Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je heads to Shanghai to test waters for presidential bid

Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je is heading for Shanghai on Wednesday in a three-day visit which will be closely watched by political and social observers on the self-ruled island.

Ko, widely regarded as a wild card in Taiwan’s 2020 presidential elections – although he has not yet declared whether he will run – is one of the few local government heads permitted to visit the mainland by both Taipei and Beijing.

Observers said the visit – for the opening of the annual Taipei-Shanghai City Forum – was aimed at testing public reaction to his dealings with the mainland and how they might affect his chances as a presidential candidate.

Beijing considers Taiwan a wayward province that must return to the mainland fold, by force if necessary. Official exchanges were suspended when Taiwan’s current president Tsai Ing-wen, of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party, was elected in 2016 and refused to accept the one-China principle.

Cross-strait relations have become increasingly strained, with Beijing staging a series of war games to intimidate the island, as well as poaching three of its diplomatic allies. Taipei has also been leaning further towards the US, seeking support to counter the growing pressure from the mainland.

Ko, who has led delegations to Shanghai twice before for the annual event – in 2015 and 2017 – was tight-lipped in a brief news conference over whether he would meet Liu Jieyi, director of the mainland’s Taiwan Affairs Office, who is expected to be in nearby Hangzhou on Thursday.

“Honestly speaking, a meeting with him will not increase my credit,” Ko said, referring to anti-mainland sentiment in Taiwan which has deepened since January when Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed unification talks with Taiwan under the “one country, two systems” model applied in Hong Kong and Macau.

Ko was reported to have won Beijing’s approval for the visit after saying in a June interview with Hong Kong-based online media outlet China Review that cross-strait relations were neither international nor foreign relations, as they were handled by Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, rather than its Foreign Ministry.

The Mainland Affairs Council gave Ko’s visit the go-ahead as a city-to-city engagement, on condition he did not touch on any political agreements.

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Ko acknowledged that recent protests in Hong Kong over a now-suspended extradition bill had further added to resentment on the island, especially among Taiwanese youth, over one country, two systems.

But he also said the visit to Shanghai was necessary to give him a better understanding and knowledge of the situation, which was preferable to the current lack of direct contact between the Tsai government and Beijing.

Taiwan news reports said Ko had originally hoped to use his visit to the mainland to demonstrate his ability to handle cross-strait relations compared with other presidential hopefuls. Many pollsters have assessed him as a potential candidate in Taiwan’s next presidential race, especially because of his support among young people.

Various opinion polls have showed a loss of at least 10 per cent in Ko’s support among young voters who oppose his mainland-friendly approach.

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Meanwhile, Tsai, whose popularity plummeted to a low of 18 per cent after her party suffered its worst electoral setback in local government elections late last year, has regained her political fortunes by capitalising on anti-mainland sentiment. Voters have been impressed with her harsh criticism of Beijing.

Chang Yu-shao, a researcher of Cross-Strait Policy Association, said Ko was trying to find a balanced approach which every side could accept, but “the biggest challenge for him is the growing resentment against Beijing, including Xi’s call, the extradition bill issue and the growing stand-off between the US and China”.

Ko is expected to arrive on the mainland in the morning before visiting Yangshan Deep Water Port in Hangzhou Bay, south of Shanghai, and the city’s Pudong New Area. He is also slated to attend a cross-strait gaming competition and a dinner hosted by the Shanghai City Government.

“The mayor will attend the opening ceremony of the forum on Thursday, deliver a speech and hold a press conference later,” the city government’s spokesman Liu Yi-ting said, adding the forum would focus on economic cooperation, youth exchanges and city administration issues.

After the morning session, Ko will visit the Jinshan Cross Strait Youth Entrepreneurship Base, a start-up incubator on the outskirts of Shanghai, to talk with young Taiwanese entrepreneurs. He is expected to visit other business and tech start-up centres and hold a reception for his Shanghai hosts.

He is set to return to Taipei on Friday, after visiting Kunshan and other areas, according to Liu.