Taiwan election 2022: Taipei mayoral race officially begins, what you should know – BBC News

In 2008, Ma Ying-jeou was elected president of Taiwan not long after he stepped down as mayor of Taipei. The current mayor of Taipei, Ko Wenzhe, established the People’s Party after winning Taipei City with the help of the DPP in 2014, and has repeatedly stated that he will run for the 2024 presidential election. In other words, the Taipei mayoral election is seen as a presidential election campaign.

An analysis of the voter structure in Taipei City found that in the past, because of provincial nationality and economic factors, there were more pro-KMT “pan-blue” people who supported close economic exchanges between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait than the “Pan-Green” and independent voters of the Democratic Progressive Party. For example, in the 2020 presidential election, although Tsai Ing-wen won a big victory, she won about 57% of the votes nationwide, but in Taipei City, her vote rate was only about 53%, which was the lowest among all municipalities in this election.

However, against the background of changing generations and strained cross-strait relations, a group of young “natural independence” Taipei citizens who support sovereign independence, along with their pan-blue elders, plus the swinging middle voters, will jointly decide who will be the city of Taipei. It will also unveil the prelude to Taiwanese politics in the post-Tsai Ing-wen era.

Zhang Junhao, a professor of politics at Taiwan’s Tunghai University, told BBC Chinese that so far Jiang Wanan has slowly recovered the basics of the Kuomintang. With the voter structure of “blue is greater than green” in Taipei City, the situation may be better for Jiang Wanan, but for Chen Shizhong of the DPP. less favorable.

Zhang Junhao analyzed that the current election in Taiwan is still spent on the topic of whether candidates have plagiarized their graduation thesis, and there is no real policy debate. Therefore, the median voters who rely on policy as the basis of voting may be less likely to vote. The low turnout rate is very unfavorable for Huang Shanshan, who focuses on “middle voters”.

However, Yao Liming, a former professor at Taiwan’s Sun Yat-Sen University and now chairman of the Congressional Watch Foundation, said the incident about the papers would not spread for long. Yao Liming told the media that he was very surprised by Chen Shizhong’s performance: “Chen did not lose to Ke Wenzhe in 2014. Chen’s speech made no mistakes at all, there were attacks, sarcasms, and defenses. I was surprised. Plus his speed on the Internet” Air combat capability’ these two points make me think that Chen Shizhong’s chance of winning the election is far greater than Jiang Wanan and Huang Shanshan.”

Yao Liming served as the core staff of Ke Wenzhe’s first election for mayor of Taipei. He successfully assisted Ke Wenzhe in defeating the Kuomintang and was called “the kingmaker” by some Taiwanese media.

According to a poll by Taiwan’s TVBS TV station, whose stance is considered pro-Blue, in the results released on August 29, Jiang Wanan had 36% support, Huang Shanshan, who ranked second, had 26% support, and Chen Shizhong had 23% support.

However, according to the latest poll results conducted by Shanshui Polling Company commissioned by Taiwan media “Fang Yan” on August 30, Chen Shizhong won the first place with 26.3%, Jiang Wanan was second with 25.8%, and Huang Shanshan was behind with 24.0%. In addition, 23.8% of voters are undecided. The gaps in the support of these three people are all within the margin of error, forming a situation where the three powers are standing apart.

“Golden Sentence Commander”Chen Shizhong (DPP member, former commander-in-chief of Taiwan Epidemic Prevention Command Center, Minister of Qianweifu)

Chen was born in Taipei, Taiwan in 1953. He came from an academic family. His father was Chen Qiyan, a well-known law professor in the Law Department of National Taiwan University.

But Chen Shizhong officially entered the political arena after middle age. Having been engaged in dentistry for many years, he served as an organizer in Taiwan’s dental association, and proposed to the government on Taiwan’s medical welfare policy. In 2000, Chen Shizhong assisted Chen Shui-bian in the election. In 2004, he was recruited by the latter to join the Taiwan Executive Yuan as the deputy minister of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and officially entered the political arena.

Like Anthony Fauci in the United States or Dr. Yuan Guoyong in Hong Kong, before the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia, the public seldom heard of his name. For more than a decade, Chen Shizhong has mostly devoted himself to medical policy and medical services. All until the outbreak of the epidemic, Chen Shizhong, who is also the commander-in-chief of Taiwan’s “Central Epidemic Command Center”, rose to fame.

For more than two years, Chen Shizhong and his team have appeared on TV in Taiwan almost every afternoon. He reported and explained the epidemic in his signature calm and steady tone, and sometimes responded to sharp questions with calm and witty words. In 2020, according to a survey by local TV station TVBS, Chen Shizhong once obtained a record of 91% affirmation of his command of epidemic prevention.

However, after leaving the Ministry of Health and Welfare to participate in the Taipei mayoral election on July 17, 2022, under the fierce political opposition in Taiwan, Chen Shizhong also encountered many criticisms from his opponents, especially in the past two years, the opposition party and critics said his leadership Taiwan’s epidemic prevention has failed completely, and it can be seen that Chen Shizhong’s challenge has just begun.

Jiang Wanan, the “Prince” of the Kuomintang (currently a member of the Kuomintang legislature)

Jiang Wanan, formerly known as Zhang Wanan, was born in Taipei in 1978. His father was Chiang Hsiao-yan, former vice chairman of the Kuomintang, former Taiwanese foreign minister and secretary-general of the Presidential Office, and was the second generation of the Kuomintang government. Jiang Wanan is regarded as one of the most high-profile political figures of the Kuomintang Mesozoic era.

Jiang Wanan, who grew up in Taipei, graduated from National Chengchi University, and then went to the United States to obtain a Juris Doctor from the University of Pennsylvania, and then worked as a practicing lawyer in California. In 2005, his father Jiang Xiaoyan changed his surname to Jiang on the grounds of “recognizing his ancestors and returning to his ancestry”, and Jiang Wanan also changed his surname with his father.

(Jiang Wanan was interviewed when he ran for the legislature at the end of 2015)

In 2015, Jiang Wanan announced that he would give up the US green card, and represented Taipei City to run for the Taiwan Legislative Council and was successfully elected. In 2020, he narrowly defeated the new generation of the DPP, Wu Yinong, to be re-elected as a legislator, and is one of the most high-profile political stars in the Kuomintang party.

Jiang Wanan said in his just-published autobiography that he was not told of his blood relationship with the Jiang family until after middle school.

However, like Jiang Youbai, a descendant of the Jiang family, his words and deeds have been widely concerned by mainland public opinion. After Jiang Wanan entered the political arena, he has always been the focus of both sides of the strait.

Since the Jiang Xiaoyan family changed their surname in 2005 to “recognize their ancestors and return to their ancestors” and were regarded as descendants of the Chiang family, many supporters identified Jiang Wanan as the “fourth generation” of the Chiang family, the great-grandson of Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the authoritarian era in Taiwan. However, the Jiang family has not done a paternity test with the Jiang family, so there is no legal evidence to prove the blood relationship between the two parties. However, every step of Jiang Wanan’s political career has already attracted the attention of public opinion.

Taiwan media “China Times” published an editorial this year, citing the Philippine people’s “reminiscence of the Marcos era” and sending the dictator’s son into the presidential palace as an example, exhorting Jiang Wanan to “have the courage of Marcos to defend his father, and to have the courage to defend his father. He has the vision of standing in the time and space of his father and grandparents, and he must have the courage of the two Chiang Kai-sheks to create a pattern… His candidacy is of historical significance.”

In any case, whether the Jiang family is Jiang Wanan’s burden or asset is still a topic of debate in Taiwan. In 2015, Jiang Wanan told BBC Chinese that the Jiang family was neither a burden nor a halo for him, but a blood relationship. Other than that, there was no special meaning.

rich political experienceHuang Shanshan (former deputy mayor of Taipei City)

As the object of the support of the current Taipei Mayor Ke Wenzhe, Huang Shanshan’s career in politics is much earlier than that of Ke Wenzhe.

Born into an ordinary police officer family in Taichung in 1969, Shanshan Huang became a practicing lawyer immediately after graduating from the Law Department of National Taiwan University. Although the wave of democratization in Taiwan rose during her studies, and the “Wild Lily Student Movement” set off a wave in the university, Huang Shanshan said that she once went to sit-in to participate in the student movement, but she still wanted to reform within the system. Later, she entered the political arena before the age of 30, representing the new party that split from the Kuomintang and opposed Lee Teng-hui’s line, and was successfully elected to the city council. Later, she joined the People First Party led by former Taiwanese governor James Soong for 20 years and became one of Soong’s most respected political figures.

Huang Shanshan is already a senior public opinion representative in the Taipei City Council, and she is popular with the central voters in Taipei with her intellectual urban image.

In 2019, Huang Shanshan resigned as the director of the Publicity Department of the People First Party and joined the Taipei City Government as the deputy mayor. Since then, she has been regarded as Ko Wenzhe’s active political partner. When she announced her candidacy for mayor at the end of August, her political mentor James Soong didn’t make the conversation for her platform.

Huang Shanshan has been the deputy mayor of Taipei for three years, and her image of diligence and calmness is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. However, Yao Liming believes that Ke Wenzhe’s management of Taipei’s municipal administration has been widely criticized, but it may be Huang Shanshan’s burden.

According to the Taiwanese mayor’s government satisfaction survey released by Taiwanese media “Foresight Magazine” in June 2022, citizens’ satisfaction with Ke Wenzhe is only 43.7%, and the government score of 61.9 is the lowest in Taiwan. The Foresight Survey also said that 25.6% of the respondents wanted Ke Wenzhe to retire.

An elder brother of Huang Shanshan, Huang Shuguang, is the former chief of staff of Taiwan who was promoted by Tsai Ing-wen.