A crowded pro-China field is good news for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party
, it was dramatic. On August 28th Terry Gou, founder of Foxconn, one of the world’s biggest electronics manufacturers that supplies Apple and others, told a packed auditorium he was joining the race to be Taiwan’s next president. Wearing his trademark navy-blue cap emblazoned with the Taiwanese flag, and giving military-style salutes, the 72-year-old billionaire said he would contest the election due next January as an independent.
His entry will in fact probably make it harder for a China-friendly candidate to win. There are already two in the race to lead Taiwan’s 24m-strong democracy: the, the mayor of New Taipei City and a former cop who calls for talks with Beijing; and Ko Wen-je, the former mayor of Taipei, who is running for the Taiwan People’s Party.
Even before Mr Gou’s announcement, that looked fairly likely. According to a recent poll published in, an online magazine, Mr Lai had the support of 39% of voters. Mr Ko had 18% and Mr Hou 16%. As a hypothetical candidate, Mr Gou was drawing 12%. He naturally points to his business acumen as a reason why that share might increase. A son of Chinese immigrants who came to Taiwan with thein 1949, Mr Gou has a powerful rags-to-riches story. He founded a business making plastic knobs for television sets in the 1970s using money borrowed from his mother-in-law.
He will need to collect 290,000 signatures by early November in order to get his name on the presidential ballot. Liao Da-chi of National Sun Yat-sen University in Kaohsiung City is sceptical that this is even his intention: “I don’t think that he wants to run to the end of the election.” She suspects that his main purpose is to shock the opposition candidates into forming an alliance against thewhich Mr Gou castigates as incompetent and reckless about triggering a war.
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