Taiwan January 2020 presidential elections: who are the contenders?
By Filip Noubel
On January 11, 2020, Taiwan will hold key presidential and legislative elections in which three candidates are competing for the post that holds strong political prerogatives: the current President Tsai Ing-wen, the Kuomintang candidate Han Kuo-yu and the minority party leader James Soong. All three represent strongly divergent views on social values, economic development, relations with China and the status of Taiwan.
Tsai Ing-wen: Taiwan’s first female president
Tsai Ing-wen [蔡英文] made history when she was elected in 2016 as the candidate of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), thus becoming Taiwan’s first female president, out of the previous six presidents elected since the modified 1947 constitution. She is also the second president running on a DPP ticket to hold the presidential position, after Chen Shui-bian DPP presidency from 2000 to 2008 .
Regarding foreign policy and relations with China, Tsai has repeatedly stated publicly she does not endorse the 1992 Consensus that states in terms open to interpretation that there is only ‘one China’. The Consensus has been used both by Beijing and the Kuomintang in Taiwan as a basis for the status-quo in bilateral relations, and is often referred to as an equivalent of the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ by China. Tsai rejects both notions, pointing out at the crisis that has affected Hong Kong in the past six months and that remains unsolved .
Tsai’s are usually younger generations, traditionally regions in the south of the island. The DPP is part of a broader political family named the Pan-Green Coalition [泛綠聯盟] that brings together the Taiwan Independence Party , the Taiwan Solidarity Union, and the New Power Party platform. The coalition mostly operates within the Legislative Yuan, Taiwan’s parliament.
Unlike most prominent politicians and other elections candidates, Tsai is not married and has no children, a rare feature for prominent public figures in Taiwan that is commonly used by opponents as an argument against her.
Tsai maintains a Twitter account at
Han Kuo-yu: the combative face of the party that ruled Taiwan the longest
Han Kuo-yu [ 韓國瑜] is the candidate of the Kuomintang party (KMT) that ruled unchallenged for 55 years, and maintains strong networks across many sectors of Taiwan’s society due to its historical role.
James Soong: the third candidate who could decide the final outcome of the elections
James Soong [ 宋楚瑜] is the chairman of the People First Party (PFP), which is a member of the Pan-Blue Coalition but disagrees with the Kuomintang on certain points.
Emboldened by his success, he decided to run as an independent candidate in the 2000 presidential elections , which got him expelled from the KMT. Soong lost closely to the DPP candidate, and then created his party. He ran again on a PFP ticket in the 2012 presidential elections , gaining less than 3 percent of the votes. He fared much better in the 2016 presidential elections , collecting almost 13 percent of the votes.
Soong is married and has two children.
Originally published at https://globalvoices.org on January 2, 2020.
