Written by Mingke Ma. Surprisingly, competition became fierce after the first Television policy debate on 4th September for the 2021 KMT Party Chairperson Election. The difference in support ratings on the opinion poll for the two leading candidates—former New Taipei City mayor Eric Chu and former KMT chairperson Hung Hsiu-chu’s policy advisor, Professor Chang Ya-chung—had been zigzagging within the error range of 3 per cent.
Written by Chia-hung Tsai. On 25 September 2021, the Kuomintang (KMT), the main opposition party, voted on the chairperson. As a result, Eric Chu (朱立倫), the former KMT chairman and ex-vice premier, was elected with 85,160, or 45.8 per cent of the votes. This election draws domestic and international media attention because the result will influence the upcoming referendums, local elections, cross-Strait relations, and even US-Taiwan relations.
Written by Nathan Batto. Eric Chu 朱立倫 was elected KMT party chair on Saturday in a surprisingly contentious race. When Chu announced his entry into the race, the former New Taipei mayor, vice premier, presidential candidate, and KMT party chair was the favourite to win. However, most people expected his primary competition to be the incumbent party chair Johnny Chiang 江啟臣 rather than Chang Ya-chung 張亞中, an intellectual from the extreme unification wing of the party.
Written by Lev Nachman. The results are in: Eric Chu, a former KMT presidential candidate, will be the new KMT party chair. This race was not supposed to be dramatic, but it ended up becoming an exciting spectacle that revealed far more characteristics about the current state of the KMT than any observer could have anticipated.
Written by Simona A. Grano & Helena Y.W. Wu. On January 2, 2019, Xi Jinping held a speech to commemorate the famous “Letter to Compatriots in Taiwan” of 1979. In this letter, he defined unification across the Taiwan Strait as “the great trend of history.” He also warned that attempts to facilitate Taiwan’s independence would be met by force. Not only this, but he also called for “unification under the ‘one country, two systems’ formula.”
Written by Frédéric Krumbein. The European Union has the densest integration region globally, whereas current trends in cross-strait relations point to a further divide between both sides. Despite noticeable significant differences between the European Union and cross-strait relations, theories of European integration provide a useful framework to analyse the past, present, and future of relations between Taiwan and the Chinese mainland. Four major theories of regional integration that were developed for or applied to the European integration process will be used to analyse cross-strait relations: neofunctionalism, historical institutionalism, liberal intergovernmentalism, and postfunctionalism.
