Kuomintang

Foxconn founder and tech billionaire Terry Gou kicked off a third-party bid for the Taiwanese presidency in August, but he vanished from the campaign trail this week, three months before the election.

Taiwanese Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng told the legislature on Tuesday that the military will no longer purchase Tesla automobiles after CEO Elon Musk’s comments over the weekend supporting a Chinese takeover of the country.

The Chinese government on Wednesday published a rare “white paper” adjusting its stance on Taiwan by rescinding a long-standing promise that People’s Liberation Army (PLA) forces would not be sent to garrison the island if Beijing takes control, by either political or military means.

Taiwan’s Chinese Nationalist Party, Kuomintang (KMT), protested the coronavirus policy of the island’s ruling party at a legislative session on Tuesday, with several KMT members shoving opposing lawmakers to the floor of the parliamentary building and drenching others with water.

American and Taiwanese officials celebrated President Tsai Ing-wen’s reelection on Saturday, in what was seen as a rebuke to China.

In one of the odder twists of the Taiwanese presidential election, representatives of the pro-China Kuomintang party (KMT) accused incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen of “sucking up to the Chinese Communist Party” while insisting it is unfair to describe the KMT as pro-China. 

Prosecutors announced on Thursday that police have detained ten people during the investigation of a visa scam that brought thousands of Chinese into Taiwan, some of whom may have been Chinese espionage assets.

Pro-democracy groups in Taipei organized a solidarity protest Tuesday in front of the Hong Kong representative office in Taiwan’s capital against a proposed extradition bill that would grant China access to dissidents in the autonomous regime.

Taiwan held the equivalent of a midterm election on Saturday. The results were brutally disappointing for President Tsai Ing-wen and her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) – so disappointing that Tsai almost immediately resigned as head of the party, although she remains president of Taiwan.

Chinese President Xi Jinping met on Friday with a delegation of Taiwanese that included Lien Chan, the former chairman of the Kuomintang party (KMT), which is currently the opposition but ran the country until the year 2000. Supporters of the governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) complain that the trip to China undermines President Tsai Ing-wen, whose election two years ago enraged mainland China and prompted it to begin an aggressive campaign of diplomatic and economic isolation against Taiwan.

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