Why Taiwanese voters are the smartest

Democratic elections have become of the culture in Taiwan. Then recall clearly then I first time arrived in Taiwan in December 1999 it was only a few months before former DPP president Chen Shui-Bian was elected. The atmosphere reminded much on carnival or FIFA world cup.

However in 2022 Taiwan only local elections and just as Courtney Donovan Smith predicted in his article: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4732675 in the follow up of Nancy Pelosi's visit interpretated everything in the wrong light. Taiwanese are incredible smart people then it comes to elections, therefore you need to understand a few basic concepts:

1. Then Chen Shui-Bian was elected in 2000 and the DPP won the majority in the Legislative Yuan (parliament) in 2003 they changed the constitution so that any rewriting of the constitution can be done through referendum. The reaction of the west was to punish Taiwan whereever it can. George Walker Bush often called Taiwan: "A meaningless rock in the water, causing a lot of trouble." Rumors say he smashed his phone in the White House then president Chen demanded the same rights for a referendum like the Iraqis. President Chen ended up 8 years in detention for evidence, which obviously came from the CIA and NSA intelligence service. Well, at least you cannot blame the BND and project curveball this time.
2. Since the will of the people is completley ignored and direct democracy to determine your own future is denied, Western style democracy is a system of lobbyism and group's interest as mentioned in this article> PDF . Taiwan is no exception from lobbyism, but much more complex. Since the KMT is clearly supporting Taiwanese enterprises favouring the Greater China Market including the PRC, the DPP is clearly supporting the high-tech industry.

Putting the election results in this prospect many exciting stories reveal slowly and make perfect sense. Many people say current president Tsai made a huge mistake by declearing the election a vote against China, which it is clearly not, but if you put yourself in her shoes, you will understand why she did what she did.

While Taipei elected as usual for the most handsome candidate following the Ma model, they elected the youngest and most inexperienced candidate, which only support the decline of the city and rise of the other parts of Taiwan. So frankly speaking it's good for Taiwan, because Taipei receives too much support despite declining on the recent decades.

Most interesting is the swing city of Taichung. Here again local based journalist Donovan Smith composed yet another article why Mama mayor won again and it has a lot to do with the lack of support and choice of candidates.

Taichung has become the centre of machinery, bicycle , robotic and offshore wind industry. Only problem is that after the city and county merged, so did the groups of interests and many of them are outside of the government and political parties.

Just a simple example: Do the fishers catch fish? Clearly not, the toxic chemicals released into the Taiwan Strait make it very diffilcult for marine life. Taipower 5.5 GW coal fire plant and Dragon Steel's steel plant don't help with the air, but most importantly Taichung has very , very close ties with China. The Taichung habour hotel for example employs PRC Chinese instead of Taiwanese. Frequently vessels cross the strait, but everybody kind of looks away as long as business continues uninterrupted.

No wonder president didn't endorse much the candidate, neither did the party.

Let us return to the beginning. The DPP's main business link is the high-tech industry and one is having a particular hard time, which if course Foxconn. Perhaps you have heared news that the Apple main supplier is recently having some trouble, which is an understatement:

A lot of people get wrong of how business actually works in China. It is know that the Chinese Communist Party calls Taiwanese as their own people, but then it comes down to business Taiwanese are regarded as FDI just like any nation. Foxconn is employing over a million Chinese workers, but the management control of the group lies with the central communist party committee and the labour issue with local CCP officials. Foxconn is only a minimum shareholder on the site just like the Volkswagen Group, BASF, Siemens and GE.

Now it gets really tricky between different group's interests        

First of all, what is the CCP? It's basicly a group of people who control China and try to enrich themselves. While the CCP has good ties with the Chinese Nationalist Party or KMT in Taiwan, they control the Taiwan People's Party of recent Taipei mayor Ko P.

Now, we get into a contridiction, because the Xi administration most obvious tries to kill the Foxconn business, but Foxconn already has a deal with the JiangZeMing fraction who want to maintain the economic status quo.

Since emperor Xi cannot attact Taiwan itself, he attacts Taiwan's supporters in China itself, which is bringing China into a war like situation.

So, Taiwanese reacted smartly by electing a neutral candidate for Hsinchu Ann Kao , who everybody knows represents Foxconn's and CCP's interests at the same time.

She has so many corruption scandales that she won't get into office, but both the Xi fraction and Foxconn got what they wanted and later on will lose it.

In fact, it is emperor Xi himself who is pushing for decoupling from Taiwan and the Western world very hard and using these underground networks to get to his goal.

Again, I frankly believe Western people and mindset is not able to follow the Chinese one, which is nicely explained here:

Chinese thinking and mindset is nonlinear and spoken words can have so many different facets of meaning that it is hard to understand.

Therefore, it is adviceable to collect as many correct data and carefully analysis, but how to put them into a future perspective? and Chinese people can stick, modify and adapt plans, while Taiwanese are extreme pragmatic and brutal realistic of what can and cannot.

What's the conclusion of the future?

Nobody can tell for sure? Then I returned from my Europe trip suddenly none of my in-laws like the DPP anymore. Their compaign was lacking content and respect of common inteligence of Taiwanese people.

The KMT candidates only mayor Hou of New Taipei City might stand a chance in 2024 presidential elections, but he doesn't have a pure mainland Chinese bloodline and the Taipei mayor might be impeached. Recent days a lot of troops are moved out of Kinmen and Matsu. A lot of indicators, but it is not a military conflicts and Taiwanese are getting smarter and smarter. I'm confident of the future of Taiwan.