Taiwanese Americans are glued to the ‘soap opera’ that is the high-stakes presidential election back home
As Jean Tsao prepared a feast with her son on Thanksgiving, her phone kept pinging.
She and many other Taiwanese Americans were glued to what some have described as a “soap opera” of a presidential election across the Pacific.
That day in Taiwan, after an attempt to unify the opposition parties had collapsed, the candidates were cementing their intent to run on separate tickets, and several vice presidential picks would be revealed.
Many who contacted Tsao, as she juggled her phone and the turkey and cabbage dumplings she was making, were upset at the failure of the joint ticket. Some asked how they could join her in traveling to Taiwan to vote in the Jan. 13 election.
Passions on both sides of Taiwanese politics are as intense as Democrat versus Republican, sometimes leading to conflicts in families and workplaces. And that has carried over to the U.S. Even some who have lived here for decades are obsessed, and not just because of the political drama.
China, which considers Taiwan its own territory and has vowed to seize the island by force if necessary, has become increasingly aggressive amid what it views as provocations by U.S. lawmakers and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen.
How the next president handles cross-strait relations could mean the difference between war and a tenuous status quo. Some also fear that the wrong approach could lead to an erosion of Taiwan’s hard-won democracy.
Tsao is director of the U.S. southwest branch of the Kuomintang, or KMT, which is generally friendlier to China than the Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP.
She sees the KMT as the “bridge of peace” and feels that the DPP is denying the Chinese roots of Taiwan’s dominant culture.
“They give up everything about our culture,” said Tsao, 72, a Rowland Heights retiree who came to the U.S. in 1976 for her MBA. “They don’t want 5,000 years of culture.”
In this presidential election, the drama has been nonstop, with Taylor Swift even becoming a talking point.
At a news conference in November, opposition candidates Hou Yu-ih of the KMT, Ko Wen-je of the Taiwan People’s Party and billionaire Foxconn founder Terry Gou sniped at each other while dealing a death blow to the unified ticket. Gou then dropped out.
Tsai of the DPP is terming out, and her vice president, Lai Ching-te, is leading in the polls after the other candidates failed to consolidate.
At a debate late last month, Lai, Hou and Ko hashed out their China policies. At one point, Ko choked back tears over allegations about a piece of land his father had bought for him.
With the U.S. presidential election nearly a year away, many Taiwanese Americans are fixated on every twist and turn, devouring news clips and talk shows on YouTube and sharing political chatter with friends on the Line app.
“It has turned out to be more of a soap opera,” said Lihan Chen, a 69-year-old Orange resident and the president of the Taiwanese American Aeronautics and Space Assn.
Chen, who supports Lai because of the KMT’s past as a military dictatorship, said he plays Taiwanese news in the background at work and regularly posts about Taiwanese politics on Facebook and group chats.
Ahead of an election that will shape the island’s relationship with China for the next four years, thousands of Taiwanese in Southern California travel to rally and cast ballots.
Tony Chen, president of the Laguna Woods Taiwanese Club and a Lai supporter, said the election comes up often, including on weekly hikes with friends. They’re all of a similar political persuasion and care deeply about the place where they grew up.
“We all want to have an opportunity to go back to visit again,” said Chen, 76, a retiree who came to the U.S. for graduate school in 1969. “We don’t want China to take it over.”
At the Taiwan Center in Rosemead last month, about 30 Lai supporters waved flags and chanted, “Choose the right person! Walk the right path!” in Mandarin. They urged Taiwanese Americans who have retained their Taiwanese citizenship to fly home to vote — the only way for overseas residents to cast a ballot.
More than a hundred Lai supporters from Southern California plan to attend a banquet in Taipei the day after the election, said Vera Yang, who leads the DPP’s U.S. West chapter and is flying to Taiwan herself.
MimiQ Soong, the reigning Miss Taiwanese American who is studying world arts and culture at UCLA, did a “campaign dance” for Lai, pumping her fists and clutching her chest.
Soong, 18, wore a green windbreaker with a patch reading “The MVP of Democracy 2024.” Lai, a big baseball fan, has called his campaign “Team Taiwan,” which sounds like “give strong support for Taiwan” in Mandarin.
Soong raised a finger. A woman behind her yelled er — two — urging Soong to lift another finger to represent Lai’s No. 2 position on the ballot.
Soong’s father’s family came to Taiwan from China after World War II and, like many such families, supports the KMT. Her mother’s family has been in Taiwan for centuries and supports the DPP.
Soong said her political views took shape on a trip to China in 2019. After she remarked to her brother that Taiwan was an independent country, cops came to her dorm and gave her a warning.
“I saw how important being able to express your political view is and having a democracy where you can do that,” Soong said. “We need to choose a leader who can protect … Taiwan’s democracy.”
Seiya Shaw’s stance on Taiwanese politics — in his case, support for the TPP — has caused friction in his family and at work.
Ko, a physician and former mayor of Taipei, has drawn support from younger Taiwanese and people disaffected with both major parties. At last month’s debate, Ko said that Taiwan should cooperate with China if necessary, compete with China if necessary and confront China if necessary.
Doctor-turned-politician Ko Wen-je has garnered substantial support in the polls by signaling a desire for middle ground on Taiwan’s China policy.
After eight years of control by the DPP, the party’s status as “the man” has created discontent, especially among Taiwan’s youth, said Lev Nachman, an assistant professor at National Chengchi University in Taipei who studies Taiwanese politics.
“A lot of it is just, ‘We’re tired of the two big parties — or the two big parties don’t seem great — and we would rather just have another option,’” Nachman said.
Shaw, 53, a human resources manager who lives in Walnut, said that neither the DPP nor the KMT has improved the lives of Taiwanese. He worries that another DPP win could prompt China to invade Taiwan.
When “Ko P” — the “P” is for professor — visited L.A. in October, Shaw organized a banquet for him.
Shaw brought his mother-in-law, a DPP supporter, telling her he was there to help his boss. At the banquet, he broke the truth to her: He’s president of Friends of Ko P in Southern California.
“She told me to be wise, to choose wisely,” Shaw said. “I know I’m not going to change her, but she knows that she’s not going to change me either.”
Shaw’s boss is a KMT supporter who, after talks about an alliance broke down, grumbled that Ko is a “bad guy.”
Shaw is traveling to Taiwan to vote — the first time he’s done so since he came to the U.S. 30 years ago.
Lihan Chen, 69, who lives in Orange and supports Lai, said his nephew in Taiwan is one of the young people enamored with Ko.
The nephew called the DPP “corrupt” and demanded to know why he doesn’t support the TPP, said Chen, who sees the TPP as a threat to the democracy that his generation fought so hard to establish.
“It’s basically your way or no way,” Chen said of Ko’s rhetoric. “They try to overthrow the current system.”
While KMT and TPP supporters mourned the collapse of the potential alliance between their candidates, others rejoiced.
Tony Chen, the Laguna Woods Taiwanese Club president, said that he and other Lai supporters were “all smiling” at the news. “When we see each other at the supermarket, we would say it’s the best that can happen to us.”
Chen has seen the worst consequences of the extreme emotions that can stem from Taiwan’s political and ethnic divides. He is an elder at the Orange County Taiwanese church where a gunman burst into a luncheon, killing a 52-year-old doctor and wounding five.
According to prosecutors, the gunman, who was born in Taiwan to a family with recent roots in China, targeted the church, where services are conducted in the Taiwanese dialect, because of the congregants’ Taiwanese national origin.
On New Year’s Day, a few dozen KMT supporters gathered at the Golden Dragon Restaurant in Chinatown for the 113th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of China — still the official name of Taiwan, where the KMT relocated in 1949 after being defeated by the Communists, then ruled by martial law for decades.
Tsao, the local KMT leader, attended the event hours before catching a flight to Taiwan to campaign and then vote.
Cindy Wu, who came to the U.S. from Taiwan at age 11, listened to a speaker rail against the DPP.
Wu, a member of the Mountain View School District Board of Education in El Monte, said her mother had flown to Taiwan the previous night to vote for the KMT’s Hou, who is mayor of New Taipei City and a former high-ranking police official.
Wu doesn’t share her 72-year-old mother’s fervent support for the KMT — she just doesn’t want China to take over Taiwan.
But she is “extremely happy” to see her mother and other Taiwanese Americans exercise their right to vote, which is under greater threat from China than ever.
“The one thing I am so proud of as a Taiwanese is that they spend the money and effort to go vote,” Wu said.
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