China Project

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Lai Ching-te continues to lead in the polls. A Taiwan News Poll of Polls released on December 20 showed Lai with 34.34% support, Hou with 30.01%, and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) candidate Ko Wen-je in third place with 20.83%. The Poll of Polls is a weighted average of all public election polls in Taiwan over the past 15 days. The previous polling release on December 15 release showed that both Lai and Hou briefly reached their highest levels of support since the Poll of Polls began on September 1, with 15-day averages of 36% and 31.2% support, respectively. Ko has dropped from 21.84% on December 10.

DPP presidential candidate Lai Ching-te made significant gains in the polls while support for KMT candidate Hou Yu-ih plateaued. A December 10 Taiwan News Poll of Polls showed that in a weighted average of polls from the past ten days, Lai had 38.06% support, Hou had 31.27%, and Taiwan People’s Party candidate Ko Wen-je had 18.48%. These numbers show a nearly 5 percentage point jump from 33.2% for Lai since the December 5 Poll of Polls, a 2% rise from 29.3% for Hou since then, and a 3.5% drop from 22.0% for Ko. This is the first time Lai has surpassed 35% support since the Poll of Polls’ first data point on September 1. It is also Ko’s worst performance in the Poll of Polls since October 16. The Poll of Polls normally aggregates polls from the previous 15 days.

KMT presidential candidate Hou Yu-ih gained significant support since November 24 and closed the gap with DPP presidential candidate Lai Ching-te, who leads in the polls. Taiwan’s presidential election settled into a three-way race last week after Lai, Hou, and TPP candidate Ko Wen-je registered their candidacies during the week of November 20. Hou and Ko registered and announced their respective running mates on November 24, the last day for registration, after the collapse of their eleventh-hour negotiations to form a joint ticket to challenge Lai. Polling data since the joint ticket collapse shows Hou Yu-ih’s support has risen considerably.

Kuomintang (KMT) candidate Hou Yu-ih and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) candidate Ko Wen-je registered as separate presidential candidates on November 24. The parties reconvened for eleventh hour talks on November 23 in a final effort to agree on who would lead a KMT-TPP joint presidential ticket before the November 24 candidate registration deadline. The failure of negotiations ended hopes for a joint ticket. Independent candidate Terry Gou, who mediated the negotiations, dropped out of the race on November 24. Hou and Ko both announced their running mates on the morning of their November 24 registration. Hou’s vice-presidential pick is media personality and former legislator Jaw Shaw-kong. Ko’s vice-presidential pick is TPP legislator Cynthia Wu.

The TPP-KMT deal to form a joint presidential ticket broke down after the parties failed to reach a consensus on who would head the ticket. Ko Wen-je and KMT presidential candidate Hou Yu-Ih agreed on November 15 to form a joint presidential ticket to challenge DPP candidate Lai Ching-te. They agreed to use public opinion polls conducted from November 7-17 to determine which of them would lead the presidential ticket and to announce the results on November 18. The parties agreed to a point system in which a candidate would receive one “point” for each poll in which a ticket led by that candidate had more support against Lai than a ticket led by the other candidate. The deal included a concession by Ko that he would accept as a “loss” any poll result in which the difference between him and Hou fell within the margin of error. Disagreements over the definition of this “margin of error” led to disagreement on the outcome on November 18, however. The KMT claims Hou won 5 of the 6 polls, while the TPP claims Ko and Hou tied 3-3.

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) military theorists frame hybrid warfare as how countries deploy all aspects of physical and non-physical state power, including civil society, to confront an adversary indirectly. They also view it as a means of confronting great powers within an interconnected and globalized world. Their framing presents hybrid warfare as a competition of holistic, comprehensive strength. The theorists use the concept to challenge the primacy of systems confrontation thought, which was the dominant CCP framework throughout the 2000s and early 2010s.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is expanding its suppression of dissents by targeting overseas Chinese expatriate critics. The party previously targeted the owner of the “Teacher Li is Not Your Teacher” X account in December. The owner is a PRC national living in Italy who published videos of dissent in the PRC amid the end of the Zero-Covid policy from November to December 2022. The party has since expanded its reach to also target dissidents in the United States, such as Jiajun Qiu, by a combination of internet and potential overseas in-person harassment. The Chinese Ministry of Public Security complements these threatening messages by running secret police stations in locations such as New York City to induce fear into diaspora communities and coerce dissidents into silence. These police stations serve as the enforcement mechanism to induce fear into individuals, such as Qiu. Their presence, regardless of whether undercover agents follow dissidents, such as Qiu, presents an omnipresent sense of fear and tension to these individuals to coerce them into silence.

The negotiations between the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and Kuomintang (KMT) about forming a joint presidential ticket have stalled. TPP presidential candidate Ko Wen-je and KMT chairman Eric Chu agreed on October 30 to inter-party cooperation for the January 13 legislative elections. The parties have not agreed to a joint ticket since their initial meeting on October 31, however. Disagreement about how to determine the ticket order remains the key hurdle. Each party favors the method that would most likely ensure it heads a joint ticket. The progress the parties make during future meetings will be the basis for future assessments, as ISW previously noted. The fast-approaching November 24 candidate registration deadline will impose a practical constraint on the feasibility of implementing any selection process.

The PRC is shaping the information environment to blame the United States for potential future geopolitical incidents in the South China Sea. The PRC state-controlled China Global Television Network (CGTN) aired an October 29 interview with Lieutenant General He Lei accusing the United States of arrogantly interfering in the Sino-Philippines territorial disputes in the South China Sea. This echoes PRC MFA spokeswoman Mao Ning’s condemnation of United States “interference” in the South China Sea amidst Sino-Philippines territorial disputes. Her comments occurred after the PRC Coast Guard rammed Philippine ships near the Second Thomas Shoal on October 22. This PRC aggression extends to a growing trend of People’s Liberation Army Air Force planes dangerously operating near United States aircraft in the East and South China Sea since 2021, according to images declassified by the United States Department of Defense. The China Military Power Report stated the United States has documented in excess of 180 such instances since 2021. The CCP inaccurately placing blame on the United States for interfering in the South China Sea indicates that the party’s false rhetoric aims to provide cover for coercive People’s Liberation Army military activity. This activity aims to degrade the American-led security architecture.

A recent poll revealed broad backing among Kuomintang (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) supporters for a joint KMT-TPP presidential ticket. 81 percent of KMT supporters and 67 percent of TPP supporters approve of a joint presidential ticket, according to data from the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation (TPOF). The polling data is consistent with ISW’s assessments that the two candidates will form a joint ticket, but such a ticket is unlikely to capture the entirety of each candidate’s support base.