Taiwan’s battered KMT ‘needs higher profile in United States’

Fresh from a landslide electoral defeat, Taiwan’s main opposition party is considering opening an office in the US to keep in closer contact with Washington.

Better ties with the American administration could help the Kuomintang (KMT) counter some of the electoral sway that the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) gained from its support in Washington, observers said.

The KMT is looking to rebuild after heavy losses in legislative and presidential elections on the self-ruled island earlier this month.

One of the main issues in the campaign was relations with Beijing, with voters wary of the KMT’s mainland China-friendly policies.

Washington had signalled strong support for the administration of President Tsai Ing-wen, from the independence-leaning DPP, including permitting high-level official and military exchanges and the signing of billions of US dollars worth of arms sales to the island.

Charles I-hsin Chen, executive director of the Institute for Taiwan-America Studies (ITAS), a pro-KMT think tank based in Washington, said the KMT needed to revive its presence in the United States to better convey its message.

“There is a strong need for the KMT to pick up the US work again in order to maintain better and closer contacts with Washington,” Chen said.

Before its first defeat by the DPP in 2000, the KMT maintained relations with the US through the island’s de facto embassy.

The party opened its own office in Washington in 2004 but closed it four years later when it was swept back into power and reverted to using the de facto embassy to manage ties.

Chen, who won one of the KMT’s 38 seats in the legislature, said the initial plan was to use the institute as a foundation for the American outreach efforts, changing the think tank’s name to ITAS KMT.

“Under the plan, the name change will be the first step, and helping the KMT re-establish the party office will be the second step,” he said. “But for the second step, it would have to wait for the new chairman to decide [what to do].”

Chen said he would help arrange for more senior KMT officials to visit Washington for discussions with personnel there and the institute would continue to serve as a channel for contacts and communications with the US in the future.

Alexander Huang Chieh-cheng, a strategic and US relations professor at Tamkang University in Taipei, has said a representative office would allow the US to better understand the policies of a political party.

The DPP has long maintained its own office in Washington – both in and out of power – and has had the backing of a number of US-based groups supporting Taiwanese independence.