This is interesting. Anyone here with internal knowledge?…
I would read that as being that the Taiwanese might view union as inevitable and don’t want war, maybe.
The appeasers won.
I wonder if China bought another election.
None of this is surprising. People who have a good understanding of Taiwanese local politics have predicted this kind of results (as well as most local news station). Seeing the discussion under numerous Taiwan-China posts though, I can understand why people would get the wrong impression. However, I wish we can share more nuanced perspectives on what ordinary Taiwanese think and want rather than the same fear mongering articles written by people who have never step foot in Taiwan.
This election is a local election. People vote for local, administrative issues they care about like childcare policies and elder care policies. I don’t think the results can indicate one way or another how people feel about China’s threats. This article (https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4726888) outlines pretty clearly why national elections and local elections, while linked, tell different stories about Taiwanese perspectives.
These were “local” elections. The factors at play here were Covid policies, local crime, and governmental issues. China rarely factors into these elections. The new party head of KMT publicly stated the national policies of protecting Taiwan’s democracy and strength would not change.
Yeah he’s running for the hills he knows China is about to invade Taiwan! He knows the US doesn’t hold a candle to the powerful China military. He is no fool.
Local elections. Fairly meaningless.
Party chair always resigns after a loss.
Most of these races had nothing to do with China.It was on local issues. For example,the mayor of Taipei. Most of the people were pissed about a renovation of the baseball stadium. For the amount of money they spent on it,they could have built a new one. Instead they redid the old one and did an awful job. The seats have no leg room and the seats behind homeplate have a wall in front of it that unless you are over 6 feet tall, you cant see over it. The field is astroturf and has so many bumps on it, it is like playing on concrete.The star player tripped at the beginning of the season and was out because of injury for the rest of the year. The local party government would not admit they did anything wrong and still claim they did a good job. In another race, their candidate was accused of plagerism on his masters thesis. He denied it, the party backed him, and when people looked into it, the thesis he copied from had the exact spelling errors.