image source,President Office ,Taiwan
Lai Qingde’s main job is to heal the damage caused by internal strife among various factions in the DPP after last year’s general election.
The by-election for the chairman of Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party was held on Sunday (January 15). As the acting chairman and the only candidate, Lai Qingde was elected with a high vote, but the turnout rate was only 17.6%.
Lai Qingde said that night that this is the beginning of the DPP winning back the trust of the people. Every vote for the party chairman and every proposal put forward will be the strength for the party to revive; Live up to the trust.
The current president, Tsai Ing-wen, resigned as the party chairman because of a big defeat in local elections last year. After that, Lai Qingde announced his candidacy and became the only candidate.
The election of Lai Qingde also means that he has become the most popular candidate to represent the Democratic Progressive Party in the 2024 presidential election.
After Lai Qingde announced his candidacy, he frequently participated in “reporting to party members” symposiums held in various places. He was regarded as the first candidate for the party to turn the tide and continue the DPP’s regime after the DPP’s defeat in local elections.
According to external analysis, Lai Qingde, who claims to be a “pragmatic Taiwan independence advocate”, will be concerned about when he will run for the presidency and how he will find supporters of the DPP.
How can a “pragmatic Taiwan independence advocate” take over the presidency?
As the new chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party, public opinion believes that Lai Qingde will definitely represent the party in the 2024 presidential election. Therefore, his “unification and independence” stance and China policy have also begun to come under scrutiny.
According to reports, when Chinese rights defender Chen Guangcheng visited Taiwan in 2013, Lai Qingde was the only county and city chief who personally received him that year.
In 2014, Lai Qingde visited China for the first time. During a talk at Fudan University in Shanghai, he said that “cross-strait cooperation will replace confrontation, and exchanges will replace containment,” expressing goodwill.
But he also said that there is a “great consensus” in Taiwanese society on the idea of Taiwan independence. Even if the DPP’s platform for Taiwan independence can be removed, there is “no way to solve the Taiwanese people’s claim for independence,” which has aroused great concern on both sides of the strait.
On September 26, 2017, Lai Qingde, then President of the Executive Yuan, claimed to be a pragmatic “political worker advocating Taiwan’s independence” when answering public questions in the Legislative Yuan.
Because this is the first executive president of Taiwan to publicly advocate Taiwan independence in the Legislative Yuan, it shocked both sides of the strait and was severely criticized by Beijing. But he is also deeply supported by Taiwan independence activists.
At the beginning of last year, Vice President Lai Qingde and US Vice President Kamala Harris “coincidentally met” at the inauguration ceremony of the new President Castro in Honduras; after Shinzo Abe was assassinated last year, he went to Tokyo, Japan to attend a private event. sacrifice，It opened the mode for Taiwanese politicians to visit Japan on a private itinerary.
Professor Zhang Junhao from the Political Science Department of Tunghai University in Taiwan explained to BBC Chinese that Lai Qingde has a clear role as a “pragmatic Taiwan independence worker”. For many voters, these will be a big challenge on his way to the presidency.
Yao Liming, an associate professor at Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan, said in an interview with the media earlier that during the remaining one and a half years of her tenure, Tsai Ing-wen will face the problem of how to cooperate with Lai Qingde on “party and government” and selflessly implement good policies and party ideas. It’s a challenge, it’s a daunting task. When he visited Palau on January 3 this year, Lai Qingde was asked by the media whether his cross-strait route would continue Tsai Ing-wen’s route. His answer was “of course.” In addition, when talking about the self-proclaimed “pragmatic Taiwan independence worker” in the past, Lai Qingde responded that Taiwan independence means “Taiwan is not part of China”, which is Taiwan’s consensus.
On January 8, he criticized some people in Taiwan for spreading doubts about the United States, and responded: “If people with good intentions are allowed to succeed, Taiwan will be very dangerous.”
Professor Zhang Junhao said that one of Lai Qingde’s main tasks is to heal the damage caused by internal strife among various factions in the DPP after the election last year. “In other words, the party chairman needs to integrate factions within the DPP in order to move forward on the road to legislative nominations and presidential elections,” he said.
However, Lai Ching-teh used to be the mayor of Tainan (2010-2017) and the chief executive officer (2017-2019), and he was criticized for his tough style of dealing with affairs. Relations are tense. Given his political style, it remains to be seen how effectively he integrates factions within the party.
Yao Liming told the Taiwan media that the role of the new chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party should be to hold the party’s nominations for legislative members and presidential elections within the year, while reorganizing the air force (network strategy) and the army (local supporters), and then find the middle voters. He emphasized that for the 2024 presidential election, regardless of whether he is competing with potential candidates within the Democratic Progressive Party or other parties, polls over the past year have shown that Lai Qingde is among the best. Yao Liming believes that Lai Qingde should concentrate on preparing for the general election, and the work of the chairman can be handled by other people in the party.
image source,President Office, Taiwan
Lai Qingde was born in 1959 in a poor miner’s family in Wanli, Taipei.
“The Miner’s Son”
Lai Qingde was born in 1959 in a poor miner’s family in Wanli, Taipei. His father died in a mine disaster when he was two years old; his mother raised him and 5 other siblings alone.
Lai Qingde graduated from Taipei Jianguo Middle School and the Department of Rehabilitation of National Taiwan University. After that, he went south to study medicine at Tainan Chenggong University, and practiced medicine in southern Taiwan after graduation. In 1994, he began to enter the political arena as an auxiliary election for the Democratic Progressive Party. In 1996, he ran for election as a representative of the National Assembly in Tainan, Taiwan, and began to become a rising star of the DPP’s Mesozoic generation.
After that, Lai Qingde’s career in politics went smoothly. After 2008, the Democratic Progressive Party was defeated in the presidential election. Former President Chen Shui-bian was sentenced and detained for political donations. However, Lai Qingde is still widely supported in the DPP’s “birth zone” in Tainan. After being re-elected several times as a legislator, he was elected mayor of Tainan in 2010 with 60% of the vote.
Four years later, he was re-elected with 72.9% of the votes, setting a record in the election of the head of Taiwan’s local self-government history. Because of his clean and diligent image, he was called the “mayor of benevolent doctors” by the Taiwanese media and supporters, and became a dazzling star in Taiwan’s political arena. . After that, he took over as Taiwan’s executive president; in 2020, he took over as Taiwan’s vice president and other positions. Lai Qingde has almost never swallowed a defeat in his political career.
image source,BBC NEWS CHINESE
How to be down-to-earth and win back the young people is a major topic for the Democratic Progressive Party led by Lai Qingde.
“Stubborn in choosing the good” or “ungrounded”?
In 2016, another star of the DPP, Tsai Ing-wen, was elected president, and Lai Qingde was regarded as the first candidate for the DPP’s “prince prince”. However, in 2017, Tsai Ing-wen encountered turbulence in the early days of her administration, and Lai Qingde, who belongs to the “New Trend” faction of the Democratic Progressive Party, took the post of executive dean. Before and after taking office, the “annuity reform” introduced by the government triggered a strong backlash from veterans of the “military, public and educational” forces in Taiwan, and the legalization of same-sex marriage was resisted by conservatives inside and outside the party.
After Lai Ching-teh took over as Premier, the government’s labor policies also drew criticism from labor and labor activists. In particular, he mentioned that low-paid elderly care workers can “accumulate merit” for society, which caused an uproar in Taiwan’s public opinion. In 2018, Han Kuo-yu of the opposition Kuomintang party emerged suddenly, and the “Korean Wave” swept across Taiwan. The Democratic Progressive Party was defeated in the local elections and referendums at the end of the year. Tsai Ing-wen resigned as the party chairman, and Lai Qingde also resigned in January of the following year.
image source,BBC Chinese
DPP loses big in local elections in 2022
In 2019, Lai Qingde joined the Democratic Progressive Party’s presidential primary election to challenge Tsai Ing-wen, who is seeking re-election. Tsai Ing-wen, who was seriously injured in the local election, faced Lai Qingde’s severe criticism, and a rift between the two emerged. At the same time, Lai Qingde has won the support of many independence faction elders in the party and at home and abroad, and is called “the golden grandson of independence faction” by the media.
As a result, Tsai Ing-wen won the primary election because of her outstanding performance on diplomatic issues and the support of young people, and she will be re-elected as president in 2020 with Lai Qingde. Representing the Democratic Progressive Party, she beat her opponent Han Kuo-yu with a record-breaking 8.17 million votes under the China factor and the situation of unity.
Having been in politics for 30 years, Lai Ching-te, who was born as a doctor, appeared in the Taiwanese media with an image of integrity and diligence. His wife and children are rarely exposed in public, and his immediate family members have almost never participated in politics, living a low-key life.
His doctor’s personality has been described by supporters as being stubborn and outspoken, while critics think he is too strong and difficult to communicate. For example, when he served as the mayor of Tainan, he forced some people to relocate in order to underground the railway, and his methods were criticized.
However, the 2016 Tainan Earthquake caused residential buildings to collapse. His image of perseverance, which he stayed up for almost 24 hours a week and went to the disaster investigation every day, was called “Lai Shen” by the citizens.
However, he has also been repeatedly criticized for his political cleanliness.Commentscommentator saidLai Qingde “distinguishes between love and hate” and does not allow gray areas. This is reflected in the fact that he takes any accusations or media criticism very seriously.
For example, when he was the mayor of Tainan, he chose not to step into the city council for more than 200 days to accept questioning in order to protest against the corruption of the city council chairman and to openly provoke his administration, which shocked Taiwan’s political circles. Lai Qingde’s supporters praised him for not being associated with corruption. But his critics said that because of “political moral cleanliness”, he did not enter the parliament and avoided questioning by city councilors, which violated the rules of representative politics and democratic politics. At that time, the Taiwan Supervisory Council also impeached Lai Qingde.
After the city’s speaker was sentenced and dismissed, Lai Ching-te summed up his political gamble of not joining the council by saying that “evil cannot prevail against good” and shouted at the press conference that “reform black money starts from Tainan.” Now the chairman and deputy speaker of the Tainan City Council of the Democratic Progressive Party that he once supported are suspected of bribery. This has caused the outside world to closely scrutinize. After he becomes the party chairman, can he uphold the same principles and deal with it fairly?