*TL; DR version: Taiwan is going to vote on Saturday, and faces its own Trump vs. Hillary choice.
*
In less than 40 hours, Taiwan is going to the polls. And its choice will be between its own Hillary Clinton or its own Donald Trump.
Background: **Tsai Ing-Wen **is the incumbent president of Taiwan, its first woman president. Her party is the DPP, the “Green” party, a liberal-progressive party that can be loosely described as Taiwan’s version of the Democratic Party. Tsai has often been compared to Hillary Clinton: Highly experienced, competent and knowledgeable for the job, but too “stiff”, lacks charisma, and can’t fire up a crowd; the political equivalent of a golf clap - and also often the target of misogynistic attacks.
Enter Han Kuo-Yu, the mayor of Kaohsiung, Taiwan ’s third-largest city - often been compared to Donald Trump. Han’s party is the KMT, the “Blue” party, a conservative party that is like Taiwan’s version of the Republican Party.
Han has been running on a platform that can be described as “Make Taiwan Great Again,” constantly waxing nostalgic about how good the old days were and how to return Taiwan back to that bygone era again (never mind the fact that it was a brutal authoritarian regime, or that economics of today make a return to that era’s trade dynamics impossible.) In the meantime, he has been derided for stunts like climbing a tree on TV or appearing on a talk show and walking on cross-legged knees. Pundits and political scientists were baffled by his popularity and seeming immunity to fact-checking - just like politicians elsewhere like Trump, Bolsonaro, and Duterte.
His demagoguery gained rabid support from his “Han fans” for making wild promises like expanding Kaohsiung’s population from 2.7 million to 5 million (impossible,) bringing Disneyland to Taiwan, and having an F1 racing circuit in Taiwan. He is popular because of the perception that “he tells it like it is; he doesn’t talk like a politician.” And well, indeed he doesn’t – he refers to Filipino and other workers in Taiwan as “chickens ”and“ Marias”, says that Taiwan and China’s relationship is like that of “a bastard and his daddy,” etc. Among other things, he also got upset that people cleaned a beach of trash, thus preventing his campaign from doing beach-cleaning as a publicity stunt.
Han (often nicknamed “Korean Fish” in Taiwan) took the KMT by storm. The KMT has long prided itself on being a conservative, wealthy, staid party and the rise of this populist rabble-rousing maverick was deeply upsetting to many Blue leaders, just like Trump taking charge of the Republicans in 2016. But Han’s voters were so rabid, and so fed-up with “normal, traditional politicians” that Han couldn’t be stopped (for them, it was Han or no one), and the Korean Fish steamrolled his primary opponents en route to capturing the KMT nomination.
Due to Han and the KMT being significantly more pro-China than Tsai and the DPP (the KMT is in favor of Taiwan becoming part of China, the DPP wants independence from China,) Han’s campaign has been boosted by a flood of Chinese trolling, interference , dark money, cyber agents and fake news, just like Russia helping Trump in 2016. A Chinese defector was recently threatened with death if he didn’t create a video falsely claiming to have been paid off by the DPP. Han Kuo-Yu has made his intense opposition to Taiwan independence clear: “Taiwan independence is scarier than syphilis” (among other odd comments.) In particular, Han fans have taken up the debunked claim that Tsai Ing-Wen’s thesis (from the London School of Economics, where she got her doctorate) was faked. It has become a Taiwanese version of “Hillary’s emails.” This has risen in part due to Taiwan being the most vulnerable nation in the world to fake news, although there have been some efforts to combat it.
Tsai had become an unpopular president over the years, and Han was leading Tsai by a wide margin in the polls - around 15% - all the way up until the Hong Kong protests started last summer, at which point his support began to drop, because the Hong Kong protests served as a vivid warning to Taiwan what unification with China would look like, and suddenly Han’s pro-China stance looked a lot less appealing. The KMT didn’t help Han out by nominating some blatantly pro-China legislative candidates such as Chiu Yi, who has said before that “Taiwan independence supporters should be decapitated,” (although Chiu’s nomination was later withdrawn.)
The gaffes have continued. In a nationally televised presidential debate weeks ago, Han said, “Why don’t you ask at what age I lost my virginity?” He was also rated as 62% misinformation during the debate by fact-checkers. Other gaffes include claiming that Taiwan was not hit by American bombing during World War II (yes it was, thousands died). Terrifyingly, though, Han’s voters live in a completely fact-free world. Any criticism of Han, no matter how legit or factual, is dismissed as “fake news” or a “media attempt to smear him.” They are madly, madly obsessed with the guy – to the point that one fan shelled out $32,000 USD to buy one of his campaign jackets.
This is also a generational battle for Taiwan. The older generation is where the Korean Fish draws most of his votes – the KMT is an aging party and it’s long been predicted that demographics will eventually consign it to irrelevancy (sound familiar?) The DPP is the party of the young. In Taiwan, generally, the older you are the Bluer (conservative) you are and the younger you are the Greener (liberal) you are. Indeed, the KMT is so overwhelmingly unpopular among Taiwanese youth that a recent mock election featuring votes from over 11,000 Taiwanese students saw support for Han fail to crack even five percent. Tsai Ing-Wen, on the other hand, garnered over 85 percent of the youth vote in that survey. In another decade or two, enough elderly voters are going to pass away from natural causes that the KMT will be at a severe electoral disadvantage.
Problem is, the youth in Taiwan often don’t turn out to vote (sound familiar?) So even despite higher youth support for Tsai, the rabid intensity of older Han fans will probably mean there’ll be considerably higher elderly Blue turnout than young Green turnout.
So, who’ll it be, Trump or Hillary? We’ll find out in two days.