that came, you didn't know where to go.

 

>> Tiffany Chun-An Wang: Yes.

>> Larry diamond: That's kinda concerning, I think. And then when you googled shelter, if I understood it, what came up was a couple of restaurants with shelter in their names.

>> Tiffany Chun-An Wang: So there needs to be some military reform in the civilian trainings.

>> Larry diamond: Or as Enoch Wu is doing, kind of more emergency preparedness.

 

>> Tiffany Chun-An Wang: Yes, so I think, so far, who is on the table actively doing that is We Nong try to have a civilian first day. I'm not making my comments on if that's effective or not, but he's on the table, if you kinda try to think who is advocating for training?

I think it's, we know. And many of the KMT, the mainstream KMT kinda argument is more like, you don't wanna kinda perturb the bully, you wanna stay quiet. But that's just not how, like, if you are bullied in school and you stay quiet, you will be bullied forever.

That's not how things work. So it's kinda not an appealing argument. So I think naturally, even if not pushed to DPP, but definitely not pushed towards KMT.

>> Larry diamond: Well, I'll say again, Tiffany, I think you make a pretty good political scientist, not only in comparative politics but in international relations.

Anyway, Stephen will turn to you.

>> Steven Tan: Some of the quick reactions, Taiwan's relations with US continue to be the most important relations I like to think that. I think it will be that the case that under advised administration it will continue to be a very solid relationship. There are some issues that we have on album, but basically, I don't see a major detail or change.

Can you hear me now?

>> Larry diamond: Yep.

>> Steven Tan: Okay.

>> Larry diamond: Yes.

>> Steven Tan: I don't see any detour or change in terms of the Taiwan's relations with the US under Biden administration. In terms of Taiwan's relations with Japan, the day right after the January 13 general election, the first international guest of honor that president elect met up with was a high level delegation from Japan.

And that speaks for itself, put a lot of emphasis On the Taiwan's relations with Japan. And I think that would be one of his turfs, that he is highly interested in cultivating the relationship with Japan. The weather, international coverage is correct. I wouldn't say it's correct or incorrect.

I think this is historical, that we have never experienced that many coverages or that many press or journalists from the international press being in Taiwan. I won't name the names, but some of the major media that I met with, they're like a dozen to 20 people around the world of that news agency covering the Taiwan election.

So you can imagine that like 30, 40, 50 international media covering. There are hundreds and hundreds of people working on that. They have different angles and perspectives, understandably, but that is because the Taiwan is a very important stakeholder. And the outcome of the election in Taiwan have drawn the international attention.

So from the international media's perspective, I think it makes a lot of sense, although domestically we see things from different angles that complementary to each other. On the white coalition, I absolutely agree. If the two parties cannot agree with each other on one single ticket prior to November 24 for the January 13 election, there will be zero chance that they could be working together for the February 1st election, for the speaker and vice speaker.

And in the next legislative session, I don't think that coalition or that sort of alignment will be as firm as a lot of KMTers would expect. Thank you.

>> Larry diamond: Okay, and Karas, we conclude with you.

>> Kharis Templeman: So I'm gonna jump around a little bit here. Let me start with the international coverage question.

I actually think, so there's a huge number of reporters who used to be in China who got kicked out and have relocated to Taiwan. And because they're now based there, they actually cover it much better than they used to. So, like, in the past, reporters would parachute in from Beijing and cover this from a very kind of pro Beijing frame, including reporters like at the New York Times.

They're all kicked out of China now, and some of them are in Taipei. And let me just give a shout out to Chris Buckley, who's done a wonderful job kind of reorienting himself, learning about Taiwan and writing some really good stories on the ground that don't kind of include a lot of cliches.

And there's lots of other stories like that of a reporter who knows China really well, speaks the language, and then have relocated to Taiwan and are doing good work on the ground. I'd give another shout out to the Bloomberg coverage of Taiwan. They had long profiles of all three of the presidential candidates that they spent months researching.

They actually surged people into Taiwan a year before this election and invested a lot of resources to cover it really well. So, to my mind, this was the best covered Taiwan election that I've ever seen in terms of English language media. But there's so much more out there that there were also still people parachuting in on election day or the week before and writing the cliched articles.

So you just have to know where to look. If you look for it, though, there's much more quality work on this election. On why the KMT and TPP were able to come to an agreement in the legislative races, but not the presidential race, a couple of things. The legislative races, the TPP didn't have candidates in most places.

And so it was really easy for the KMT to say, we'll give you this seat and that seat. You do your best there, but don't run against us in other races. And the TPP was fine with that cuz they didn't have a whole lot to give away there.

The problem with a presidential ticket is that the presidency is worth everything and the vice presidency is worth nothing. And so both sides wanted the other side to go into the VP slot. And then you're trapped as VP for four years. You can't really credibly commit to share power in that arrangement.

 

>> Larry diamond: And if somebody's appointed as premier, they could be fired a month later.

>> Kharis Templeman: Exactly right. And so I actually thought there was grounds for Coenja to make a deal where he didn't join the ticket, but supported it from outside and put himself at the top of the legislative list.

And then ended up as, say, speaker, or otherwise took advantage of the leverage he had over the KMT before the registration deadline and really extracted some credible promises from them. And he didn't do that. Instead, he said, we'll do this by polls. He was confident that he was ahead in the polls.

Looking at this, I don't think he was. I mean, this is in the period right before then, the KMT was pretty clearly ahead if you had a trustable pollster. And so then the polling agreement, they worked out. He was stunned when the results came out and he had lost.

I think I'm a cynic. I think the KMT would never have signed on to anything where they would have lost the polling arrangement to decide their nominee. They would not have agreed to a deal that didn't make Hou Yu-ih the candidate. So I think Kuo was just a little too confident, overconfident, and maybe thought he was smarter than he actually was in this arrangement.

And so I thought he blew an opportunity, really, to leverage what he had over the KMT into more power. He could have gotten more seats and potentially been the speaker of the legislature, or at least have some real commitments from the KMT going forward. Last thing I'll say is, I'm not persuaded that the so called missile test, actually helped the DPP.

When I saw that, and then when I heard the kind of conversations about that over the next day, the points that stuck with me were, nobody knows what to do. The DPP has been talking about this stuff for eight years, but they have done zilch to actually prepare people.

Do you want another four years of this, or do you wanna elect somebody who might actually deal with this set of challenges? So I didn't actually think it helped the DPP. And I thought if it were a deliberate signal that they were sending out, they totally botched it.

 

>> Larry diamond: Well, I certainly didn't mean to suggest. Karas, Steven, Tiffany, thank you all so much. It's been a really rich discussion. And what can I say? It's just a real privilege for international observers, journalists, friends, to be able to watch another manifestation of this democracy. It's however you think about the issues or individual parties or candidates to see this election campaign unfold, go to the rallies.

People feel very even, not quite as passionate as they used to feel, but real passion about their parties and candidates and their banners and their mugs with the images and so on. And then on the day of the election, the polls open at 8, they close at 4.

Everybody votes. Nobody is suspicious. The ballot boxes are opened at 4. And exactly the way Tiffany described in the old fashioned way, the ballots are shown up, counted, there's X's or lines put on the chalkboard. The results are finished. Everybody agrees. They're phoned in. Four hours later, the result is announced.

The losers concede, the winner accepts, and life goes on. Wouldn't that be nice in the United States? Anyway, thank you all so much, and to be continued.

>> Steven Tan: Thank you.

>> Kharis Templeman: Let me also just give a shout out to Steven. He's in Spain right now, and it's 2:30 in the morning, so he's really burning the midnight oil here.

 

>> Steven Tan: All right, thank you. Thank you, guys. All right, good to be here.

>> Kharis Templeman: Thanks, Steven. Have a good night.

>> Steven Tan: All right, bye bye.