The KMT is not a normal political party. Normally, if a candidate wins 72% of the vote in an election, then everyone rushes to congratulate him, and ingratiate themselves with him. Not so in the KMT where it seems that new KMT chairman Ma Jing-yeou is trying to ingratiate himself with the loser while getting snubbed from all directions. First, outgoing chairman Lien Chan (who, in a classy move, ‘accidentally’ let the TV cameras see that he’d voted for Wang) decided to publically admonish Ma about the pre-election complaints on vote-buying:

“The inflammatory language has to stop,” Lien was quoted as saying in yesterday’s United Evening News. “It is most important to heal the wounds and ..unite.”

Aside from the fact that Lien clearly doesn’t care whether vote-buying happened or not (but cares that it was made public), his decision to slap-down the winner at the moment you’d expect congratulations is pretty divisive in itself.

The there is Ma’s relationship with the loser: Wang Jin-pyng. After Wang phoned Ma to concede defeat, Ma went round to Wang’s headquarters to have a personal word …

After winning the election, Ma was seen on television Saturday night rushing to Wang’s car as it was departing, apparently trying to say something. But Wang, who would have seen Ma, refused to wind down the window and the car drove off swiftly, raising eyebrows in the local media.

Undeterred by this snub, Ma has said he is still keen to talk to Wang in the next few days to clear the air and discuss future cooperation. However, it seems that Wang has already turned down the offer of vice-chair of the KMT, and his aides are making their views on Ma clear:

“Ma’s camp’s accusations of so-called corruption, bribery, inflated KMT membership numbers and that Wang was following the so-called ‘Lee Teng-hui line'” are just too much to take.”

The aide was referring to former President Lee Teng-hui, who became a radical Taiwan independence activist once he quit the party.

“If Ma wanted to cooperate with Wang after the election, he shouldn’t have made all the nasty comments beforehand, ruining the party’s image,” another Wang aide said.

“If Ma says Wang represents ‘black gold’, then why does he want to cooperate with him?”

Finally, there is the issue of cooperation with the KMT’s main ally, the PFP. PFP chairman James Soong promised not to get involved in the KMT election – only to appear on videotape at Wang’s final pre-election rally, and it seems he’s none too enthusiastic about working with Ma:

Still, Wang was the preferred candidate of the PFP’s, with Wang’s aides saying Soong likened the behavior of Ma’s campaign aides to China’s red guards during the Cultural Revolution.

In fact, just about the only words of comfort for Ma after his victory came from two of the most unlikely directions: President Chen Shui-bian and that other President Hu Jintao.

It’s looking like Ma’s new job is going to be hard work; he’s probably relieved to be back at his dayjob today monitoring how his city is handling typhoon Haitang.

So much for it being a close race. Ma Ying-jeou has become the next chairman of the Koumintang(KMT) by scoring a resounding victory in his race against Wang Jin-pyng – with over 70% of the vote. Landslide is actually much too weak a word. While he had a lead in the polls, noone was predicting such a one-sided result. It will take a while for the ramifications of this to become clear, but here are some initial thoughts:

• With such huge support, Ma has a great opportunity to reform the KMT. The KMT ‘old guard’ (headed by Lien Chan) were always going to resist change (I had posted before questioning how much freedom the new leader would really have), but this should give Ma the power to push through reforms despite their resistance.
• Even for the KMT it’s not who supports you that matters, it’s how many support you. Wang had the overwhelming support of senior KMT members (and a videotaped message from James Soong, the head of the PFP), but it meant very little in the final analysis. Democracy has truly arrived for the KMT.
• There must be big question marks over the future for Wang (and his allies) now. In 2008, the legislature will be halved in size, and you can be sure it’ll be Wang’s supporters who will be most nervous about losing their jobs.
• This will answer a lot of questions about how popular Ma is outside of Taipei (his powerbase). Of course, a poll of KMT members is different to a presidential election, but the fact that he even beat Wang on his home turf of Kaohsiung means Ma can claim to be the most popular KMT member in all regions of Taiwan.
• Why did noone predict this result? The polls in Taiwan are usually fairly accurate in predicting results – but everyone was surprised by this one.

It will be very interesting to see what the fallout is from this one, but from my perspective (that the KMT is in serious need of reform) this is a big and unexpected step forward for the KMT. I’ll post more when the dust settles a bit.

With the Koumintang election due tomorrow, the KMT are busy with last minute preperations for the vote – with all the ballot papers sent out to the relevant authorities. Although the Taiwanese have a pretty well organised voting process[*], the problem that observers are worried about in this election is the question over who is eligible to vote. Since the KMT central committee decided that people who hadn’t paid their membership fee recently were still allowed to vote, they opened up the possibility of all sorts of lapsed members appearing to vote. There have already been arguments over the membership lists in some counties, and noone quite knows what will happen if large numbers of voters with moth-eaten old KMT membership cards turn up to find their names aren’t on the list.

The other danger for the election is a bit more uncontrollable … the first typhoon of the year is heading in the direction of Taiwan, and could make itself felt on Saturday – which may make voting interesting.

The polls still seem to show Ma with a slender lead – but each day seems to see more senior KMT members coming out in support of Wang, which could swing things decisively:

Meanwhile, the KMT’s old guard — top officials in the time of the rule of former President Chiang Ching-kuo — came out in support of Legislative speaker Wang.

Wang met with more than 100 retired generals in the Legislative Yuan, supported by KMT lawmaker John Chiang, a foreign relations expert and Chiang Ching-kuo’s illegitimate child along with lawmakers Hung Hsiu-chu and Tseng Yung-chuan. Lee Huan, a former premier who is almost 90 years old, Chen Chien-chung, a former Justice Minister who is 93, Soong Shih-hsuan, a former provincial party director who is in his mid-80s and Yu Chung-chi, a former Taipei City secretary general all gave the thumbs up for Wang.

To shore up the support of these senior members, Wang promised that he would “strictly toe Chiang Ching-kuo’s line.” in regard to the continuous debate about independence/reunification. Perhaps he was thinking of this quote by the former president from 1982:

“To talk peace with the Chinese Communists is to invite death. This is an agonizing, blood-stained lesson that we and many other Asian countries have learned”

* The one positive to come out of last years post-election mayhem was a ringing endorsement of the voting system in Taiwan. I don’t know how many countries have had a complete recount of every vote, and such an inquisition into every detail of the process, but I doubt many would stand up to it as well as Taiwan’s system.

The seedy side of Taiwan: Murder, kidnapping and … online computer games

Police injured and captured yesterday heavily armed fugitive Chang Hsi-ming whom they had been tracking for more than a year after he exposed his whereabouts by sending messages on the Internet and playing online computer games. One of his followers was also picked up following a shootout in central Taiwan.

Chang, wanted for murder, multiple kidnappings, and illegal possession of weapons, was found via his Internet protocol address after police found out he often played games online.

After pinpointing the latest hideout of the elusive Chang at Shalu of Taichung County three days earlier, Commissioner Hou Yu-ih of the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) personally led the siege against Chang’s newly rented apartment in central Taiwan, with more than 130 police and two armored vehicles as he was known to be armed with assault rifles and hand grenades.

In the West, there is an ongoing debate about whether playing violent online games turns kids into future criminals. In Taiwan, the debate is how to catch the violent criminals playing online games.

The KMT will be choosing their next chairman on July 16th. It’s a notable event because it will be the first time that there has been a real contest (which all KMT members – 1 million of them – can vote on), and because the next KMT chairman is very likely to become their presidential candidate for 2008.
I’ve written before about the problems with this election (Who gets to vote?, Will Lien run?, and the KMT generation game), but not yet said much about the two candidates.

Ma Ying-jeou

Ma (here’s a brief biography) is best known as the mayor of Taipei (an important position: the last two presidents of Taiwan both held that position at some point) – a job which he has done pretty competently since 1998. He has kept a very high profile as mayor, and seems to be one of the few politicians in Taiwan who understands the importance of ‘public image’. As a result he is massively popular in Taipei, although there are question marks over his popularity in the rest of the island.

His other claim to fame was as Justice Minister from 1993 to 1996. His role was to clear up the ‘Black gold’ (corruption) that was endemic in the KMT then – a job he did with great success (so much so, the rumour goes, that he was sacked because his investigations were getting too close to senior politions).

Ma’s strengths are his image (in the North), his administration experience, his relative youth (he’s 55), and his strong anti-corruption position. However, many people have questioned whether he has enough experience or political nous for the job; although he’s got a large grass-roots following, there aren’t that many senior KMT politicians who favour him.

Wang Jin-pyng

Wang (biography) has been the speaker of the Legislature since 1999, having been a member of Taiwan’s main governmental body for close to 30 years now. In that time, he seems to have managed not only to avoid all the many fistfights & foodfights which the legislature is rightly famous for – but also to have built up a reputation as a politician which all sides respect. Anyone who can keep on good terms with Lee TengHui while at the same time remaining a loyal deputy of Lien Chan is clearly a pretty smooth operator.

The one major downside of all his experience in politics and the KMT is that he is very much a product of the KMT system. If the KMT is going to change and modernise to keep up with the changing realities of Taiwan, then it’s unlikely that it would be someone like Wang who would provide that change.

Support & policies

It looks like a close race, with the charismatic mainlander Ma possibly having a small lead in polls over the political savvy Taiwan-born Wang. Ma has support from a lot of the old mainlanders, as well as from many casual voters, while Wang is more popular in the south with the native Taiwanese, and crucially with a lot of the KMT senior members:

Polls for the July 16 primaries have given a slight edge to Ma, who is viewed as the more charismatic of the two candidates.

But Wang is the favorite of the party elite, and is believed to have the financial resources to hire vehicles and organize workers to move more people to the polls on election day — a key factor because relatively few polling places will be open, requiring many voters to travel to cast ballots.

As for policies – they’re both singing from the same hymn sheet (albeit in different keys). Reform the KMT, entice more young members to the party, sort out the problems with party assets, adhere it Lien Chan’s (reality defying) One-China principle, and prepare the party to lead the country in 3 years time. The only difference is in the emphasis they place: while Ma talks more about reforming the party, Wang talks more about how to win the next election.

A battle between ‘gentlemen’

When this race started, everyone was emphasising how this would be a race between two gentlemen, with no dirty tricks or bad behaviour spoiling the election. Since then, the ‘gentlemen’ phrase has been trotted out by the candidates and the KMT heirarchy so often that it’s become more of a plea rather than a statement, and I’m starting to get sick of it. As the election has got closer, the cracks have also started to appear: after some earlier differences over ‘black gold’ were papered over, yesterday Wang complained that Ma was obstructing him from staging a rally in Taipei, while today Ma is claiming that Wang has been buying votes. (Michael has been following the recent problems with the election here, and more recently here.)

Final thoughts

The KMT has serious problems, and needs change. While I think either candidate would do a decent job (and a much better job than the previous incumbent), Ma is much more likely to give the party the shake up it sorely needs. However, if you treat this as an election for the next KMT presidential candidate, then Wang (who appeals to moderate Taiwanese voters, and has no enemies) would probably be the better candidate.

Xinhua can at times provide amusement:

BEIJING, July 12 — A senior mainland official yesterday urged Taiwan people to fight “Taiwan independence” activities as hard as they fought the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression.

Which raises the question: “How hard did the Taiwanese fight in the ‘War of Resistance’?” Given that Taiwan was part of Japan at the time, I’m guessing that the answer is ‘not at all’ (or possibly, for those Taiwanese who got drafted into the Japanese army ‘fight for the other side’) , which implies that this official is advocating Taiwan independence.

Maybe he’s just talking to the KMT members on Taiwan – in which case I guess he’s advocating doing as little as possible and waiting for American intervention …

Interesting news today on possible technology collaboration between Taiwan and the PRC:

More than 40 executives from local firms are in Beijing to discuss standards for cellphones, audio-visual systems, portable storage devices and LCDs

Taiwanese and Chinese companies such as DBTEL Inc (大霸) and Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想) are seeking to cooperate on development of formats for mobile phones, flat panels and other digital devices to compete with European and US standards.

China has been struggling with its policy on standards (especially for wireless technology) for a while now – on the one hand, it has started getting involved in global standardisation processes for future generations, but on the other has been trying to develop its own standards so that it doesn’t get locked in to standards developed in the West. However, things haven’t gone so smoothly with its homegrown standards:

• In 2003, China announced that any wireless computer (WiFi) equipment sold in China would have to support its proprietary (and secret) encryption standard called WAPI. Any company wishing to sell into China would have to license a solution from one of a handful of Chinese companies who were allowed to develop the system. After a long argument, many companies (most notably Intel) said they would stop selling their products in China if this was enforced – which finally forced China to back down, and scrap it’s plans for WAPI.[*]
• Ever since the late 90s, China has been working on its own 3G mobile phone system (called TD-SCDMA), which is free of all the patents held by US and European companies. Although they had some success in getting some Western countries to invest in this, it has been taking a long time to develop this system – and recent tests have shown there are still a lot of problems to be ironed out. Luckily, takeup of Western 3G systems has also been slow, but nevertheless, China’s system is seen to be 2 or 3 years behind the competition.

In this light, it makes a lot of sense for China to partner with Taiwan on development of more ‘home grown’ standards. Taiwan has plenty of experience which could help China, and of course Taiwanese companies are as keen to exploit the China market as any.

*Note that one suspected reason for the WAPI standard was that the PRC had build in a ‘back door’ which would allow them to listen in on anything transmitted using WAPI – a wireless extension to the great firewall. Rebecca may be interested to note that Cisco was one of the companies who didn’t complain about this, and would have been happy to implement it in their products.

From the department of stupid ideas:

Speaking on the same day the International Olympic Committee tapped London as the city to host the 2012 Olympic Games, Premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) yesterday told the public Taiwan should campaign to stage the 2020 Olympic Games.

Although Taiwan has successfully hosted sporting events like the baseball World Cup in 2001, and has won the rights to host the 2009 World Games (these games involve such well-known sports as ‘artistic roller skating’, ‘dance sports’ and ‘tug-of-war’) in Kaohsiung, something tells me that bidding for the Olympics is a recipe for disaster.

Of course, this is more likely to be an effort by the government to get the KMT to oppose an Olympic bid (thus showing their true unpatriotic nature) as well as to get the PRC to shut out any Taipei bid (thus showing the unjust treatment of Taiwan by China). The idea of a bid will no doubt sink without a trace after a bit of a slanging match between the DPP-KMT and foaming at the mouth by the PRC.

For an insight into the depth of political analysis in the Chinese-language press about Taiwan, head on over to ESWN for an article about the ‘missing government in Taiwan’. The article he translates is basically an anti-Chen Shui Bian rant with little or no facts to back it up, and is, unfortunately, pretty indicative of the level of discourse here in Taiwan. Now go and read Michael Turton’s excellent rebuttal, to show how fact-free it really is.

A few points that sprang out at me in addition to Michael’s comments:

• The basic premise ‘The government of Taiwan is MIA’ is actually painfully true. Literally speaking it’s true (one of the 5 branches of government has been inactive for 5 months now), and pragmatically speaking it’s also pretty true (there has been such a deadlock between the KMT-controlled legislature and the DPP-controlled executive that a record low number of pieces of legislation have been passed). This deadlock, caused by an inability of the Greens and Blues to find any middle ground goes to the core of the political problem in Taiwan. However, because it’s a murky issue (with blame on both sides), it doesn’t fit in to the anti-DPP screed which ESWN reproduced.
• How can anyone start a paragraph with the sentence The “old ten great projects” included items such as the CKS airport, and not follow up with an analysis of the built-in nepotism of those projects (which were started by CKS’s son)? I doubt the writer noticed the irony. I don’t think anyone would dispute that those ten projects were very beneficial to Taiwan’s development – but you’d have to be incredibly naive to think they didn’t benefit those in power (and their friends) more. Of course, the level of public scrutiny of projects started while the country was under martial law compared to the new projects (started in a fully democratic society) is incomparable.

Finally, in ESWN’s disclaimer (“It wasn’t written by me, and I don’t really know anything about Taiwan anyway”), he makes the odd claim:

If they think that universal suffrage will solve all problems, then they are quite wrong; it had better be universal suffrage with some attention against the invasion of special interests beforehand or else it will be too late afterwards.

While I agree that universal suffrage isn’t a magic cure, I think he’s got this completely wrong. The one-party rule of the KMT was an invasion of special interests – and democracy (along with a free press which allows Nan Fang-shuo to write articles like this) is the only cure that I can think of. Public scrutiny and an ability to vote out the worst offenders is the best antidote to corruption – it takes time, and it’s imperfect, but it does work.

Politics was back to normal in Taiwan yesterday, with plenty of politicians trying to embarrass themselves. It’s hard to know which one is the most impressive:

• Legislator Li Ao (a man who can make other Taiwanese politicians look moderate) tries to flog a dead horse by claiming that President Chen Shui-bian was trying to assassinate his VP Annette Lu last year. It seems a mysterious man gave him a top secret CIA report which confirms this. How the CIA came across this information is unclear … partly because he refused to hand over the report to anyone apart from Annette Lu.
• Wang Yu-cheng – a Taipei City councillor – faked a video claiming that a mortuary was reselling funeral offerings to nearby restaurants. This little scandal has been going on for a few days, and it seems to have reached its conclusion with him being kicked out of his party, with the promise of litigation to follow. Was the fact that his friend owns a competing mortuary a factor? (more at ESWN, and INDIAC)
• An excellent bit of political grandstanding by ‘Aboriginal’ legislator May Chin – who is visiting the (in)famous Yasukuni Shrine in Japan to demand that the names of Taiwanese Aboriginals are removed. This is a reaction to the idiotic visit of the TSU Chairman Shu Chin-chiang to the Shrine to honour the Taiwanese war dead a couple of months ago (which, in turn, was a reaction to Lien Chan’s trip to China).
• Three new members were added to the cabinet today. Two of them failed to get elected to the legislature last December. If the cabinet is made up of people who aren’t competent enough to become legislators, then this country is in deep trouble.

Personal Note: I’m off on my holidays for a fortnight … so things will be quiet here for a while.