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Worldview Weekly #1: 99 Problems and 1 Year in Office
Anushka Saxena | Slightly modified and reposted from the original source of publication: The Hindu
On May 20, 2025, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te celebrated a year in office. And while Lai’s speech, marking the milestone at the Presidential Office, presented a vision of cooperation with rival stakeholders, the second year of his presidency is off to a rocky start. If the recall campaign facing legislators of the two main parties – DPP and KMT – comes to fruition, it may be both a display of democratic vibrance, and indicative of volatility in the political corridors of Taipei.
Yielding the Yuan
Perhaps Lai’s biggest policymaking hurdle since the beginning of his tenure has been that his party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), failed to achieve a majority in the legislative yuan. Of the 113 parliamentary seats, 52 were won by the DPP’s main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), and 51 by the DPP. 8 seats were won by a third party closely aligned with major ideals of the KMT – the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The remaining two seats went to independent candidates who, again, are believed to be ideologically aligned with the KMT. Subsequently, the KMT has blocked vital steps to secure Taiwan’s internal democratic and legal processes, as well as its defence preparedness.
For example, in December 2024, the KMT pushed amendments to the ‘Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures’. The Act was amended for the first time in 25 years, and its new text restricted the central government’s budgetary decision-making powers, especially in the defence sector. Now, the central government is liable to disburse more funds to local governments, bringing the ratio of the central-to-local tax revenue share from 75:25 to 60:40, the pre-1999 amendment levels. Even the budget cut numbers, which are usually expected to be ~30 billion NTD, now stand at an unprecedented high of ~200 billion NTD.
The list of KMT’s controversial manoeuvers in Lai’s tenure goes back a year. In May 2024, one of the bills put forth jointly by the KMT and the TPP made the case that it should be compulsory for the president-elect to address the yuan post-inauguration, and conduct an on-the-spot question-and-answer session with legislators. In the past, this had been optional for the president. Historically, no sitting Taiwanese president has been subject to it. Despite this, KMT and TPP lawmakers proposed that it be made mandatory for Lai. The bill led to scuffles in the yuan.
DPP lawmakers also alleged that the KMT introduced amendments to laws on the legislature’s powers, without going through mandatory processes. These include first hashing out bills at a procedural committee meeting, and then forwarding them for a first and second reading to the legislative floor, before the eventual vote. KMT lawmakers opposed this stance. Then-KMT caucus secretary-general Hung Mong-kai argued that the amendment bills have already gone through the procedural committee, cross-caucus negotiations (first reading across political parties), and even public hearings. Eventually, the push for the bills led to mass student protests, under the umbrella of the ‘Bluebird Movement’ in Taiwan.
On the Brink of Dismantling?
Today, the ideological and political rift is evident in something more serious – a series of recall campaigns targeting as many as 37 KMT legislators and 15 DPP ones. The initiators of the petitions for the KMT recall campaigns seem to all be citizen groups, including from constituencies through which KMT legislators won a seat in the yuan. Some of these groups, such as ‘Daan Qiangqiang Gun’ and ‘Keelung Jun Pei’, have pointed out that KMT legislators such as Lin Pei-Hsiang emerged victorious due to nepotism, and condemned his remarks surrounding recall groups being a “gathering of the marginalised sections of society.” Further, another Kinmen-based lawmaker, Chen Yu-Jen, though quoting another article, referred to filmmakers and television artists in Taiwan as “beggars,” incentivising them to join the protests.
Today, many KMT lawmakers are in stage 2 of the recall process, where 10% of the electorate in a constituency signs a petition to initiate a recall vote. In a face-saving move, KMT lawmakers, too, initiated a recall campaign against DPP parliamentarians, and have shot themselves in the foot by forging signatures on behalf of voters who were declared dead sometime in the past year. This controversy did not sit well with even those who wished the KMT to continue to remain in power. Now, sometime in June 2025, a huge batch of lawmakers (of which a greater majority at risk belong to the KMT) may have to vacate their yuan seats. It all depends on the validity of the signatures submitted to the Central Election Commission in the second stage petition period (ending on May 23 for the KMT and were scheduled between May 31 and June 2 for the DPP). Names of the first set of recalled legislators may even be available as early as late June-early July, when the third and final stage, the recall vote, comes to fruition.
Legacy Rift
Under Lai, the rift between the KMT and the DPP is especially apparent, because the KMT previously never occupied a majority in the yuan when a member of the DPP party (Tsai Ing-Wen or Chen Shui-Bian) was President. The transformation of the legislative deadlock into a mass recall campaign means that democracy is alive through the exercise of citizens’ rights to referendum and recall. But it also means that even the KMT lawmakers winning a majority in the 2024 elections are losing hold of their electorate, and need to get their act together.
Historically, KMT has been a party that promotes dialogue over deterrence with China, while the DPP is relatively more vocal against reunification and the ‘1992 consensus’. With changing sentiments among the youth, the KMT’s narrative and pitch were already unappealing, even though they won yuan seats due to dissatisfaction with the DPP’s economic and diplomatic display in Tsai’s two tenures before Lai. As the legacy ideological rift materialises into a deadlock, Lai has two options. He can either continue to emphasise deliberations with the KMT to avoid mass recall – including by inviting opposition parties to the table for a meeting on national security. This is something he suggested in his milestone speech. His other option is to put the weight of the DPP behind KMT recall petitioners, and prepare a policy agenda so strong that by-elections yield majority seats for the DPP. Either way, this would be a historic moment in Taiwanese politics.
Worldview Weekly #2: Will Taiwan Sneeze at the Diplomatic Squeeze?
Anushka Saxena | Reposted from the original source of publication: MoneyControl
As Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te marks a year in office, his foreign policy agenda faces vital challenges. Two main events from the past few weeks – the rejection of the island’s allyship bid at the World Health Assembly (WHA), and the downgrading of the status of Taiwan’s representative office in Pretoria, South Africa – shed light on a shrinking diplomatic space for Taiwan. They also provide the global community with an opportunity to consider options for keeping the island’s international relevance intact.
Another Year, Another Failed WHA Bid
The 78th World Health Assembly opened in Geneva on May 19, 2025, and continued deliberations on important global health matters till May 27. However, despite Taiwan’s repeated applications to the World Health Organisation for securing an observer status at the WHA, the island has been denied involvement. It is obvious that China’s political and diplomatic wrangling is gaining ground, even as Taiwan’s mighty unofficial and smaller unofficial partners, including the US, the EU, Belize, and Saint Lucia, all supported its bid. Although, the US’s support was not evident in Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s speech at the Assembly on May 22, primarily because it was focused on reasons why the US will be vacating its WHO seat.
Taiwan was a WHA observer between 2009 and 2016. However, since 2016, its presidents have been elected from the pan-green Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Ideologically, the DPP is more sovereignty-minded than its primary opposition, the Kuomintang (KMT), which desires dialogue over deterrence with China. From 2009-16, Taiwan’s President was KMT leader Ma Ying-Jeou, who made prominent economic and political overtures to China, and to date, continues to publicly instruct KMT cadres to seek cooperation with the mainland. In July 2024, for example, in an interview with Malaysian newspaper Sin Chew Daily, Ma said that the KMT stands firm on its pro-unification stance, and believes President Lai Ching-te of the DPP to be “naive.”
Taiwan’s Centers for Disease Control is at the forefront of epidemic prevention, and demonstrated capability and prowess in testing, tracking, and isolating the masses during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Even in 2020, when the world was fighting the Pandemic, the WHA created hurdles for Taiwan to gain data and cooperate in global mitigation efforts. Data published by the Taiwanese foreign ministry indicated that from 2009 to 2019, Taiwan applied to attend 187 WHO technical meetings, but was invited to only 57 – a rejection rate of 70%. Further, it indicated that while Taiwan shared pandemic data and best practices with the WHO under the International Health Regulations (IHR), the WHA did not share any lessons learned from the island to other parts of the world, rejecting the channel’s amplification value.
Where the Opportunity Lies
The WHO has cited its resolution WHA25.1, titled ‘Representation of China in the World Health Organization’, as the reason why it cannot invite Taiwan to participate in the WHA. As a specialised agency of the United Nations, the resolution text has drawn heavily from the contents of UN General Assembly Res. 2758 of 1971, titled ‘Restoration of the lawful rights of the People's Republic of China in the United Nations’. Just like 2758, WHA25.1 also exploits the flawed idea that the granting of the UN’s China seat to the People’s Republic is co-terminous with Taiwan losing international representation. This interpretation continues to act as an obstacle to Taiwan’s WHA bid, even as both resolutions only expelled the Chiang Kai-Shek government’s representatives from the UN and the WHO, without commenting on the island’s representation under future governments.
In this regard, the international community must critique the legal loophole that is evident in the language of WHA25.1, and make bids to the WHO to amend relevant provisions allowing Taiwan an observer status in the organisation. Due to its multilateral nature, the WHO cannot be allowed to base this decision on political factors, given that legal and technical precedent indicates that Taiwan can indeed be an observer to the WHA (as it was between 2009-16).
Fighting Deep Pockets with Resolve
Lai Ching-te’s second diplomatic challenge is his shrinking diplomatic base due to official partners either being poached by China, or unofficial partners downgrading the status of the relationship further. His predecessor, Tsai Ing-Wen, also leading the DPP, lost 10 of Taiwan’s official allies in her 8-year-long tenure, as they switched recognition to China.
Now, an important partner – South Africa – has threatened to forcefully relocate Taiwan’s liaison office from the administrative capital city of Pretoria to Johannesburg. Not only that, it has also downgraded its status to a ‘Commercial Office’, acting as an ‘international organisation’ operating out of the country. The office has a huge foreign policy task, which is to not only revitalise relations with South Africa, but also conduct diplomacy with as many as 17 other African nations, including Kenya, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.
Even though Taipei has lodged protests with South Africa, and is determined to undertake negotiations on the name-changing and relocation, it seems unlikely that the decision would be reversed. This is especially considering that if one looks at the sentiment expressed by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the aftermath of the FOCAC Summit in September 2024, it is clear that the South African government is interested in leveraging Beijing's economic might to attract investment and firm operations. He even uses Xi Jinping’s language to applaud the elevation of the two countries’ relationship to an “All-Round Strategic Cooperative Partnership in a New Era.” Ramaphosa’s government, too, has used UNGA Res. 2758 as a shield for its decision, despite the fact that the Resolution does not determine Taiwan’s status or ability to enter into international relations.
Conclusion
For now, Taiwan’s relocation is stalled due to “budgetary concerns.” Moving forward, Lai’s administration has an important endeavour to undertake – challenging Chinese investments in smaller, Global South countries, and building robust unofficial relationships through multiple representative offices. For this, Taipei may need to expand the strength of its diplomatic personnel, and enhance foreign policy operations to build representative offices in cities across a particular country. Even if one office is downgraded or shut down due to Chinese pressure, others can continue operating.
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Eye on China is a weekly newsletter curated by the Indo-Pacific Studies Programme at The Takshashila Institution, a public policy think-tank based out of Bengaluru, India.
