Taiwan opposition KMT’s presidential candidate Hou Yu-ih slated for US visit in September

High interest in New Taipei mayor’s views on island’s defence and security expected among American officials and experts he meets over eight-day trip
Visit follows US stopovers by poll-topping DPP candidate William Lai Ching-te that upset Beijing and triggered military drills around Taiwan

Taiwan

Amber Wangin Washington

Published: 7:27am, 25 Aug 2023

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The presidential candidate for Taiwan’s main opposition party will visit Washington next month and meet members of Congress, think tank experts and the head of the de facto US embassy in Taipei, his campaign office said on Thursday.

The eight-day trip by Hou Yu-ih, candidate for the Kuomintang, begins on September 14 and takes him to New York and San Francisco in addition to the US capital in advance of the island’s politically sensitive election in January.

Hou’s visit aimed to lay the groundwork for “deeper relations” and promote ongoing “substantive exchanges” between Taiwan and the US, his campaign office said, according to Taiwanese news service CNA.

The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the visit. But in the past it has condemned trips by Taiwanese officials and semi-official representatives as dangerous separatism.

It is customary for Taiwanese candidates to meet US officials and members of Congress before a presidential election. Such outreach is meant to help Americans understand their policies and can burnish candidates’ overseas credentials with voters back home.

Earlier this month, Taiwanese Vice-President William Lai Ching-te, the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s candidate, made two US stopovers to and from Paraguay.

After the visit, Beijing slammed Lai as a “troublemaker”, accused Washington of using the island to contain China and launched military drills around Taiwan in a ‘severe warning to separatist forces.

A poll released this week by the DPP-leaning Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation showed Lai held a 43.4 per cent favourable rating, compared with 13.6 per cent for Hou and 26.6 per cent for Ko Wen-je, who heads the smaller Taiwan People’s Party. Other polls have shown smaller gaps between the candidates, with Lai continuing to lead.

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Industrialist Terry Gou, who is himself reportedly considering a presidential bid, recently suggested that the two opposition candidates Hou and Ko might need to join forces if they wanted to defeat the DPP.

Ko visited the US in April, before announcing his candidacy, and said in July he was considering a second visit as a presidential candidate before the election.

Beijing favours the mainland-leaning KMT over independence-minded DPP. Hou, the mayor of New Taipei, was officially nominated by the KMT in July after spending some three decades in the police force, rising from a patrolman to become head of the National Police Agency in 2006.

Hou’s campaign did not immediately furnish the names of those he planned to meet in the US, other than Laura Rosenberger, chairwoman of the American Institute in Taiwan, a non-governmental organisation that effectively functions as the US embassy in Taipei. Nor did it state whether he would meet US government officials, saying the details of the visit were still being worked out.

During a 2015 visit to the US, leading KMT candidate Eric Chu and then DPP candidate and now president Tsai Ing-wen met Antony Blinken, then deputy secretary of state, ahead of Taiwan’s 2016 election.

“US officials and experts will be keen to hear Hou Yu-ih’s approach to relations with the US and China if he is elected president, as well as his plan for strengthening Taiwan’s defence and security,” said Bonnie Glaser of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a public policy think tank.

Hou, who is generally regarded as less well-known in the US than Lai, is expected to assert his commitment to Taiwan’s democracy and its values, his campaign office said.

The election will be closely watched as tensions hover at record-high levels in the Taiwan Strait. Beijing last August launched military exercises around the island that were unprecedented in scale in response to then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit.

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Beijing sees the island as a breakaway province to be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary. Washington does not have official diplomatic relations with the island and opposes any unilateral changes to the status quo by either side.

But Washington’s policy is to support Taiwan’s military defence capability as well as its expanded presence in global health, crime prevention and aviation – objectives Beijing opposes.

Lai’s recent US stopovers in New York and San Francisco were intentionally low-key, involving no publicly disclosed meetings with senior US officials or members of Congress, analysts said, as he sought to counter his reputation for being provocative.

It remained unclear how much support Hou would find in Washington for his cross-strait policy espousing closer ties with Beijing at a time when US-China relations have plumbed new lows. Lai told Bloomberg earlier this month that there was no need for him to declare Taiwan independent.

In July, Hou said he endorsed the 1992 consensus, a tacit agreement that there is only “one China”, but the two sides may disagree on what that refers to.