VOA News
Date: July 15, 2019
By: Ralph Jennings

TAIPEI, TAIWAN – Taiwan’s presidential race kicked off Monday with China the top issue as a Beijing-friendly mayor won the chief opposition party’s primary to face an incumbent who wants Beijing to keep a distance.

The opposition Nationalists announced that Han Kuo-yu, now mayor of the Taiwanese port city Kaohsiung, had won the presidential primary Monday against four other candidates, including the founder of consumer electronics assembler Foxconn Technology. Han will go up against incumbent Tsai Ing-wen in the January 2020 general election.

China is expected to define the late-year campaign because the two contenders differ on how to handle it, reflecting divisions among Taiwanese people.

A policeman scuffles with a protester inside a mall in Sha Tin District in Hong Kong, July 14, 2019.

Divided public

Taiwan and China have been separately ruled since the Chinese civil war of the 1940s, but Beijing still claims sovereignty over the island. Opinion surveys as recent as January show most Taiwanese oppose rule by China, and protests in Hong Kong since June against the territory’s own rule by Beijing have solidified that sentiment.    [FULL  STORY]