00:00KMT Chair Zhengli Wen just came back from a trip to the U.S. which included stops in major
00:06cities like San Francisco, Boston, New York and Washington DC and also Los Angeles. Is there
00:11anything that we can extrapolate from her trip? So this was a charm offensive you could say
00:15that is trying to win the U.S. over because there are those forces in Taiwan that would like to
00:21see
00:21Taiwan go away as an issue perhaps if the KMT is in power but also then seeking support from
00:26overseas Taiwanese communities but perhaps also overseas Chinese communities and so part of it
00:32was to reassure DC that she will maintain stable cross-strait relations in spite of her rhetoric
00:37against at times U.S. arms sales or that she would like to see Taiwanese proud to be Chinese but
00:43in
00:44the sense I think there also is alarm that was raised by some of the people that she met with
00:48or the incidents that happened during her trip such as confrontations with Chinese dissidents
00:52or meeting with people that were connected to the Chinese united front and so it's actually
00:56very hard to tell because I think it could go either way in terms of what the trip was aimed
01:01at
01:01it's probably for building a future presidential run but we'll have to see there. Legislative Speaker
01:05Han Guoyu who's also part of the KMT he's heading to DC relatively soon and his trip comes shortly after
01:12Zheng came back from her trip to DC. What do you think the purpose of his trip might be? He
01:18was previously
01:18the 2020 KMT presidential candidate and during that time he was a very hard-line candidate but this
01:24time around he seems to be more moderate including on arms sales and usually when you do see KMT
01:29politicians traveling to the U.S. it is to build up their diplomatic credentials and pad out their
01:34portfolio for a future presidential run and so you see that with Taichung Mayor Lu Xiaoyuan for example
01:39also Taipei Mayor Jiang Wen'an and if Han is traveling too perhaps he also sees himself as maybe having
01:44a role
01:45in this race. With two high-level KMT officials or high-level KMT members going to the U.S. in
01:52quick
01:52succession like this one after the other is there anything we can extract from that? Yeah it's very
01:57hard to tell there was some chatter online that tried to frame Han's trip as to clean up the mess
02:02of Zheng's trip but I think that's probably more motivated by his own personal political interest and
02:08his desire to also maybe still stay in a potential presidential race but in the sense I think that
02:13there are different contending factions for power different contending candidates in the KMT
02:17and that is also reflected in this series of trips we're seeing
Comments