Taiwan’s KMT Primary Is Fueling a Heated Struggle for Party Power

Polling began on Monday for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential primary, with results expected to be announced on Monday, July 15. In theory, that should end the jockeying for power within the party and unite the KMT behind its ultimate nominee. Will this happen? Probably not: The intrigue will likely continue well into the fall.

The three leading candidates are KMT power players: Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), Foxconn founder and billionaire businessman Terry Gou (郭台銘) and ex-New Taipei City Mayor and 2016 presidential nominee Eric Chu (朱立倫). Beneath the surface, a long-running power struggle between KMT Chairman Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) and former legislative speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) continues to brew.

Most primary polls give the edge to Han, who leads Gou by an average of 3 to 5 percentage points. But regardless of the results, not all of the major candidates have pledged not to break ranks should they lose. The ongoing jostling for power within the KMT, both among the candidates and behind the scenes, could have a profound effect on the presidential race at large—and could spur a radical shift in the very identity of the party.

The primary is a landline-only public opinion poll expected to run through Sunday, June 14. To ensure fairness, a huge database is being used and multiple polling companies have been contracted to conduct it. 85% of the result is drawn from theoretical polls matching the KMT candidates against Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and independent Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), who is heavily rumored to be plotting his own bid. The remaining 15% comes from a comparison of popularity of each of the five candidates running in the party—Han, Gou and Chu, along with ex-Taipei County Commissioner Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋) and professor Chang Ya-chung (張亞中), both of whom barely register in the polls. Regardless of the KMT’s efforts to conduct a fair primary, suspicions of malfeasance are running high in some quarters within the party—always a bad sign on the party unity front.

Han—who shocked Taiwan by winning last year’s Kaohsiung mayoral race, seizing a longtime DPP stronghold in the process—is a charismatic populist with an unfailingly positive message largely centered around booming prosperity (發大財). His passionate fans flood the streets for massive rallies, where Han appeals to the audience with the touch of a commoner—arriving through the crowd instead of around back, getting wet in the rain like everyone else, singing nostalgic and patriotic songs and calling out his ever-ready phrase, “Good or not good?” with the inevitable answer an enthusiastic “Good!”

As a candidate, however, Han has some serious drawbacks. His performance in the debates was not exceptional, and whether he did well or not likely depended on one’s pre-existing opinion of him. His support base is strong, but mainly limited to the 45 to 65-year-old demographic. Like Han, many of these voters were raised on strong Republic of China (ROC) nationalism and grew up along with Taiwan’s booming economy in an era of hope, optimism and rapidly rising incomes.

Han’s support evaporates at either end of that age spectrum. The older demographic is more suspicious, perhaps remembering the darker, more brutal aspect of that nationalism under the era of martial law which preceded Taiwan’s democratization.

The younger demographic, meanwhile, suspects Han is full of hot air and scrutinizes his ties to China and overt pro-Beijing stance. The pro-Beijing media is strongly behind him (especially two TV news stations), and alleged Chinese influence operations appear to have boosted him on social media and through radio. He is so disliked in some quarters that a campaign to launch a referendum to impeach him is underway. He is also under investigation for financial improprieties alleged to have taken place while he was in charge of a semi-state owned enterprise.

Terry Gou has, on average, been trailing Han by fairly small margins. One of the most successful business leaders on the planet, Gou is himself pitching a cocktail of prosperity and ROC nationalism. He is, however, more specific in his plans than Han, with proposals on boosting the birth rate and technology being high on his list. His base of support is less passionate than Han’s, but he may have more potential to gain the support of undecided voters.

Gou’s campaign got off to a rough start, impeded by his history of scandals, being thin-skinned, and making off-the-cuff remarks. But he has very rapidly shown his ability to adjust, adapt and improve as a campaigner. His debate performances were respectable, and he carried himself with confidence, good humor and focus on his message. He has done reasonably well attracting younger voters by promising them directly he would work to improve their economic prospects.

Gou has cleverly deflected serious concerns over the bulk of his wealth and business interests being in China (he was one of the pioneers of the manufacturing exodus from Taiwan to China) by taking stands that are clearly pro-ROC. Like all the other KMT candidates, Gou has strongly rejected Beijing’s “one country, two systems” formula for Taiwan, but he has taken it one step further by demanding that Beijing recognize Taiwan’s formal “Republic of China” title in negotiations—a likely non-starter for the Chinese side, which considers itself the only legitimate representative of the Chinese nation.

While Gou has strong business ties in China and longstanding links to Chinese government officials—including Chinese leader Xi Jinping himself—Taiwan’s local Beijing-friendly media outlets appear split on how to deal with him.

Fellow Taiwanese businessman Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明)—the controversial head of the Want Want China Times Media Group and holder of considerable investments in China—has staked his media properties against Gou and firmly behind Han. This has given Gou the opportunity to sound strong on resisting Chinese media interference. In recent weeks, Gou has attacked Tsai Eng-meng as China’s “hatchet man” and has refused to give interviews to his media group. United Daily News, the other major media group with an editorial sympathy for closer ties with Beijing, has been more friendly to Gou.

Eric Chu is the “grown up in the room.” He is an established and successful politician; the twice-elected mayor of the nation’s largest city, New Taipei. His policy proposals are detailed and generally normal for a leading KMT politician, though his promise of a “peace treaty” with China to be signed on the frontline island of Kinmen ruffled feathers and he had to walk it back and clarify it as a “peace agreement” because China would never sign a “treaty”—an agreement between independent states—with Taiwan.

Chu has been picking up some support in the polls, and he made his appeal explicit in the last debate: Don’t vote for a populist you’ll regret later. This may appeal to some in the primary, as there are considerable doubts in some quarters about the two leading populist candidates. He has one giant liability, however: He was the party’s candidate in the last presidential election. He lost in a landslide.

The two other significant players are Wang Jin-pyng and Wu Den-yih. Wu announced he would not run when it became obvious he was too far behind in the polls to win. He had lost considerable leverage in the party after the last election, in which Wang Jin-pyng was the power player behind much of the party’s success. So much so that Wang figured more prominently than Wu on advertising and on stage outside of Taipei in the last weeks of the election. To undermine Wang’s position, and to regain the initiative for himself, Wu abruptly threw his support behind Han Kuo-yu running for president in April. Han had been, in many ways, Wang’s creation in the last election, and Wang had been counting on his support in his own run for the presidency. Eventually, Wu succeeded in getting Han into the race, splitting him away from Wang and racing to the head of the pack in the primary.

Wang abruptly quit the primary in early June right as Han formally entered the race—but only right after having said he was “running to the end.” Wang didn’t formally rule out running as an independent, saying only to a reporter “it’s still early” in response. Right after his announcement of leaving the primary, Wang attended a “Nantou Friends of Wang” election campaign support group founding ceremony to the chants of “dong suan” (get elected). The location of this election support group (which helps the ground game and raising donations for his presidential campaign in Nantou County)? Not the county seat, but rather the smaller town of Caotun, which happens to be Wu Den-yih’s hometown. Wang has ruled out being vice president, but the one position he has previously coveted in past is KMT party chairman—but lost to future president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who elevated Wu Den-yih to the position of vice president. It is unclear if that is a position he still wants, but his maneuvering against Wu suggests that power in the party is one thing he may still want. Regardless, he has been meeting with candidates during the runup to the primary to remind them, and everyone else, that he remains a power broker.  

While Wang hasn’t ruled out running as an independent, or could be angling for power to seize the party chair position, Wu may be considering party precedent. Throwing support behind Han seems odd on the surface: Han dared challenge him previously in the party chair election and Wu subsequently exiled Han to what was then considered hostile territory in Kaohsiung. It makes sense when considering his power move against Wang, but is there more? Wu openly worked to change the rules, and change them again and again to make sure Han could enter the race.

Another possibility is he may be calculating that Han, while popular with the base and inside the party, does seem to have a low ceiling in popularity with the general public. If this should be the case, and Han is trailing in the polls significantly—or suffers from yet another scandal (he has several known ones, and he’s currently under investigation)—then the party may decide to dump their candidate, which is exactly what they did in the last presidential election to their primary winner Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) when it became clear she was unelectable. Who did the party turn to to step in and fill that position? The party chair (at the time Eric Chu). Traditionally, the party chair and the presidential candidate have been one and the same, but the early stages of the last election—and, so far, this election—have been the exceptions.

And then there is the Terry Gou situation. He refused to sign off on a pledge to the KMT that he would not run as an independent if he lost the primary, though he claims to have “not thought about that” when asked by reporters about an independent run. Terry Gou likens himself to Genghis Khan, a take-no-prisoners kind of leader. He’s achieved his goals in the past through force of will and intelligence, and is a self-made multi-billionaire who has recently stepped down from running the company he founded. If Han Kuo-yu wins the primary, what will Gou do?

(Feature photo from Hao Chen-tai on Wikicommons, CC BY-SA 3.0)