Taiwan Election Showdown! A Blue Prof and Green Pol Explain

The Taiwanese populace will head to the polls to choose their next president on January 13, 2024 — and the three-party slate is set!

To discuss, we brought on Lu Yeh-chung 盧業中 — a professor of diplomacy at National Chengchi University 國立政治大學 — and Lin Fei-fan 林飛帆, previously the Deputy-Secretary of the DPP and well-known for leading the Sunflower Student Movement in 2014.

Our conversation gets into:

• What a three-party race means in a first-past-the-post electoral system, and how the pan-blue and pan-green camps are feeling;
• Why the KMT-TPP alliance broke down, and what the pan-blue side needs to do to mobilize its electorate;
• The KMT’s and DPP’s views on whether Taiwanese and mainland Chinese are part of the same family 兩岸一家人;
• What the 1992 Consensus means to the KMT and DPP, and the tensions and synergies between idealism and functionalism in Taiwanese politics;
• How the CCP views the upcoming election, and to what extent it really fears pro-independence activists in Taiwan;
• What demarcates the KMT and DPP outside of cross-Strait politics, and which domestic issues are most compelling for the average Taiwanese voter;
• And how the KMT and DPP balance government spending on hard military assets versus subsidizing critical technologies like semiconductors.

DPP ticket:

• president: William Lai Ching-te 賴清德
• vice president: Hsiao Bi-khim 蕭美琴

KMT ticket:

• president: Hou Yu-ih 侯友宜
• vice president: Jaw Shaw-kong 趙少康

TPP ticket:

• president: Ko Wen-je 柯文哲
• vice president: Cynthia Wu Hsin-ying 吳欣盈

Outro music: 回春丹- 鲜花 https://open.spotify.com/track/35XxW360SO3puJQDfuaY4r

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