Taiwan Insight
Date: 5 June 2020
By: Gunter Schubert.

Since its electoral defeat in the presidential and legislative elections in January, the KMT has entered a period of soul-searching. For many observers, Taiwan’s largest opposition party, which governed the country almost exclusively since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, is struggling for political survival. As well as having lost power, the KMT has been stripped of many of its assets in the name of ‘transitional justice.’ The pending investigations are an attempt by the DPP government to clarify whether those assets were illegally acquired during the authoritarian era and must, therefore, be transferred to the state. Although this impacts on the daily running of party affairs, it is the altered political environment in Taiwan which is costing the KMT most dearly.

As the current narrative among many observers goes, the KMT has lost touch with Taiwan’s younger generation and thus faces a bleak future as it is the young people who increasingly determine electoral outcomes. Internal strife and bickering between party factions, steered by the vested interests of an unholy alliance of KMT heavyweights and capitalists with a keen interest in the Chinese market, has further alienated the KMT politically. The KMT is widely seen as an ‘old man’s party’ with non-existent vertical mobility for young talent, undemocratic and corrupt party bodies, and an elitist and conservative mindset at the top – which matches its ossified Leninist party structure. There is no cohesion among party leaders to fight for a common goal, as they are too busy rallying support for the next intra-party nomination for whatever political post stands for election. Finally, and probably most damaging, the KMT is seen as unable to respond to the death of the ‘1992 consensus’. This was  killed by Xi Jinping’s January 2019 speech in which he declared that Taiwan cannot expect more than and must accept the ‘one country, two systems’ model.   [FULL  STORY]