Taiwan's 2024 General Elections: The Campaign So Far

>> Larry Diamond: I'm Larry Diamond. I'm joined by my colleagues, Admiral Jame Ellis, with whom I co-lead the program, and Kharis Templeman, who also co-leads the program and is our program manager, and will be leaving for Taiwan to observe the election before too long. And we have two amazing speakers today to help us understand what is happening so far in the Taiwan 2024 presidential election campaign.

We won't ask you to predict the result.

>> Larry Diamond: But if you can at least help us understand the turbulent twists and turns of the campaign so far, that will certainly justify our time together today. Chiaoning Su is an associate professor in the Department of Communication, Journalism, and Public Relations at Oakland University, where she also serves as director of the Barry M Klein Center for Culture and Globalization.

Professor Su is a communication scholar with a PhD from Temple University and a dual focus on the journalism of crisis and journalism in crisis. Her first line of inquiry delves into the representation and production of crisis news, while her second line of research centers on the role of journalism in the context of diminishing democracy.

Her work has been published in many journals. And one of the great benefits of having her here is that she has actually worked on political campaigns in Taiwan, and so she understands it from the inside, having previously in her career been a communications specialist at Ogilvy Public Relations.

Our second speaker is Dr. Dennis Lu-Chung Weng. He's an associate professor of political science at Sam Houston State University and the founding director of the Asia Pacific Research Institute. Let me say that again. Asia Pacific Peace Research Institute, which is known as APPRA. His PhD is from the University of Texas at Dallas.

He's formally taught at various institutions, including Wesleyan and SUNY Cortland. He currently holds research fellowships at Stellenbosch University, presumably in South Africa.

>> Kharis Templeman: Exactly.

>> Larry Diamond: And at National Chengchi University in Taiwan. His research centers on comparative politics, international relations, and the dynamics between domestic political behavior and international politics, particularly in the US and the Asia Pacific regions.

His insights have been featured in scholarly publications, op-eds, media outlets, and he's a noted commentator on US-China-Taiwan relations as well. So I guess you've arranged with Kharis on the order of your presentations and how you're gonna divide up the time. Are you?

>> Kharis Templeman: Yeah, so I'm gonna moderate a conversation with the three of us.

 

>> Larry Diamond: All right.

>> Kharis Templeman: And before we jump into that conversation, we all have just some slides to show on the election. So if I could pull up mine. Yeah, great, there we go. I just wanted to give us all kind of a common understanding of what's happened in the election so far.

And then I should say we're in for a real treat today, because our two visiting scholars here are extremely well connected to their respective political camps. So Chiaoning Su is very knowledgeable about the DPP and pan-Green politics. Dennis Weng is equally knowledgeable about both the KMT and KMT TPP cooperation, or lack thereof, as we've just-

 

>> Kharis Templeman: And so we're gonna try to keep this fairly conversational. We've just had a great time catching up. We discovered we're all almost existing the same age as well. And so we share some kind of common political markers in the evolution of Taiwan's democracy as well. And so I'm looking forward to a really fun kinda casual conversation today about what has happened in Taiwan politics and what to expect over the next six weeks.

So just so we're all on the same page, I wanna first give you my key take-away, which is that this election ain't over. I have been hearing from a lot of people who asked me, what happens when William Lai wins this election? The assumption is that the DPP, of course, is going to win reelection.

The only question is whether they'll hold on to their majority in the legislature or not. And I think it is too early to say that, because number one, Lai and the DPP are actually, if you dig into the polling numbers, not particularly popular right now. They are an incumbent party running for a third term.

As we know from this country, eight years in office, people get tired of you, right? And Lai is, I would say, significantly less popular and kind of generic ballot than Tsai Ing-wen, the incumbent president. And so he's been trying to come close to the margins that she registered in 2016 and 2020.

But polls are showing that he's way behind where she was at this point in both of those races. And second, we've got a three-way race now, as we'll get into in a moment. There's a DPP candidate, a KMT candidate, and then a TPP candidate in the middle. And there's been a lot of volatility in the polls, especially in the last couple of weeks between all three of those candidates.

And in particular, it looks like the KMT's support base has actually risen significantly over the last couple of weeks. And now, we have a pretty close race. So I'm gonna use one set of polls, which I like the best. People tend to cherry-pick polls sometimes in Taiwan, and pick the one that favors their own candidate the best.

The one I like is Myformosa Public Opinion because they make all of their data readily available on the web. They allow you to do cross tabs and dig down, and they pull very consistently. So they do a rolling telephone poll where they sample 400 respondents each day. They have a three-day rolling average.

And so what you're looking at here is an average of averages for every week starting from mid-July up until the end of November. And for a long time, the picture of this race was pretty static. You had a Lai Ching Te, the green line there, the DPP candidate significantly ahead, somewhere in the 35% to 40% range, and then both of the opposition candidates somewhere in the 20% to 25% range, and consistently arguing about who was in second place and who was in third.

And therefore, the other candidates should support them, right? So for a long time, there was this expectation that the two sides, sorry, the KMT and the TPP candidate would have to cooperate and run a unity ticket. To have any chance of beating the DPP ticket, right? And so there was kind of long, acrimonious process of negotiation between the two opposition camps.

And in the end, they failed to strike an agreement, and both registered separately. And so the expectation before that was that this election is over. If they register separately, they will split the vote evenly. Liqing does a shoe in then. Strangely, though, we've actually seen over the last three or four weeks, the KMT's numbers rising and the DPP's numbers falling.

Part of this effect is probably an attention effect. There's a lot of attention on the opposition, and they've kind of overshadowed the DPP ticket over this time period. So much like you get a bounce out of your convention in American politics, there may be a kind of ephemeral bump up for the KMT and an ephemeral drop for the DPP here.

But I do think there is something real here, which is that the KMT has nominated a deep blue vice presidential candidate. They were leaving that spot open for Ko Wen-je of the TPP for a while. They've given up on that. They nominated a deep blue VP, and that's helped them consolidate the KMT base.

A lot of KMT voters are actually not very happy with their standard bearer initially, and they seem to have come home now. And so we're looking at what is a fairly close race. And the last thing to add here, if you are in third place, voters have an incentive to abandon you and vote for one of the top two candidates.

There's a strong incentive to vote strategically here. And so it's hard to say how the people who support the third place candidate right now will ultimately vote in six weeks time. So I don't think this election is over. And I think we've got actually some really. We may have some more interesting twists and turns over the next few weeks.

I'll skip this because I know Dennis has it in his presentation. But so let me say, just so we're all on the same page here, what's at stake. The election is on January 13, 2024. There are two branches of government up for grabs. Taiwan has a president that's directly elected.

The chief executive serves a four year term. The president appoints the premier, who then appoints the entire cabinet. And so this effectively is deciding who is going to lead the government for the next four years. But there's also a unicameral legislature at state. Taiwan has 113 seat parliament that's elected at the same time as the president.

And the Legislative Yuan is actually a very powerful body. It's where all laws have to be passed. It approves the budgets. It can initiate investigations. It can freeze the budgets of the executive branch, and it confirms presidential appointees. And so the DPP has enjoyed a majority, a governing majority in that body for the last eight years.

There's an open question whether they'll be able to hang on to that majority. Just to lay the ground here. You can basically, when in describing Taiwan's party system, you can order just about every political party in the Taiwanese political spectrum along a single line. Are they more pro unification or pro independence?

And so in Taiwan political parlance, we have two camps. We have the Pan Green camp, which leans towards independence. The main party in that camp is the current ruling party, the DPP, led by Tsai Ing wen, the current president. There's a smaller party, the New Power Party, which also holds seats in the legislature.

That's on that end of the spectrum. And then in the other camp, we have the Pan Blue camp. So we've got the KMT and an even more pro-unification small party, the New Party. And then somewhere in the muddled middle is Ko Wen-je and the party that he founded in 2019, the TPP, Taiwan People's Party.

Ko is an interesting character because he started out clearly in the Green camp eight years ago, ten years ago, and then has gradually drifted towards the Blue camp, to the point where the Blue camp was trying to get him to join their ticket until very recently. And so now it seems like both camps hate him, and he's kind of on his own in the middle, running as an independent.

I would note his political party color. The dominant color is aquamarine. So they're neither green nor blue. They're right in the middle. And it's kind of hard to pin him down on what his positions are on any issue either. And so when you ask him about cross straight relations, you may get a different answer depending on what time of day it is.

He's trying clearly to take a sort of centrist tact in this election. So three presidential candidates. In the green camp, we have Lai Ching-te, William Lai. The blue camp, we have Hou Yu-ih. William Lai is the current vice president, the successor nominated by the DPP to succeed Tsai Ing-wen.

In the blue camp, Hou Yu-ih is the current mayor of New Taipei. New Taipei is the largest city by population in Taiwan, and it's also a swing area. And so he's won twice big in this area. So he's been able to win over a lot of swing voters during his time as mayor.

And then, of course, in the middle again, we have Ko Wen-je, the former mayor of Taipei for two terms, now leads this party that he founded, the Taiwan People's Party. I mentioned there's a controversy about whether these two guys would team up, Ko and Hou. In the end, they did not.

They picked separate vice presidential candidates and had a very kinda public acrimonious falling out. And so the vice presidential candidate, as these folks will talk about in more detail, in both cases, I think, complements well the standard bearer for their two parties. I didn't have William Lai's vice presidential candidate, but many of you probably know it's the current representative to the United States, Hsiao Bi-khim.

And so the DPP also has, I think, a nice complimentary presidential ticket as well. And then, oops, I guess I have to talk about Terry. Terry Gou, many of you know, is the founder of Foxconn, the company that manufactures your iPhone in China. He tried to get the KMT nomination last summer, didn't get it.

Rage quit the party, declared that he was going to run an independent campaign, actually did the work of going out and collecting 300,000 signatures to get on the ballot, submitted those signatures, got them approved, and then on the very last day, he said, I'm not going to run.

So he hasn't endorsed any of these other three candidates, but he is no longer on the ballot. And so we have a three way race rather than a four way race. And one of the open questions is what he's going to do. Finally, I'll just mention briefly the legislative elections.

The DPP had a pretty clear majority after the 2020 elections. They're trying to hang on to that. So they need 57 seats for a majority. They had 61 after the last election. And then with the New Power Party's support, they had a comfortable working majority. In the upcoming elections there are three tiers, the DPP and the last Selection did very well in the single member districts, which are about two thirds of the seats.

There's also a proportional representation tier where the DPP and KMT split almost equally two-thirds of the vote, and then small parties won the remaining thirds. And then there are also six seats elected from indigenous constituencies as well. The expectation is that the DPP may struggle to hold on to their majority.

They did pretty well in the district seats last time around. In 2024, they're probably gonna lose some of these district seats. And estimates I've seen, they could lose anywhere from 5 to 15. If it gets really bad, they could lose more than 15 of those district seats. So there is also, I should note, high uncertainty about the district races because in many of them, there are third-party candidates running as well.

And so in a three-cornered race, it's kinda hard to predict how that's gonna play out. The DPP is suffering from a problem that the KMT used to suffer much more from, and that is renegade candidates. So the DPP has a bunch of incumbent legislators they did not renominate, and several of those legislators quit the party and are now running as independents, challenging the DPP's official nomination.

The DPP has not generally suffered from this problem in the past, and so they may lose some winnable seats because they're splitting the green vote this time around. Bottom line, I think there's still lots of uncertainty in both the presidential and legislative races. If Lai wins, I think what we should expect after that day, more of the same.

So continued pressure from Beijing on Taiwan, on the new government. If Hou manages to win in the end, and I don't think this is out of the question. So we could have a KMT president. That probably results in a short-term reduction in cross-Strait tensions. But it may well raise questions in Washington, DC, about Taiwan's own commitment to defend itself.

And Beijing may also be emboldened to pressure the KMT government for political talks. And if Ko wins, I don't know. It's really hard to say right now. He's a wild card. He doesn't have a real clear track record. His party is new. And so that possibility is, in fact, probably the most that will inject the most uncertainty into trilateral US-Taiwan-China relations of all.

So thanks for listening. I've kind of set the stage, and now I wanna turn it over to the real experts here. And so we'll go over to Dr. Su to speak about the kind of pan-Green campaign, and then we'll turn it over to Dennis Wang after that.

>> Chiaoning Su: Thank you, Kharis, and thank you, Hoover Institution, for having me today.

As Larry mentioned that prior to my political career, I was a communication specialist working for several political campaigns in Taiwan. So I greatly appreciate this opportunity here today to talk about something that is more than just a research project for me, but also a lived experience. So Kharis set the stage for a general understanding of the election in Taiwan in terms of the presidential election and the legislator election.

So I'm gonna use my time focusing on the DPP candidate, Lai Ching te, who has been nominated in April 2023.

>> Chiaoning Su: So who is Lai Ching Te? For those of you who follow Taiwanese politics, Lai Ching Te is not an unfamiliar figure. He was a physician by training who began his political career in 1996 when he was first elected as a National Congress representative.

And then two years after, he was elected as a legislator, and then he served in that position for more than a decade. In 2010, he was elected as the mayor of Tainan City. And then he served two terms in that position. In 2017, because of his popularity at that time, he was asked by President Tsai to serve as the premier for two years.

And then in 2020, he was the running mate of President Tsai, and he's the current vice president. So he is a well-established political figure. And in many ways, I think you can say that Lai does have a wide range of political experience and expertise, not only in local government, but also central government.

He also knows politics from both the legislative and executive perspective as well. So this is Lai Ching Te as a politician, as a political figure. But Lai Ching Te as a political brand is still quite new to the Taiwanese people. So ever since the beginning of his presidential election, he has been doing a lot of strategic messaging and through various media platform to really construct his branding.

On the one hand, he tried to offer more personal details, stories to humanize himself. So I think at this time, all Taiwanese people, we are quite familiar with his upbringing. He was have this humble beginning. He lost his father in a very young age. His father was the coal miner in this very poor village in Northern Taiwan.

He lost his father when he was not even one. His mom was a single mother, raised six children altogether. Growing up in such poverty, the story is that every time when a typhoon hits Taiwan, it will blow away the rooftop. And that's how he grew up. So to some extent, the story of Lai Ching Te really is the story of Taiwan.

It is the humble beginning. It's this hardship, challenges, and difficulties. Yet with great self-determination and resilience, he was able to achieve success and excellence. That's the story of Lai Ching Te, but also the story of Taiwan. On the other hand, Lai Ching Te also tried to do a lot of media interview to sort of reinvent his political position on China.

In his earlier days, he took a deeper green position on China. He's leaning toward pro-independence, but now, running for the president, he tried to frame himself as a continuity of President Tsai, who is taking a more moderate approach to China. So he's also tried to rebranding himself in that way.

So this is Lai Ching Te as a political brand.

>> Chiaoning Su: And also, I want to mention that Lai Ching Te is probably the only candidate so far who offer a clear policy framework among all the presidential candidates that we have. In September 2023, he held a press conference called the 2024 National Project of Hope.

And during that event, he clearly laid out three policy pillars that he is going to initiate with his presidency, in which he is going to safeguard peace and democracy in Taiwan, to create a better environment for innovation and prosperity. And to ensure social justice and sustainability in Taiwan through different policies.

So he was the only, I think, presidential candidate who has the sense of responsibility to provide a very clear policy framework thus far. So with his political profile and with the accomplishment of the Thai administration. When I say accomplishment, I was referring to the pandemic governance, the great economic performances.

For example, Taiwan, we've been seeing this rising global competitive ranking. And just yesterday, the Taiwanese stock market surpassed the Hong Kong stock market the very first time in 30 years. So all of these are embodiment of the achievement of the Thai administration. So with someone like Laise's political portfolio and with the Tai administration's achievement in the past few years, you would think that this election should be an easy one for Lai Ching-te.

Which is not. Which is not. Actually, in the past few months, it has been a quite tough battle for DPP and Lai Ching-te altogether. And why? I think there are three reasons. One is that, I think this is something Carlos mentioned earlier, there is this growing politics of anger and resentment, not only in Taiwan but also globally, that people are just tired of establishment and the institution.

So they want to punish the establishment through their voting behavior. And I think this time around, KMT and TPP was able to mobilize that sentiment and ask voters to vote against DPP. That is quite successful. I mean, at the end of the day, there is no perfect governance, and I think people do want to have a different ruling party, with DPP being the power for eight years.

And then with people, this growing resentment and dissatisfaction, TPP and KMT was able to mobilize that emotion and that sentiment to have voters vote against DPP. So that's reason number one. Reason number two that we've been seeing is this weaponization of this misinformation, happens through the collaboration of foreign and local agent.

This year, we've seen this complete ecosystem of foreign agent and local agent work together to really amplify the impact of this misinformation. So a lot of times, as a ruling party, Lai Ching-te was fighting against such misinformation, and then really tried to offer a clarification on several issues.

So that's reason number two. Reason number three is media agenda setting. As Carlos mentioned earlier, it took months for us to see that blue and white are not going to work together. But in the past few months, they really sucked the oxygen out of the room. They set the media agenda, they dominate the media coverage because of the sensational value.

So there is really very little room for DPP to have that media exposure. DPP has been completely marginalized in the past few months. So for these three reasons altogether, it has been a quite tough battle for DPP, despite the falling out between the blue and white. So where does Lai stand right now in terms of his polling?

I'm using the same poll number that Carlos just used, but I'm using the one that just done very recently on November 24th, 27th and 28th. That was after the confirmation of these three tickets. So as a way, you can see that this is the public opinion on the three tickets.

What is concerning for the green camp is that we were hoping to see this boost, this bump in Lai Ching-te's number, because now the blue and white are not going to work together. And now with Hou Yu-ih joining the ticket, we were hoping to see this boost, this bomb, this jump, but we are not seeing it.

Lai Chaing-te is still leading in Nepal, but not in a significant margin. So that's concerning. And then if we look closer into the demographics, there are some interesting patterns that we can see. One is about geography, so you can see that it is very much followed by the traditional pattern, that KMT is doing better in the northern part of Taiwan, the eastern part of Taiwan.

And DPP is doing much better, polling stronger in the southern part of Taiwan. I do want to mention, though, that DPP is actually polling stronger in New Taipei City with 38.1%. And that is significant because New Taipei City is the base of the KMT candidate of Hou Yu-ih, who is the current mayor of New Taipei City.

So for DPP to pose stronger in that district, that city, that could be a warning sign for KMT. So that's what I want to point out. And then let's look at the age, and as you can imagine, that DPP is pulling stronger among the younger generation. And then KMT is doing better with the age group that is between 50 to 70.

And TPP is doing pretty strong with the youth, the younger generation as well. So if I am from the KMT side, I would like TPP to stay in the race so they can split more votes from DPP, and that would tip the election into the favor of KMT.

If I'm a KMT person, I would love for TPP to stay in the race as long as possible, as strong as possible, so they are going to get more vote from the younger generation. What I really also want to point out is that this is a dilemma for DPP.

Like, how do you engage the younger generation? Cuz we know that Ko Wen-je, the candidate from TPP, is very social media savvy. He's very, very social media savvy, he's very good of transforming his everyday life, political campaigning into social media content. And I would like to point out, he's actually the only candidate among the three to have a Douyin account, a TikTok account.

And that really presents this dilemma for DPP, because from the perspective of national security, you are not supposed to use TikTok. But on the other hand, you also know you are conceding a significant space to your enemy, so what do you do? So this is really the dilemma for democracy.

Do you want to have a presence in a platform that is very much governed by Chinese logic just to have some extent, or is your absence actually more meaningful in this case? This really, truly is a dilemma for democracy and for DPP specifically at this point. But we are happy to see is that ever since Hsiao Bi-Khim joined the ticket, we started to see this traction on social media.

A lot of net users start to make organic contact to celebrate the Hsiao Bi-Khim. And they actually call this pair Taiwan the Mei, the virtue of Taiwan. Virtue triumphs in Taiwan, but also literally made in Taiwan. So we've been seeing this excitement, we've been seeing this momentum on social media ever since Hsiao Bi-Khim joined the ticket.

And we really hope this momentum would continue and just carry Lai Ching-te through the finish line. And the last thing I want to look at is the political position, right. The political position, if you look at the first three categories, you will see that it is obvious penguin blue is gonna vote for KMT.

Pangreen is gonna vote for DPP. TPP is gonna vote for TPP. So basically, they all return home. Really, now is the independent undecided voter that is gonna determine the result of the election. And this is the question that I have for KMT and also for Dennis, who is gonna present right next to me.

The question is now with Zhao Shao Kang join the ticket. And he is using this more pro China, China leaning, more hawkish and aggressive narrative, sorta like disrupt Hoyo Yi's strategic messaging, that is more moderate, more Taiwan based. Now, Zhao Shao Kang has this pro China statement, especially in terms of self defense.

He proposed to reduce the extended military service from one year back to just four months. He also proposed to do a comprehensive review on curriculum so that the children would learn better and develop the right national identity, right? All these are quite China leaning, pro China narrative. And that kinda revamp the strategic messaging of Hoyo Yi.

And is this kinda narrative gonna win KMT the independent undecided voter? Or are they just using this to consolidate their base? President is not their goal. Their goal is to consolidate their base, do better with legislator election. And then they are looking at 2028. I don't know.

>> Larry Diamond: No.

 

>> Chiaoning Su: They are not?

>> Kharis Templeman: They wanna win.

>> Chiaoning Su: They wanna win. Okay.

>> Chiaoning Su: So what to expect with only 44 days prior to the election? I think Carlos mentioned that as well. Strategic voting, right? Are they gonna concentrate their vote on KMT and abandon TPP? Or are they gonna concentrate their vote on TPP and then abandon KMT?

Would strategic voting even happen? And I think a lot of factors would shape the formation of such decision. One is Terry Guo's endorsement. Is Terry Guo gonna endorse Ke Wen Zhe? That's a big question. He seems pretty quiet now, so I don't know if he's gonna have his next move.

Maybe we will see. And then the Chinese interference. China is gonna interfere this election one way or another. They have been playing a role in this election along the way. I'm waiting to see their next move and how that is gonna shape the voting behavior at large. And then also there are some scheduled events that is about to happen.

The presidential debate, the vice presidential debate. This is a really interesting year that you are gonna see vice president candidate actually play an essential role in the election. So the debate among the vice president candidate will be something interesting to watch. I mean, we are at the time that whoever makes fewer mistake will score more points.

So whatever being said during those debates might have some impact on the overall voting behavior. So I think that's something to watch prior to the election. And one last thing, and I don't even know if this is gonna be relevant, but we've been seeing this developing situation in China, this spiking of respiratory illness in China.

It sounds quite familiar as we just went through in pandemic. The situation is quite unclear, but we are watching that closely in Taiwan. Would that becoming a major issue? Is that gonna have a quick development? We don't know. But maybe it will also have a role in the election with only 44 days to the election day.

So I think I will stop there and I will give it to Dennis. Thank you so much.

>> Kharis Templeman: Just before you jump on, I just wanna say a note to our online audience. We will be taking questions in our discussion in just a moment. So I invite you to enter questions in the chat box.

There's a Q and A cursor on the online zoom platform. Go ahead and enter your question there. And if we have time, we'll try to get to all of those. All right, Dennis, floor is yours.

>> Dennis Lu-Chung Weng: All right, thank you, Kara. Thank you for this opportunity to be here and to share with some of my insight.

It's always very difficult to present my so called insight after Kara's because even though I look like a Taiwanese, but Kara is a true Taiwanese.

>> Dennis Lu-Chung Weng: So anyway, my assignment from Professor Templeman today is to share what's going on, what's going wrong with the opposition party. So I'm gonna talk about this blue and white.

I picked a shirt, blue and white.

>> Dennis Lu-Chung Weng: I don't know if you can tell.

>> Chiaoning Su: I could wear a green shirt.

>> Dennis Lu-Chung Weng: I was wondering why.

>> Kharis Templeman: I'm neutral.

>> Dennis Lu-Chung Weng: You are neutral. So, yes. If you follow Taiwan politics, you may notice in the past several months that they're very dramatic.

The people talking about, all the media talk about forming a coalition ticket. They're gonna form together. Form a coalition together or not. And then, if you see this as a TV series, then the season finale was terrible. I mean.

>> Dennis Lu-Chung Weng: It's like they are competing against each other for a Golden Ross Berry award for the worst actor.

But I-

>> Larry Diamond: Or fighting.

>> Dennis Lu-Chung Weng: It was horrible. But anyway, but after, we also see the latest poll. It shows something very interesting happening because just like Chao Ning mentioned, DPP didn't see like a boost right after this horrible situation. I have to say the vote, that Taiwan voters are very pragmatic.

They see this horrible, crazy drama, but they soon return to their rational thinking, what they want to do. So I'm gonna go through my outline. I'm gonna do an overview of opposition candidates, briefly talk about their, Strength and weakness and some key issues and emphasize at this moment.

Although most of the issues was kind of not emphasized a lot because the media only focused on the coalition things, but they did provide some policy online. And I'm going to focus on the key issue which is the Cross-Strait Relation from those camp, KMT and TPP. And then I'm going to give you a brief analysis on key demographic target by the two party.

What do we know and don't know so far? So overview of the opposition candidate Hou You-Yi versus Ko Wen-je and Xingqiu Wu. Some of you probably don't even familiar with Xingqiu Wu, but I'm going to briefly talk about them. So Hou You-Yi first, Hou You-Yi represent KMT and as you probably know he was a detective.

He was a police officer for a very long time. And in comparison to all the traditional KMT politicians, he's very unique. You have to admit that he's not a traditional KMT or KMT politician. He has no significant controversial China tie, unlike the previous KMT politician. Normally, you have business or family got business with China, but Hou You-Yi has none, right?

That's one, second of all, he was a police officer. He's tougher than the traditional politician and he stressed on this a lot. He talked about police story and his time. I used this picture, I don't know if you can see, it was the younger Hou You-Yi rescue the baby from the South Africa diplomat's house when Chang Xing kidnapped the family as a hostage.

And then when Hou You-Yi visited the US here, San Francisco, the kids actually came to visit Hou You-Yi, and that's the picture. So it's a very emotional moment, at least for Pam Blue camp. And also I used a picture took taken when he visited, I think that's Heritage Foundation.

So why I mentioned Hou You-Yi is a very typical KMT politician. If you're looking back to Hou You-Yi's 43 years public service year, he was nominated and he was appointed by President Chen Shui-bian under DPP administration as the director general of the National Police Academy. At the time, lots of Pam Blue supporters actually see him as President Chen's protégé.

So protege, which means people don't like him. I mean from the Pam Blue camp, the supporter. When Hou Yu-Yi got nominated as a KMT presidential candidate, the Pam Blue camp didn't really support the idea and they complain about the situation a lot. So what I'm trying to tell you is Hou Yu-Yi is not a traditional bull.

And people say he's blue skin and green bone. And one thing from my personal interaction with Hou Yu-Yi is, if you ever talk to Hou Yu-Yi, his Taiwanese is better than his Mandarin. He's very, very different from the KMT so called Mainlander party. Another candidate representing TPP, Ko Wen-je as you know, he's a physician.

He's a doctor. He talk about his professional experience a lot. He's the one introduced the so called EcMo treatment from the US. And improved the transplant success rate from 19% to 51%, he mentioned that a lot. It also kind of connect him with China in the past. And like Harris mentioned, he was from the deep green.

Like a pro Taiwan independence camp, but then he moved toward the Blue camp. He mentioned both sides of the Taiwan Strait are families, right? So the thing is, Ko Wen-je, he mentioned he's very pragmatic about the crossword relation. But people also see he utilized this pragmatism as a flexibility for him to manipulate his position, go with the flow.

For the vice president selection, I'd like to mention Jaw Shaw-kong. If you're familiar with Taiwanese politics, you probably know Jaw Shaw-kong used to be really like a die hard Roc person. And people see him as a pro China friendly guy. And then I got the chance to again interact with Mister Jaw.

He mentioned that he leave a new party. Depart from the pro unification party. The new party he kind of departed from separate himself from Yu Mo Ming and those really pro China politicians for a reason. One of the reason is because he disagree with the pro unification position.

So he like to stress on that. And he retired from politics in July 1996. And founded a radio station and become a media person. Now he returned to politics, of course, for a reason. The reason is to consolidate the pan blue vote, Jjust like Larry mentioned, they want to win.

But both of you mentioned they want to win. They are thinking the tactical way to do it is to unify the Pem Blue vote. Another VP candidate, Sing Hia Wu is unfamiliar. Not many people know Sing Sia Wu, is kind of inexperienced politician. However, he has a strength.

She has a strength. The strength is financial management and global view according to TPP website. I'm sorry, but the thing is, he's new. He's new to politics. He joined TPP a year or two ago as a proportional representative to represent TPP in the legislative yen. And of course, she's well connected because of her family background.

So she could potentially get a lot of support from family connection. I don't know how much support she can bring to TPP, but she has to work very hard. So the key issue emphasized by KMT, the Cross-Strait Relation, for sure. I'm going to talk about that later. But the 3D policy keep Taiwan without facing the difficult choice, peace and war.

That's what Hou Yo-Yi mentioned in his op ed. And also the KMT's stress on the economy and technology. The prosperity is what KMT wants to stress and energy policy. Now, Hou Yu-Yi mentioned there's sustainable and steady energy transition with goal for 2030, 2035, 2040, and 2050. They criticized.

The DPP how you criticize the DPP that the nuclear power is needed. He said KMT argued that nuclear power plant is needed because Taiwan need to have a sustainable energy policy. If we consider Taiwan need to strengthen the national, deterrence force, energy is needed. You cannot not have sufficient energy.

And KMT also stressed on the corruption issue currently, like previous presentation, you hear the politics of anger, right? You can say that they play the card. But also there are some incidents in Taiwan related to corruption or scandal. So hoyo, you mentioned he's going to establish a new special investigation division.

That's kind of appealing to some voters in Taiwan. The KMT also mentioned absent voting lower voting age to 18 years old iof course attract some young voters. I don't know if that works but they try for DPP. Their policy issue mainly focus on domestic issues. The main reason is because Ko Wen-je.

His political experience is mainly about domestic things. So he talked about AI, technology development. He talked about energy, education, public health, aging, society. He said, well, we need to provide a better social welfare policy for the elderly people because Taiwan is dealing with the Asian issue. They also talk about housing and job.

That's also one of the reason a lot of young people like her. And the absent voting, lower voting age. That's what TPP stand for. So now I'm going to talk about the critical issue, the cross rate relations issue Kuomintang mentioned actually. I published a piece by Blue Kings mentioned Kuomintang has already evolved gradually from peace dove to peace hawk.

Why Hou Yu-ih mentioned the 3D strategy, deterrence dialogue and de-escalation. And if you listen to Hou Yu-ih in recent interview, he specifically mentioned deterrence will be number one priority. Which means he understands the importance of strengthening Taiwan's national defense force. And he also mentioned publicly Taiwan need to increase the defense budget.

And 3% is not a cap when he visited Washington DC, he mentioned specifically there's no cap. If needed, there's no cap. Given his background, he got a lot of positive feedback because people view him as a war hero or wartime leadership, some people at least. He also mentioned the military reform and defense budget.

I said, need to be increased and the conscription. Although people criticize Hou Yu-ih and the KMT about shorten the conscription. But Hou Yu-ih argument is actually it's not about the lens of the conscription, it's about the training program. If you can train properly, then we can utilize the time more effectively.

And also, there's a precondition to shorten the military conscription. It's not about directly right after he got elected, he will shorten the conscription back to four months. It's actually about if the situation allowed, if the condition allowed. So that's very important. And support for dialogue based on the constitutional 92 consensus is also kind of different from the so called one China two system.

The constitutional 92 consensus. The focus, it's about Republic of China. You have to acknowledge, at least acknowledge the existence of Republic of China before we can move on to the political dialogue. So that's why he mentioned constitutional 92 consensus. If you're looking back to Hou Yu-ih political career, he actually never mentioned 92 consensus until this time, until he run for presidential election, he's very cautious about 92 consensus.

And that's why he mentioned constitutional 92 consensus. And he also mentioned the social level exchange for de escalation. He believed the more exchange, even though we probably cannot go directly to the political dialogue. But he mentioned if we can have some exchange, like at the society level, it could de escalate the tension, which is what we have now.

The tension level is too high, not only at the politician level or government level, but at the society level. So that need to be fixed for Ko Wen-je for TPP, Ko's focus on deterrence, he mentioned specifically during his interview with Bloomberg, he also mentioned deterrence and communication. So one thing in common, I think, not only for the opposition party but also with DPP, is that all the political parties in Taiwan know strengthening National Defense Force is necessary.

It's not a joke. It's necessary, and all the party know that. And I also specifically mentioned in my piece why? Because they know Taiwanese people is not eager to reunify with China. If they like to get support from Taiwanese people, then they have to show they care about Taiwan security, they care about Taiwan's sovereignty.

So Ko Wen-je mentioned deterrence and communication, but there's, unfortunately, there's not much detail about that. Ko Wen-je indeed mentioned increased the national defense budget as well. It's kind of ambiguity in Ko's stance on 92 consensus and the Republic of China because he didn't mention that. He didn't mention 92 consensus.

He did suggest the potential for alternative terminology in crossray dialogue. I quote here because I don't quite understand what that means. He kind of suggests, we need to find a way, but we'll think about it the way that we will figure that out. So it's kind of the suggestion during the interview, he specifically said 92 consensus is not popular in Taiwan.

So we need to find a way. What is the way? I think that's the thing that Ko Wen-je need to think through and deliver to Taiwanese voters. So now I'm going to share with you some basic analysis. The key demographic target for KMT and DPP, which we all share the same poll.

So a lot of things in common. That's the beauty of democracy. We can actually talk, right? So the Formosa poll shows that this is the latest one. Chi-Ming and I, we used the latest, they released yesterday. So indeed, after the dramatic horrible, like season finale, the Koens lost.

Unfortunately, if they believe in polls recently, they don't believe in poll.

>> Chiaoning Su: It is a marginal barrow.

>> Dennis Lu-Chung Weng: Yeah, well, because of the marginal barrow. And it just remind me four years ago what happened with Guy PI we just. Just don't mention Paul. But anyway, now it's like the DPP is leading.

But like Xiaoning mentioned, DPP didn't see like big boost, right, after this crazy things. And Hoyo Yi get really a lot of race because of the pen blew unified after Zhao Xiao Kang's pick, and TPP lose some support. Yes.

>> Kharis Templeman: Just to read that graph. Excuse me, what is that horizontal one in 78, how is that corresponding?

 

>> Dennis Lu-Chung Weng: Yeah, 78 waves.

>> Kharis Templeman: Daily.

>> Dennis Lu-Chung Weng: Every three days they roll it, yeah.

>> Chiaoning Su: We started this in July.

>> Dennis Lu-Chung Weng: We started this in July. They started mid July. Every three days they rotate.

>> Kharis Templeman: Most recent wave was, I think June, two, three days ago.

>> Dennis Lu-Chung Weng: Yes, two, three day.

 

>> Larry Diamond: 78 days from July 1st.

>> Dennis Lu-Chung Weng: 78 waves. Waves not days. Waves, not days.

>> Kharis Templeman: That 78 is the date before yesterday or-

>> Chiaoning Su: It's November 24, 27, and 28.

>> Dennis Lu-Chung Weng: Yeah, it's very close. It's very recent. We don't know how it goes, but at this moment looks like this.

And then I share with you also they released yesterday from TVBS. They do this like monthly. So you can see very clear after the failure of coalition ticket, right after picking Zhao Saokang, the KMT got a boost. Like I mentioned, the pen blue unified after the VP selection and TPP obviously kind of declined, and TPP decline and DPP remain.

And I'd like to show you this why I picked TVBS and do some basic analysis because I compared the 2020 polls with the actual margin, with the actual vote share. So what I'd like to share with you is that if you look at 2020, the TVBS poll, pretty good job within the margin of error, if you guys know, believe that.

So in November 2019, November 14, November 26, December 14 and January 2, as you can see, it's quite accurate. Especially in December, it's quite accurate. The accuracy is about the margin, the difference between DPP and KMT, the poll and the actual vote here. So I just want to show I'm a scholar.

 

>> Dennis Lu-Chung Weng: What do we know and what we don't know. So if we look at the key demographic factor, TVBS the reason polls in terms of party support, take a look at the trend. The trend is very obvious. October 24, before they are talking about the result of the coalition, 78% of KMT.

Like I mentioned, that Hoyou Yi didn't get a lot of pemblue support. If you're looking back to August, it's only 67% KMT supporters, support Hoyo Yi in September, 62% and October 78% slightly better. And right after they picked the, is now 87%. And when we look at the party support, not only look at the percentage, but think about the base.

The DPP and KMT, their party base is about 25% to 30% and DPP is probably 13 to 15. They probably don't like me to say that, but it's 80 something percent. But you have to take into account the real number, the population. And then we look at the young voters.

We care about young voters. I also show you the trend. It's very obvious Hoyo Yi didn't get a lot of support. And if you think positively, he didn't lose a lot. Nothing to lose. So, but the thing is DPP, like Xiaoni mentioned the young voters and why Xiaoni mentioned that the KMT want to keep Cohen Joe in the race.

But I will say the DPP will do the same. The DPP need to have Cohen Joe in the race. If you look at the young voter, you may think, no, the TPP will get the KMT's young voters vote. But in fact, if you look at other factors like education and other things, I will argue the DPP also want Cohen Joe to be, to stay in the race.

That's a very interesting thing to observe. So for senior voters, not only look at the young voter but older voters as well. Why? Why that matters? Because the turnout rate, young voter has a lot of things to do on election day. So they may not turn out to vote, but the senior citizens normally election is the big thing to them, right?

So senior voters normally go out to vote a lot. So if you look at the trend the KMT got a lot of senior voters return to KMT. So that's something. If I were KMT strategiest, I would say, this is very positive. And if I were DPP strategist, I would say, we need to be cautious about this.

And again, for TPP, they have nothing to lose. For college graduate, the education level, okay, I have to go faster, sorry. For college graduate also there's a very clear trend and it's good for DPP. After this, the failure of coalition, the DPP gets some support because for college graduate, they probably see I want to have someone stable, I want to have someone cautious about our country's future.

So they actually get a little bit increase after the coalition failed and DPP lose the support. So what do we know? We know this is a three-way race, right? We know the campaign. And also I like to point out this, the campaign slogan actually reflect the strategies pretty well.

Why? If think about this, they both mentioned made in Taiwan the major in Taiwan English, it's like virtual wins Taiwan. Use virtual win Taiwan. The value, democratic value, keep Taiwan safe, keep Taiwan democracy. The value wins Taiwan will be the main issue. And steadily for Hoyo Yi and Zhao Shao Kang they mention means the economic.

Well, the people will get benefit, we'll make money, we'll bring economic prosperity back to Taiwan. So and for TPP, very, very typical. Taiwan's choice is Kwanzhou. It's all about me. Don't worry, I'll take care of it. So it's a very different strategy. And like I said, it's very interesting to see the campaign slogans reflect the party's strategy for this election.

And report, a lot of report mentioned That DPP is sure of victory, I think is premature. It will be a close race if things continue. What we don't know is I think the most important question in this election is whether the strategic voting happened in this election, the strategic voting means whether the TPP voters will sway to another party.

So that's also, the DPP and KMT need to be very careful to calculate that. How to play the strategy to make partial DPP voters move toward their side in favor of them instead of moving toward another side. So they want to keep DPP in race, but they don't want DPP to win too much.

But, well, conclusion, always be positive, right? Democracy isn't perfect, but it will still prevail, thank you.

>> Kharis Templeman: So we have just under a half hour for Q and A and discussion. We have a convention in this room. If you have a question and you're in the room, just turn your tent card to its side and I'll keep a list.

But I want to start with one big question, kind of a general question about this election to a foreign audience. Looking at Taiwan, when people ask me about this election, they ask, is this election about China or is it about something else? Ultimately, when it comes down to it, how will the swing voters choose?

And is that a reflection of their attitudes towards the China threat versus opportunity? Or is it going to be driven by something like corruption or economic opportunity or sexual harassment scandals or something like that? Xiaoning, do you have thoughts on that?

>> Chiaoning Su: I think to say this is an election only about China, I think it's a reduction.

I think this is too much of a simplification of the complexity of Taiwan politics. I think everybody vote for different reasons. For some people, this is truly a election between China and our democracy. And I think that will be this election and every election in Taiwan that is always about China.

But I also think there are some other voters, especially the younger generation. China is not their immediate concern. They really used this election as a way to channel their dissent, satisfaction and frustration. Just last week I gave a talk in Taipei at Soochow University, and I was reminded once again that students in that class is in their twenties and for the majority of their life, DPP was the ruling party, DPP was the ruling party.

And so for them to be critical, for them to be rebellious, it's to go against DPP, and which is very, very different from my experience growing up, that DPP had to fight a way to become this party representing the taiwanese voices. So I think this election is partially about China.

But it is also beyond that.

>> Kharis Templeman: Dennis, would you agree?

>> Dennis Lu-Chung Weng: I agree. And in comparison to the last elections this year, the China factor will probably not as significant or influential as the last one. As I mentioned, Hou Yu-ih is a very different politician. And Chaoning mentioned the Taiwan story.

Li Qingda is actually reflect how Taiwanese people back then grew up, the perfect Taiwan story. And interestingly, Hou Yu-ih share the same story, right? So it's difficult to say, KMT's candidate is pro-China because Hou Yu-ih is Taiwanese, and it truly never show any pro-China attitude. So it's hard to play the China card, to say the least.

And I'd like to just mention that we talk about the VP debate will be very interesting because both the presidential candidate, they are not very good at public speaking, I mean, William Lai and Hou Yu-ih, Ko Wenje probably, but not the DPP and the KMT. But the VP debate will be very interesting.

 

>> Kharis Templeman: Okay, all right, so in the interest of time, let me go ahead. We've got a big queue of questions. And I've got some online as well. Let's start with Larry.

>> Larry Diamond: Well, that's a good segue, because my question is about the vice presidential candidates, and particularly Joshuang, who strikes me literally and figuratively as a figure from the past.

I mean, I can remember interviewing him when I was living there, what was it, 25, 26 years ago? And he had left the KMT to form the new party and so on. The question is, how much do you think the vice presidential candidates will affect the race? You just suggested maybe more than normal, because I guess there will be one vice presidential debate.

But it seems to me that, yes, the vice presidential selection by the KMT had the short term effect of solidifying their base. But at the risk of having the more extended effect of putting a ceiling on their ability to attract voters from the center, because Yu-ih is a pretty polarizing figure.

He is a pro-unification candidate in a country that isn't pro-unification. So I would just be interested to hear you expand on that.

>> Kharis Templeman: Yeah, and before you jump in, let me add a question from online that's on that same topic. This is from Wayting Yan, who we know, who's asking, can the KMT credibly still commit to the three D's policy if you've got Zhao Joshuang on the ticket, what do you say to that?

 

>> Dennis Lu-Chung Weng: Well, I cannot. On their behavior, I can tell you this first. It's VP, it's vice president. Still, it's not the presidency, it's vice president. So Hou Yu-ih should have the control, supposedly. And for the VP, yes, you are right about Zhao Zhao Kang can get a lot of a pan blue voter.

But if you think about, you know, this is a three way race. So a lot of KMT's strategies suggest it's gonna be a 40 40 20, 40 40 20 race. So how are we going to get 40? Now Taiwan has 19 million eligible voters, 70% turnout rate, that give 13 million, right, 13 million, and this time DPT will not get 8.17 million.

I think that we could probably agree with that, right? So if that's the 40 40 20 strategy makes sense, then how do the KMT get 40 for the first step and then attract more, and then count down the strategic voting. So the first step is to get 40.

So 13 million, 40% of 30 million, that's actually Hou Yu-ih's vote That's 5.2 to 5.5 million, right? If the pan blue consolidated unified, then it's 5.5 million. Ideally, if that's the case, if you think Han Guo get a blue can blue voters, then 5.5 million could potentially give KMT a tie.

And then before the election day, strategic voting, the Qi Bao, Xiao Yin, a lot of people who probably angry about what they have today could potentially sway their vote toward KMT toward the second place. So that will be the strategic move. And that's also the reason why the VP picking Zhao Shaokang actually makes a lot of sense to KMT.

But as I said, theoretically speaking it makes sense. But I think it is also a concern or also a question for KMT to tell the whole world. Hoyo Yi, tell the us we gonna have the treaty, we are gonna be strong on China, we are gonna be tough on China.

Have is Zhao Shao Kang gonna influence your policy? I think KMT need to have a statement or something. If I were KMT's policy advisor, I would definitely ask KMT to do that. But like I said, for electoral purpose, for winning elections, I think you were right. KMT is not giving up elections, presidential elections, they try to win and this is the winning strategy.

 

>> Kharis Templeman: So I've got Jim next, but I wanna go first to three questions that are all on the same topic online for Qiaoning, which are about disinformation and the kind of misinformation and disinformation ecosystem you were referring to. Could you expand on what specific external interference is going on and what evidence we have of collaboration between people in Taiwan and people outside of Taiwan to try to influence the election in a pro China direction, I'll say.

And then a related question to that is do you think its having any effect at all? Because there were concerns about this in 2020 and then Tsai Ing wen won 57% of the vote. So it didn't really seem to affect the ultimate outcome of the election. Should we be more concerned now than we were in 2020?

 

>> Speaker 1: Carlos, can I add to your question a very related one here we have far left, far right news media, we see that all the time. But we also have quite neutral in the middle ones, either paper form or tv or that that people can go to. I wonder if that fraction is do exist in Taiwan.

They are more neutral and people can look at that. Quick question.

>> Speaker 2: What is the Taiwanese government doing, if anything, to do with regards to disinformation?

>> Chiaoning Su: So I will answer those questions maybe the synergy between the foreign actor local agent to begin with and what has Taiwan government been doing?

And then the media landscape. I think there is some transformation in this misinformation ecosystem since the Taiwanese academia tracked this phenomenon in 2016. In 2016, it's mostly from the foreign actors from China, from the contemporary farm, which is based in Malaysia, supported by a Chinese company. They produced this material.

They first published an anonymous online website and then being reposted in a popular Taiwanese site called BBS, which is a discussion board. And then immediately those topics being picked or covered by the mainstream media sort of like legitimize the topic and then being used by the political commentators in political show to mainstream those topics.

And it has been like this in the past few years. What we've been seeing this year is the extension of the topic itself. It's not really about Taiwan, China anymore. This time we are seeing this growing discourse of American skepticism. So it's not really about US or it's not about China.

It's about this distrust in US. And so we've been seeing, and I think IORG published this paper tracking 84 different patterns about American skepticism. Like specifically how the US is using TSMC, opening this factory in Arizona as a way to exploit Taiwan to Halloween the industry. And that's why Taiwan should really distance itself from the US, which is one of its key allies.

So this kind of narrative, it's not explicitly pro China, but it does put a distance between us and Taiwan. And that is through disrupting that ally, achieve the purpose of pushing Taiwan closer to China. So that's the variation of the dismiss information that we've been seeing, that it's not really about China, it's more about the distrust in the US.

And that is really shaping the public opinion. I couldn't remember which organization published this, Paul, but the willingness for Taiwanese people to work with the US government actually decreased a little bit in the past two years. It dropped from maybe 50 something to 40, I think, this year.

So you do see that kind of discourse is shaping the public perception. There is still this strong public perception in Taiwan, eager to work with the US, seeing US as the key ally of Taiwan, but not as strong as before. And I do think that this misinformation, this American skepticism is playing a role.

And then we are also seeing in this time around that more local politician is willing to use half true, half fake information. It's a mixed information to make a political statement. And they typically pick a domestic issue, something random, seems petty, but quite essential to your everyday life, for example, the egg.

So there will be this discourse about not having enough egg in Taiwan. And then the Taiwanese government tried to import those eggs from Brazil with such high price. And then there must be some sort of like corruption, like a closed deal, a closed door deal between the government and the business, the business in Brazil.

This is totally corruption. And then they also moving into the new direction, that is about the food safety issue, right? So this is all like a connected discourse, moving from one to another. And that actually the minister of the agriculture actually offered his resignation at the end as a way to shoulder the political responsibility.

And almost immediately after his resignation, it was discussed. Covered that it was a person we spied to KMT who is managing thousands of accounts producing such narrative. And that's another example of this misinformation being weaponized in Taiwan. Now, it's not just foreign agent with ill intention, but local agent are playing a role in shaping the narrative as well.

And then back to the question about the media landscape. Unfortunately, I do think the Taiwanese media landscape is quite partisan, it's just like the US media landscape. You know that if you are Republican, you watch Fox, if you are Democrat, you watch MSNBC. My student would tell me that in the introduction to journalism class.

In Taiwan, I don't know if I have to identify a neutral media would you say PBS? Xiaohongshu. Xiaohongshu which was supported by the government funds, which is probably something that we consider as independent and neutral in Taiwan. But I really cannot think of a very good example, yeah, maybe Xiaohongshu, PBS, and CTS yeah.

 

>> Kharis Templeman: Actually, I wanna get to Jim first and then, Yeah, I just wanna thank you both for exceptional presentations and really contributing to my understanding of the complexity.

>> James O. Ellis: Something that I heard from both of you that I think I heard from both of you that kind of surprised me is there's some strategic ambiguity in the messaging of each of the parties.

And is that intentional, do you think? Or, it's one thing to newly minted bumper stickers that fit nicely on the back of a pickup truck in South Texas or something like

>> James O. Ellis: Need to change the terminology and cross straight dialect. What does that mean? What does deterrence, dialogue, and de-escalation mean when the other side is gonna have a huge amount of agency, and whether any of those three Ds actually are executable or not?

What's the accountability mechanism? We see that in the debate, or is that kind of like theater of the absurd in this country as our debates are where they're just shouting at each other? Are people gonna ask these hard questions and demand answers, or do you think it's just kinda gonna go flow and people are gonna get to interpret it as they think they want to and vote as they think they must?

And I'm trying to be critical. We have the same kind of challenges here. But I'm surprised on such critical things as cross-strait relations that people can get away with kind of a hand wave and a bumper sticker.

>> Dennis Lu-Chung Weng: Yes, okay. Just try to answer these questions. I won't say this as a critical question because I think this is necessary.

And in fact, if you read Hoyoh Yi's foreign policy piece and you would learn that he actually mentioned the deterrence force, how to strengthen the deterrent force. One of the practical things that he mentioned in the article is he's going to establish the so-called all-out defensive mobilization council is under the deputy premier, bless you.

Is under deputy premier, which is important because in comparison to what we have now under DPP's administration, now we have the so-called similar things. All our defensive mobilized department under the Ministry of Defense, but under DOD Department of Defense. But Hoyo Yi says, well, if we really like to strengthen this, we have to put this like a higher level.

Why? If you read the policy, actually he mentioned to do that, he's going to take into all the different ministry, including education. Why that matter? Because in Taiwan the major problem is, well, disinformation and the military training is important. But in Taiwan, the real problem is the society is too soft.

The society is too solved. The solve is because the mentality is because of mindset. The mindset is solved. The mindset is not prepared for any kind of conflict. And the younger generation, born and raised in the very peaceful democratic society, they believe fighting against China is about typing something on the Internet.

So, education department need to be involved and the entire Taiwanese society need to face the situation, face the reality, so we can move forward. So, if you ask me what's the way forward, what's the real pragmatic things, and what Hoyo Yi will mention in the debate, I think he will mention what he published in the article.

He will lay out the strategy. The strategy is doable, feasible. Instead of just saying, we're gonna keep the ambiguity no, it's very clear. The 3D deterrence force need to be strengthened. And also constitutional 92 consensus like I mentioned, any political dialogue need to have something in common. The common before we can move on to the political dialogue.

According to his piece, he mentioned constitutional naid consensus, which is Republic of China Constitution. Republic of China need to be acknowledged. Well, we won't imagine that Beijing will accept that or will be happy about that. But it's kind of the KMT over this. Hey, it's the Republic of China versus Republic of Taiwan you pick, right?

So, that's why I said, Hoyo Yi. It's different from the traditional KMT here. But as I also mentioned, Zhao Shao Kang is a problematic pick for foreigners, for foreign media. If you think 3D is tough and if you think you're gonna be a hawkish on China, why you pick Zhao Shao Kang, like I said, strategic move.

Winning election to KMT, they learn a hard lesson from the previous elections. Winning election is very important in order to actually implement any policy they lay out for Taiwan's future, for Republic of China's future. So, I think there's different way or different perspective to see this election, to see KMT's campaign.

That's my response

>> Kharis Templeman: Okay, we'll do a speed round here. First, a question from online that observes from Ben Reed of UC Santa Cruz, who observes that all three of the candidates have been mayors, big city mayors, before. And so, do you think that's reflected at all in the nature of this campaign, or how is that kind of shaped their experience and their appeals?

In K Wenzhou's case, that's basically his only experience in politics. So that's the first question. The second, we'll go to Ricky.

>> Ricky: Sure. So thank you so much for the opportunity. My question is related to Professor Templeman's. So historically, Taiwanese politics has been dictated by cross-rate relations, but it seems that this election is not going to be focused entirely on that.

So what other issues do you think would be a game changer in the election? And for example, for someone who is interested in climate change and energy policy, how do you think people can give more way to those type of issues in this election?

>> Kharis Templeman: Okay, great. And the last question, Julian, go ahead.

 

>> Julian: Yeah, thank you both so much for your talk is really enlightening. My Question relates to more of the legislative elections and how the splitting of not having a joint KMT TPP ticket will affect maybe coordination at a district level between the two more opposition parties. And also how well the TPP will do in legislative elections, especially in Professor Templeman and Diamond's book, Ma Ying-jeou.

They mentioned that a lot of campaigns are driven by presidential figures for legislative elections. So how will that affect the TPP now that they have Ko Wen-je? That's sort of leading the charge.

>> Kharis Templeman: Okay, great. Chiaoning, I think-

>> Chiaoning Su: I think I can go with the third question first, how now blue and white are not working together, how is this going to affect their legislative election?

I think this is going to affect TPP significantly now, without a ground operation. They didn't nominate that many candidates for the district legislator to begin with, and then really counting on vote for TPP to increase their seats in the parliament. I think the estimate so far is to grow from five to ten.

I think that's the estimate, and I think that's optimistic. I think now with the fallout between blue and white, I think it's gonna be less than that. So that's for TPP. For DPP, I can say with all honesty that we are not gonna perform as strong as four years ago.

But we remain hopeful, we remain hopeful. And I think that's also why Lai Ching Te tried to sort of translate complicate policy languages into simple digestible campaign messages nowadays. For example, in terms of self-defense, and how do you build up credible self-defense, he would say that we need more legislators in the parliament so that we have people to vote on building our own submarine.

And now we built one, we need eight of that, so we need every vote so we can have more legislators in a parliament to carry us through that finish line. So he really tried to sort of translate complex policy languages into digestible campaign messages, I think that's what I've been seeing.

But I don't know about KMT.

>> Dennis Lu-Chung Weng: I don't know either.

>> Chiaoning Su: You don't?

>> Dennis Lu-Chung Weng: No, I'm just joking. Well, I try. So I try to answer all the questions regarding this election. And you mentioned someone like you, you probably pay attention to climate change or all the other issues.

Those are important issues, but there are priorities, right? They probably may not prioritize those issues in this campaign. Even though this time, well, personally, I really feel pleased. I'm pleased to see in this year's election, three candidates are Taiwanese. I mean, I have to say this because of their background.

So that make the China factor less important as before, because Taiwan voters really tired of during the elections, always about pro-China, pro-Taiwan, pro-China, pro-Taiwan, it's all Taiwan. It's Taiwan's elections, it's ROC's election, whatever. So this year, the three candidate, because of the similar background and similar grew up experience, so they will open the door, open the room for them to persuade voters.

The voters, I mean, here, is independent voters, because all the parties will have their supporter back to return to the base, right? So now, the critical point is whether there will be a strategic voting and also whether anyone can convince independent voter, right? So what's the key issue?

Well, unfortunately, I don't have the data. But most likely, economic situation, economic condition will be the key point, the critical issue. So Lai Ching Te need to convince people he can deliver better economy, same thing to Hou Yu-ih. They cannot just say it, they cannot just criticize or question DPP.

They have to have a concrete policy how to make Taiwan prosper in the future, and TPP as well. What are the other questions, the TPP?

>> Kharis Templeman: Well, there was a question about big city mayors.

>> Dennis Lu-Chung Weng: Big city-

>> Kharis Templeman: Mayor.

>> Dennis Lu-Chung Weng: Yeah, well-

>> Kharis Templeman: Give you both a shot at this, and then we'll wrap up.

 

>> Dennis Lu-Chung Weng: Well, the mayorship in Taiwan kind of get a lot of media attention. That's why they got name recognition a lot. So it's kind of a benefit for politicians who wanna run for the higher race. But I'd like to just add this, for TPP, a lot of TPP supporters, they believe they can do it alone because they hear everything, there's an echo chamber, right?

But if you look at the National Chin-Yi University, the College of Communication, they have this four year program. There's one specific question as how the percentage of Taiwanese people get their political information from online sources. 53%, over half percent of Taiwanese people, they don't get political news from the Internet, from social media, which means the TPP probably too optimistic about their influence, about the feeling or the temperature they perceive online.

So at the end of the day, I do believe the DPP and KMT, they will mobilize all their base, utilizing the national party structure to get more vote. It's gonna be a tough race, but at the same time, I think they probably find a way to play soft, at least to get some vote from TPP.

Like I said, the independent voter, the DPP voter, my assumption, my prediction is there will be strategic voting before the election.

>> Kharis Templeman: Okay.

>> Chiaoning Su: I do want to add one more point before we close the panel, if that's possible. I feel like we keep saying that the China factor is less significant this time.

I think that's a very dangerous narrative, because if you look closely into the election and the whole process, China factor is everywhere. The fact that they can just investigate forced to drop out, and then finally, just a very symbolic fine, less than $3,000, and then Terry will drop out, and that's a very clear Chinese interference over there.

And then on the other hand, in 1996, China used missile to sway the Taiwanese voters, and now they are sending fighter jets to cross the medium line every day, and that is becoming a new normal. And then we just seems numb to that. So the narrative that we are using, that there is less China factor this time, it's just less visible, and it's just more sophisticated in a way.

And it's less visible because four years ago, we had this ongoing social movement in Hong Kong. So that was a daily spectacle, that was a daily reminder of the China interference. The China interference is everywhere. It's getting more and more sophisticated, and this cognitive warfare has already begun.

So I think it's quite dangerous to use the narrative that the China factor is less significant this year. It is equally significant from my perspective.

>> Kharis Templeman: Okay, great, I'm sorry, I gota cut us off since we're past time. I wanna thank our online audience for following along. This has been a production of the project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific region at the Hoover institution.

You've been listening to Dennis Weng, Chaoning Su, and I'm Kharis Templeman. Thanks for joining us, and tune in early next year when we find out the results of the election.

>> Kharis Templeman: And we'll probably do this again, so thanks, everyone.