Why some are running scared of Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu
- Rising star of the Kuomintang could become president of Taiwan, which is why there are forces on the island and in Hong Kong shaking in their boots
Han Kuo-yu has either committed political suicide or is playing the long game. Since the Kaohsiung mayor and rising star of the opposition Kuomintang is one of the savviest politicians to have emerged in Taiwan in many years, I will assume it’s the latter. The guy knows what he is doing.
The flamboyant mayor has had high-profile meetings not only with Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor and her Macau counterpart, Fernando Chui Sai-on.
More importantly, he also met Wang Zhimin and Fu Ziying, the directors of Beijing’s liaison office, respectively, in Hong Kong and Macau. He will also meet the head of the mainland’s Taiwan Affairs Office, Liu Jieyi, in Xiamen.
That really upsets a lot of separatists in Taiwan and localists in Hong Kong. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen asked if Han was unaware of the dangers of “one country two systems” for the island as they had been demonstrated in Hong Kong while he met mainland officials.
Someone could have asked Tsai the opposite: whether she was aware of the benefits of such a political arrangement?
Hong Kong’s opposition lawmakers, Eddie Chu Hoi-dick, Au Nok-hin and Leung Yiu-chung, and activist group Demosisto called Han’s meeting with Wang “inappropriate”. Ousted lawmaker Nathan Law Kwun-chung said the meeting conveyed Beijing’s “blessing” for Han instead of being about trade promotion.
Let me wrap my head around their criticisms; it’s OK for opposition figures such as themselves to travel to Taiwan to fraternise with pro-independence circles, but it’s not OK for a Taiwanese mayor to meet mainland officials to promote cross-strait trade and closer ties?
Regardless of your politics, most people – besides our opposition – should approach such issues with common sense. Han ran on a pro-trade and pro-Beijing platform and won the mayoral race in Kaohsiung, a traditional stronghold of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party. Should anyone be surprised that he is now meeting mainland officials?
What Tsai and many Hong Kong opposition figures are really afraid of is that far from being delegitimised, rapprochement with the mainland remains a mainstream and potent political force that can still get someone elected, or is at least no barrier to someone trying to reach the top in Taiwan.
Han is doubling down and may well become a real contender in the island’s presidential race next year. That’s why his opponents, in Hong Kong and Taiwan, are running scared.
