A leader of Taiwan’s main opposition party wrapped up a whistle-stop mainland China tour on Friday, spreading the Kuomintang’s message with less than a month to go until a presidential election on the island.
In an apparent effort to win over mainland-based voters from the Taiwanese business community, Andrew Hsia Li-yan, vice-chairman of the Beijing-friendly KMT, visited five southern cities to rally support against the ruling Democratic Progressive Party.
Hsia was following in the well-worn footsteps of his party.
According to Taiwanese media estimates, there are roughly 1.2 million people from the island living on the mainland, accounting for about 5 per cent of Taiwan’s population.
Most of the voters in this group tend to support the KMT and party officials often make the trip across the Taiwan Strait before elections.
People who attended events during Hsia’s trip said this visit was unusually high profile in its push for voters to travel back to the island and cast their ballot.
“He was speaking in a very straightforward way, and said he hoped everyone would go back home in advance. He asked business leaders to make it easy for employees to apply for leave to do so,” 32-year-old Xiamen-based Angel Wu said.
The port of Xiamen is directly across the strait from Taiwan and roughly a thousand Taiwanese businesspeople turned out to an event in the city for Hsia on Wednesday, Wu said.
In Zhongshan in the southern province of Guangdong, former and serving mainland officials turned out for a meeting for Hsia on Sunday, an unexpected presence given accusations of Beijing interfering in the elections.
Sharing the stage with Hsia, was Zhang Zhijun, president of the semi-official Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, according to Taiwan’s United Daily News.
Zhang, who headed Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office from 2013 to 2018, called on Taiwanese residents on the mainland to support the one-China principle and oppose Taiwanese independence, the report said.
The visit attracted criticism from the DPP, with Vice-President William Lai Ching-te, the party’s presidential candidate, describing the trip as “suspicious”.
Polls suggest Lai is the front runner in the race, with KMT candidate Hou Yu-ih gaining and the Taiwan People’s Party’s Ko Wen-je, another mainland friendly candidate, third.
Several members of Taiwanese business groups on the mainland said they expected a higher voter turnout from the mainland-based community.
Li Zhenghong, head of the Association of Taiwan Investment Enterprises on the Mainland, said on Wednesday that 80 per cent of Taiwanese businesspeople were prepared to return to Taiwan to vote.
Wang Weiren, a Taiwanese entrepreneur in Kunshan, said he would go back to vote given “this election will be a turning point for the direction of cross-strait relations”.
Beijing has described the election as a choice between war and peace, and labelled Lai as a Taiwan independence force and the root of the risk of war in the Taiwan Strait.
In an apparent warning to voters, the mainland has in the past week suspended tariff cuts on several Taiwanese products under the cross-strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA).
But it has also said it will allow imports of Taiwanese grouper, after Hsia raised the issue of the ban during his visit to mainland earlier this year.
Lu Minghan, a Taiwanese businessman in Nanning, Guangxi province, said the shaky economic relations were concerning Taiwanese groups on the mainland.
“If cross-strait relations get worse and the ECFA is suspended, businesspeople will face higher taxes,” Lu said.
“We know very clearly which party is promoting peace and which one is stopping communication.”
Wang Jianmin, a Taiwan affairs specialist at Minnan Normal University in Fujian province, said Taiwanese residents on the mainland could play a significant role in the election.
“The election campaign is changing and the gap is narrowing, so the votes of Taiwanese businesspeople are significant,” Wang said.
He added that the group played a “key” role for the KMT in 2012.
Luo Dingjun, a mainland analyst of Taiwanese affairs, said some young people on the mainland from Taiwan were looking beyond the KMT to the TPP’s Ko.
Wu from Xiamen agreed. “[Young people] believe the DPP is corrupt and the KMT is rotten. Ko represents a new wave and he listens to the voice of youth,” she said.
