Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu enters Taiwan’s presidential race

The mayor of Kaohsiung, Han Kuo-yu, has joined the race to become Taiwan’s next president, with observers saying that if he wins his party’s nomination to challenge for the top job the contest may be seen as a proxy for the tense dispute between Beijing and Washington.

Han, a former businessman who represents the Kuomintang (KMT), overturned a huge majority to win the Kaohsiung seat – previously held by President Tsai Ing-wen’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) – in November’s local elections.

His popularity was seen by many as the catalyst for the KMT winning 15 of the 22 city and county seats up for grabs in the poll. Such was the scale of the victory that Tsai promptly stepped down as chairwoman of the DPP.

Han, who is widely regarded as Beijing’s preferred candidate for the presidential election in January, announced his candidacy on Wednesday.

The 61-year-old said that when he was asked by the KMT selection committee if he felt he had the necessary drive and desire to become president, he replied: “Yes I do.”

He will now take his chances alongside four other KMT contenders, including Foxconn’s billionaire chairman Terry Gou Tai-ming and the former mayor of New Taipei Eric Chu Li-luan, in next month’s primaries.

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The winner of that contest will then run for the presidency against either Tsai or former premier William Lai Ching-te, who also resigned in the aftermath of the DPP’s local election defeat.

Fan Shih-ping, a political-science professor at National Taiwan Normal University, said that if the presidential contest came down to a race between Han and Tsai it could be seen as a metaphor for the trade and technology war between Beijing and Washington.

“Of all the KMT candidates, Han is the most favoured by Beijing due to his support for the ‘1992 consensus’ and his heavy reliance on China’s economic sweeteners,” he said.

“On the other hand, Tsai is favoured by Washington for a second four-year term, given her staunch support for US President Donald Trump’s Indo-Pacific policy, which sees Beijing as a threat not only militarily but also economically.”

Han won support from Kaohsiung’s small and medium-sized enterprises during his mayoral campaign by promising to help them boost exports to the mainland. Since taking office he has signed several deals to achieve just that.

Despite only just announcing his candidacy, most opinion polls make Han favourite to win the KMT vote – with Gou as his nearest challenger. In cross-party polls he heads the two DPP candidates by a much wider margin.

Local media reports said that Han, who had not held a government post before winning the Kaohsiung seat, originally had no intention of running for president but bowed to public and party pressure for him to do so.

On Saturday, an estimated 150,000 people braved heavy rain to attend a rally in front of the Presidential Office in Taipei calling for him to throw his hat into the ring. Political commentator Huang Han-wei said the huge show of support was evidence of the public’s belief that Han could not only win the KMT ticket but also the presidency.

He is expected to stage another rally in the eastern county of Hualien this weekend.

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The politician’s strong ties to Beijing were on show in February when he met Wang Zhimin and Fu Ziying, the directors of mainland China’s liaison offices in Hong Kong and Macau, respectively, and Wang Weizhong, the Communist Party chief of Shenzhen.

During the meetings Han repeated his support for the 1992 consensus – a verbal understanding reached 27 years ago between the Communist Party and the KMT that there is only “one China”, and which forms the political foundation for talks and exchanges between the two sides.

Beijing, which considers Taiwan a wayward province awaiting reunification, by force if necessary, suspended all such contact with Taipei when Tsai became president in 2016 and refused to acknowledge the consensus.

The KMT primaries will run for 10 days from July 5, with the public voting for their preferred candidates.

Han declined to say if he would stand down as mayor of Kaohsiung if he was selected to run for president, but told the city council he would be present for its next session after the summer break.