Written by Mark Wenyi Lai. Ko has seized swing voters from the KMT’s pocket and pushed KMT to the far-right. The stronger this far-right narrative becomes, the greater the swing to pan-green votes. Thus, the weaker the KMT becomes, the more likely that Ko will join the race. The more Ko believes he will win, the more likely that pan-green voters will side with Tsai.
Written by Dongtao Qi. Since the DPP was trounced by the KMT in the November 2018 nine-in-one local elections, most public opinion polls found that compared to other possible presidential candidates, popular support for president Tsai in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election was consistently the lowest. However, about six months before the 2020 presidential election, many polls showed a surprising turn…
Written by Yu-tzung Chang. (…) Taiwanese parties have been “captured” and “marginalised”, gradually losing their vital functions such as political recruitment and aggregation of interests. Parties have become little more than support acts for politicians. The result will be increasingly fluid and polarised politics that has hidden dangers for Taiwan’s democracy.
Written by Jacques deLisle. Whoever holds the presidency in Taiwan after 20 May 2020 will need to navigate especially challenging relations with Washington and Beijing. Under Xi, Beijing has taken a tougher line, squeezing Taiwan’s international space, poaching its diplomatic partners, and chilling cross-Strait ties. It is not clear that China’s more demanding and assertive posture stems solely from dissatisfaction with Tsai, whose cross-Strait policy has emphasised stability and continuity.
Written by Mei-chuan Wei.
Given the unexpected scenarios in the KMT and DPP primary elections and the aforementioned complex factors that have always impacted upon Taiwan’s politics, the outcome of Taiwan’s 2020 presidential election is uncertain. Another uncertain element is Taipei City Mayor and former doctor at the prestigious National Taiwan University Hospital, Ko Wen-je.
Written by Timothy Rich. Han Kuo-yu surprised many observers with his victory in the Kaohsiung mayoral race in November, the clearest example last year of a Kuomintang (KMT) candidate faring above expectations in a south historically dominated by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). This “Han wave” now appears to have propelled Han as a viable presidential candidate for the January 2020 elections…
Written by Ljavakaw Tjaljimaraw. Ma Ying-jeou’s two-term presidency between 2008 and 2016 represented a short window of laying Taiwanese society wide open to China’s United Front infiltrations before the election of Donald Trump in the US unveiled a new era referred to as the “New Cold War” or the “Cool War.”
Written by Ljavakaw Tjaljimaraw. This strategy did work in the short run in terms of party competition. From 2000 to 2008, the DPP, despite playing as Team America B, found itself caught between two unfavourable situations. On the one hand, the KMT’s “Go West” advocates stirred up an avaricious “China craze” of United Front-driven bonuses, bribes, or subsidies handed out to people from all walks of life.
Written by Ljavakaw Tjaljimaraw. While Taiwan is still in a state of limbo over who will win out among the candidates running for the presidency, the overall pattern of the 2020 election is becoming quite clear: it will be, for the first time, a battle between “Team America” and “Team China,” instead of the competition between Team America A and Team America B that appeared in the course of Taiwan’s democratisation in the 1990s.
Written by Chen-Yu Lin. 30 years since inception the Awards are still presented by the Ministry of Culture, but have also become a stage where musicians are free to make political statements.
Written by Maggie Yang. Given the reality that music promotion cannot completely rely on the government’s cultural policy and subsidy, more professionals based in overseas countries are dedicating themselves to increasing Taiwan pop music’s global visibility and audibility. The three speakers I invited to the talk were from academia and industry. What they have done in the past years has exceeded the government’s capability and had a real impact for Taiwan’s artists and the music industry. Through their efforts, and those of other artists and promoters, Taiwan’s pop music is being heard on some of the biggest stages in the world.
Written by Eden Townend. This is a clear manifestation of this mutually beneficial relationship at work. CD REV align their content with the CCP’s values and preferred narratives pertaining to Taiwanese reunification, and the CCP in turn provide the rap group with the necessary tools to be successful.
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