Milan (AsiaNews) – On 28 November, Taiwanese voters will be called upon to elect holders of over 11,000 local offices, ranging from the mayors of the six major cities (Taipei, New Taipei, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung) down to village chiefs, in an election that will also serve as a litmus test ahead of the January 2028 presidential elections. The surprise of the election campaign is Taipei, a traditional stronghold of the Kuomintang (KMT), the party that succeeded the dictatorship which ruled the island until the late 1980s.
In the previous elections in 2022, the current mayor, Chiang Wan-an, a KMT member, won by a large margin. Aged 47, Chiang belongs to the new generation of party leaders, from whom he stands out for his more liberal stances on civil rights, starting with same-sex marriage. His frequent international trips as mayor have been interpreted as part of his preparation for a future bid to lead the country, to the extent that, until the summer, Chiang was considered one of the KMT’s most likely candidates for the 2028 elections.
The ‘oceanic current’
His rival for the post is Puma Shen (born Shen Po-yang), aged 44, a criminologist trained at the University of California and a scholar specialising in Beijing’s propaganda campaigns against the island. Founder of Doublethink Lab, Taiwan’s best-known research centre on disinformation, and of the Kuma Academy, which prepares civilians to cope with a potential invasion or disaster, Shen was elected to parliament in 2024.
When the DPP, which holds power at national level, selected him as its candidate in May, many thought the party merely wanted to field a second-tier figure in a city where it had little chance of victory, not least because a poll conducted at that time put Chiang at 52.9 per cent of the vote, compared with Shen’s 29.7 per cent. By mid-September, however, another poll showed the two candidates almost neck and neck, whilst on 20 October a further poll recorded a 17-point lead for Shen.
The candidate has sparked a wave of enthusiasm that in Taiwan is known as the ‘ocean current’, yangliu, a play on words based on the last character of his name, which means ‘ocean’. Shen is known for being one of the Taiwanese politicians most uncompromising towards Beijing, but in this election campaign he is focusing almost exclusively on the practical issues facing Taipei, saying very little about China. He has also agreed to be interviewed by presenters close to the KMT, garnering millions of views online compared to the few tens of thousands generated by Chiang’s interview.
The wave of support for Shen seems to stem, amongst other things, from the desire for revenge among civic groups which, in 2025, had launched a campaign to recall KMT parliamentarians en masse. Shen had been one of the leading figures in that initiative, which ended in complete failure.
However, many voices cast doubt on the reliability of the polls. The scholar Liu Chin-tsai interviewed dozens of experts from Taiwan and China anonymously for the Taiwanese website The News Lens; the majority of them consider the ‘oceanic current’ to be an overhyped phenomenon, whose appeal fails to overcome the DPP’s core support base. Moreover, even during the recall campaign, the polls had proved to be far too optimistic.
It should also be noted that Chiang benefits from the support of the Taiwan People’s Party, which has decided not to field its own candidate and whose electorate is hostile to the DPP. According to the experts interviewed by Liu, the most tangible effect of the ‘oceanic current’ therefore concerns the balance of power in the election campaign. Chiang is forced to focus on Taipei, neglecting support for his party’s candidates in the rest of the island, whilst enthusiasm for Shen extends to neighbouring cities, starting with New Taipei, another KMT stronghold.
Divisions within the Kuomintang
The KMT is going into the elections deeply divided. Cheng Li-wun, elected party leader at the end of 2025, met Xi Jinping in Beijing in April and uncompromisingly supports the ‘One China’ principle, but in June only 26.7 per cent of respondents in a poll said they had confidence in her. The internal rifts within the party are also evident from the fact that many prominent candidates have avoided appearing publicly alongside her, whilst at one election event, the mayor of Taichung and the outgoing mayor of New Taipei left before Cheng arrived.
The KMT appears to be divided between “two centres of gravity”, one centred on Cheng Li-wun and the other on Lu Shiow-yen, the mayor of Taichung, who until recently was considered the favourite to lead the country. Washington is closely monitoring these divisions and, according to the Taipei Times, in private talks with the Americans, several KMT figures have stated that the problem lies with Cheng Li-wun, whilst the rest of the party, unlike her, is said to hold views favourable to the United States and to strengthening defence. Raymond Greene, the US representative in Taipei, has travelled to Taichung at least three times this year to meet Lu. According to a Washington-based analyst, Beijing has invested heavily in Cheng, and Xi Jinping is said to have staked his own personal prestige on her success.
To win over the conservative electorate, the KMT is also focusing on the issue of security. Hung Mong-kai, vice-chairman of the parliamentary group, proposes introducing flogging as an additional punishment alongside certain prison sentences. The reference is to Singapore, where corporal punishment is still in force. “The conservative section of the Taiwanese electorate tends to regard Singapore as an ideal model,” sociologist Yen-Tung Lin of National Taiwan University explained to *Le Monde*, adding that this proposal resonates with those nostalgic for the dictatorship.
The manoeuvring ahead of the 2028 presidential elections
Meanwhile, the People’s Party – the third-largest political force founded in 2019 on the initiative of the then mayor of Taipei, Ko Wen-je – is at risk of disbanding. In the 2024 elections, it won eight seats, which were crucial in enabling the KMT to secure a parliamentary majority; however, this year Ko was sentenced at first instance to 17 years’ imprisonment for corruption and is barred from standing for election. His successor as party leader, Huang Kuo-chang, is accused of being too subservient to the KMT and has withdrawn from the New Taipei City mayoral race. In Zhubei, a satellite town of the Hsinchu Science Park where Ko had secured 38 per cent of the vote in 2024, the two parties have failed to reach an agreement and have suspended their electoral cooperation across the entire county.
President Lai Ching-te, for his part, has adopted a cautious approach. In his speech on 10 October to mark National Day, he put forward no new proposals nor attacked the KMT, even though shortly beforehand the Speaker of the Legislative Yuan, Han Kuo-yu, had accused him of behaving like a dictator. According to Brian Hioe of the Taiwanese website New Bloom, Lai wants to avoid repeating the mistake of 2025, when the campaign to recall KMT legislators ended up being associated with him and its failure dented his popularity.
Beijing, too, is closely watching the contest for Taipei. Chiang Wan-an is among the KMT figures who have met most frequently with officials from the Chinese Communist Party, on some occasions even in the wake of military exercises conducted by Beijing around the island – exercises which he has never condemned. He has always advocated dialogue with China, whilst Shen has long been in the crosshairs of the Beijing authorities, who accuse him of secessionism and have taken various intimidating measures against him. The Chinese attacks on Shen, however, seem to have had the unintended effect of strengthening his political position.
It is important to bear in mind that Taiwanese local elections follow their own logic, which does not necessarily coincide with that of national politics. Taichung and New Taipei elected KMT mayors in the last two local elections, but in 2024 they voted overwhelmingly for the current president, Lai Ching-te. Furthermore, during Tsai Ing-wen’s years at the helm of the country, the DPP lost local elections twice only to go on to win the presidential elections.
In terms of national politics, the vote on 28 November will serve primarily to determine who can still aspire to the 2028 candidacy. A defeat in Taipei would almost certainly close the door to the presidency for Chiang, depriving Beijing of one of its preferred interlocutors. A generally negative result for the KMT, on the other hand, would strengthen Cheng’s internal opponents, who might call for his resignation, and would favour Lu and the wing of the party on which Washington relies for the country’s stability.
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