In another important development for Cross-Taiwan Strait ties, defeated presidential candidate and hitherto Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu has been recalled by voters of the southern Taiwanese city. This is the first time that Taiwanese voters have recalled a mayor, and it clearly reflects growing Taiwanese distrust of China. This is evident from Han’s political rise and fall over the last one-and-a-half years. He rose from relative obscurity and won the Kaohsiung mayoral election in 2018, ending the national ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s two-decade hold over the city. But within months of taking office, reports started doing the rounds of Han actually launching a bid to secure his Kuomintang (KMT) party’s ticket for the 2020 Taiwan presidential polls. 

At the time, Han was seen as a relatively young, firebrand KMT leader. And a poll conducted by Taiwan’s Apple Daily in February last year actually put him well ahead of incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen for the presidential polls. But then things turned dramatically when pro-democracy protests broke out in Hong Kong over a proposed extradition bill that would have allowed fugitives to be transferred to mainland China. But Hongkongers saw this as undermining the city’s ‘One Country, Two Systems’ formula and giving Beijing a handle to target dissidents. 

President Tsai latched onto this and declared support for the Hong Kong protesters, whereas Han struggled to articulate a clear position on the protests and the Hong Kong extradition bill. After all, he had travelled to China and met the head of Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office before he officially declared his presidential bid. Similarly, he had also met embattled Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam. On the other hand, Han during his presidential campaign had pushed for better economic ties with China and supported a peace deal with Beijing to make “Taiwan safe and richer”. 

But the Hong Kong protests completely torpedoed Han’s campaign and gave a huge boost to Tsai. And with Chinese President Xi Jinping also offering Taiwan its own ‘One Country, Two Systems’ formula to facilitate reunification, the Taiwanese mood towards China totally soured and with it Han’s chances of becoming president plummeted.

In Kaohsiung, a section of the people were anyway unhappy that Han had launched a presidential bid just months into his mayoral stint, thereby abandoning the city. And after Han lost the presidential polls in January this year, he was seen as someone who had used Kaohsiung for his own selfish ambitions. Add to this his pro-China credential, which today after Covid-19 and Beijing’s blocking of Taiwan’s participation at WHO is like the kiss of death, and Han was certainly doomed. It isn’t suprising therefore that Han’s recall vote passed with 939,090 votes, more than what he had garnered in the 2018 mayoral election when he had won with 892,545 votes.

But apart from Han’s own ambitions, the real culprit behind Han’s downfall is the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It was a huge mistake for Xi to offer ‘One Country, Two Systems’ to Taiwan last year and strongly assert reunification. Status-quo is what most Taiwanese wanted then — now they seem to be veering towards ‘unique Taiwan, separate Taiwan’. Then under Xi, China has become too threatening, too rigid and too aggressive. Case in point are the aggressive military drills that China has been carrying out around Taiwan. As I have written before, all of this I believe is because Xi wants to reinforce the authority of the CCP and extend its shelf-life. The external aggressive posture is a cover for internal political restructuring. Essentially, Xi is trying to show that only a strong CCP leadership can ensure beneficial strategic gains for China. 

But no one is buying into this ‘strong China’ framework. There was a time when the CCP leadership appeared to have hit upon the right formula combining the party-state system and liberal, free market economics. This had a profound liberalising effect on Chinese society, and other countries believed that China could be an equal partner in the world’s development. But Xi believed that the CCP was moving away from its core values and was on the verge of decline. Instead of trying to adapt the party to changing global circumstances, he decided to take the CCP back to its roots. This strategy may ensure the CCP’s survivability for a few more decades, but it has also led to China’s image taking a beating in the international community with huge distrust growing towards Beijing. And that won’t be good for China’s growth and development in the long term. 

So Han’s downfall in Taiwan is another message that the current Chinese leadership’s approach isn’t working for the international community. China’s image is at its lowest point in decades. But will Beijing ignore this for short-term domestic political goals? Only time will tell. 

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Views expressed above are the author's own.

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