Terry Gou, the billionaire founder of iPhone maker Foxconn, has a dramatic manifesto for Taiwan’s presidency: Save the country from the “edge of the abyss” and make it Asia’s richest.
“I built a world-class company from nothing. I will use this pioneering spirit to improve the lives of everyone!” Gou wrote on Facebook after announcing his campaign for the Jan. 13 presidential election this week.
Gou’s resume is impressive considering Foxconn is the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer, with sales of $208 billion last year. But analysts said his candidacy’s chances of success were slim and the most likely consequence would be to weaken support among those who want Taiwan to take a more conciliatory stance toward China than its ruling Democratic Progressive Party.
The competition has geopolitical implications. A DPP victory in January could further escalate tensions across the Taiwan Strait as China views the party as separatist and has threatened to attack if Taipei defies unification indefinitely. Gou and other opposition politicians accuse the DPP of bringing the issue to the brink of conflict as it refuses to call Taiwan part of China and promises to defend its sovereignty against Beijing.
But polls show Lai Ching-te, the DPP candidate and incumbent vice president, with 33 to 40 percent of the vote in the race for election after the first round. No opposition candidate achieved more than 30 percent in the polls.
“Gou will have an impact more akin to Michael Bloomberg than Donald Trump,” said Nathan Batto, a Taiwan election expert at Academia Sinica in Taipei, who sees parallels with the billionaire former New York mayor’s short-lived 2020 U.S. presidential bid.
Gou, who built his business almost entirely on manufacturing in China, shares the position with his rival opposition candidates that Taiwan is part of a larger Chinese nation.
The Foxconn founder said the opposition can only win by uniting, but did not say how he might work with rivals Ko Wen-je and Hou Yu-ih.
Ko, a 63-year-old former surgeon, took part in a wave of youth protests against the then-ruling Kuomintang and won election as mayor of Taipei in 2014 working with the DPP.
But Ko became a harsh critic of DPP President Tsai Ing-wen after she came to power in 2016. He founded his own Taiwan People’s Party, which is aimed at swing voters but is often closer to the KMT.
Ko’s appeal to swing voters, particularly younger people, has hurt Hou, the KMT candidate and current mayor of New Taipei, the municipality surrounding the capital.
The KMT chose Hou, a down-to-earth former police officer who prides himself on “getting things done,” because of the good reviews he had before becoming the party’s candidate.
But he struggled to rally the KMT’s traditional core of Chinese nationalists, many of whom came from families that fled to Taiwan in 1949 after the party’s defeat in the Chinese Civil War. Hou’s family has lived in Taiwan for generations and he was reluctant to support the party’s emphasis on Chinese identity.
“The majority public opinion wants to get rid of the DPP, but the poll numbers of the opposition candidates are weak and morale is low,” Gou said on Monday. “I hope that the entrenched opposition forces can consolidate.”
That looks unlikely. Formosa, one of Taiwan’s largest pollsters, puts Lai’s recent support at 36 percent, while Ko and Hou have 19 and 18 percent, respectively, and Gou trails at 9.7 percent.
More than 30 percent of respondents who did not support Lai said they would vote for the opposition candidate with the highest poll ratings. This shows a willingness to switch parties, which analysts expect will heat up competition between the three.
“There is a large cohort of anti-DPP protest voters who are frantically thinking about strategic voting and how they or other people might do that. So there could be big fluctuations,” said Batto. “Multi-candidate races like this are inherently unstable, and will inevitably remain that way until Election Day.”
Lev Nachman, a political scientist at National Chengchi University in Taipei, said three candidates from the other side of the political spectrum should make things easier for the DPP “on paper.”
But he added that a possible scenario would be for Ko to quit as part of a deal with the KMT to cede some districts to his party in the parliamentary elections, which will run parallel to the presidential election. Alternatively, Ko could work with Gou.
“Although this is unlikely, Lai should not breathe a sigh of relief about this [the DPP] I have the race in the bag,” said Nachman.
All three opposition candidates blame the DPP for rising property prices and stubbornly low salaries, issues that are resonating with the public as the economy slows sharply.
Taiwan’s growth has continued over the past three years due to a global semiconductor boom and success in containing the Covid-19 pandemic. But demand for chip exports is declining and gross domestic product growth is expected to fall to less than 2 percent this year.
Some DPP politicians sense public weariness with the party.
“People don’t believe the DPP has the same values as before and they think we have become arrogant,” said a senior party official. “Even young voters don’t think it’s necessary for us to stay in power. Many people are dissatisfied with economic issues such as starting salaries, but some also no longer know what we stand for. What can the DPP offer other than the China factor?”
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Analysts believe the growing discontent among DPP supporters and the increasing importance of swing voters that fueled Ko’s rise reflect broader changes in Taiwan’s political landscape.
Young adults tend to be “less connected to the DPP and party identity in general,” Nachman said.
The DPP’s problems will only help the opposition if Gou, Ko and Hou can reach an agreement. The early signs are not promising. The KMT said a recent attempt to negotiate with the Foxconn founder failed because he insisted the party make him its candidate. Gou’s campaign team disputes the claim.
Analysts said Gou’s egoism and lack of political experience would hamper his bid, pointing to the example of him abandoning much of his opening news conference just to introduce a campaign spokesman.
“He spends a lot of money but doesn’t run a professional campaign,” Batto said. “It is much easier to convert power into money than money into power.”