Taiwan’s former top cop wants China talks if voted president

NEW YORK – One thing Mr Hou Yu-ih wants Taiwan’s voters to know about him, as they prepare to elect a new president, is that he used to be a great policeman.

The 66-year-old’s decades-long career, which saw him work his way up from a police officer to become Taiwan’s top law enforcement official, is a core part of the

image he is projecting ahead of the election in January 2024.

Mr Hou’s pitch is simple: His time working as a police officer in very high-stakes situations makes him the best choice to manage one of the world’s most dangerous geopolitical hot spots as Taiwan’s next president.

“I have participated in countless gun battles and I always stood on the front line,” Mr Hou said during an interview in New York last Saturday. “Facing down opponents in a hostage situation teaches you that whether you’re on the offensive or the defensive, you must also engage in dialogue and negotiations.”

He has a lot of work to do. Polling by Taiwanese broadcaster TVBS in August put Mr Hou, running as the candidate of the opposition Kuomintang (KMT), in third place, with 19 per cent support.

Mr William Lai Ching-te, the nominee for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), was in the lead with 30 per cent, followed by Mr Ko Wen-je, who is running as the candidate of a party he founded in 2019.

Billionaire founder of Foxconn Group Terry Gou, whom Mr Hou defeated for the KMT nomination, is running as an independent and polling in fourth.

In addition to his being cool under pressure, Mr Hou’s campaign has also argued that he would be able to open lines of communication with Beijing, something President Tsai Ing-wen, also a member of the DPP, has not been able to do since she took office in 2016.

Dialogue would make Taiwan safer by reducing the potential for misunderstanding and would also improve business links with the island’s biggest trading partner, Mr Hou’s team has argued.

The main stumbling block to dialogue over the past eight years has been an understanding between the two sides, known as the “92 Consensus”, which essentially says that Taiwan is part of China.

Beijing has insisted that Ms Tsai, like her predecessor, must affirm the 92 Consensus before there can be talks.

Ms Tsai and Mr Lai, who currently serves as her vice-president, have both said that this is not something they will do, suggesting that if Mr Lai were to win, the communications freeze would continue.

Mr Ko, running as the nominee of the Taiwan People’s Party, said in an interview earlier in September that he would not outright reject the 92 Consensus to keep the door open for talks with Beijing, even though he felt there was “no market” for the understanding among the island’s population.

Mr Gou has indicated that he would affirm the 92 Consensus.

Asked in New York if he saw any value in the 92 Consensus, Mr Hou responded that he has “the responsibility to protect the lives of 23 million people and to ensure the sustainable prosperity of this land”.

A few days after that interview, which took place as part of a trip to the United States that included stops in Washington DC and San Francisco, Mr Hou published an article in Foreign Affairs magazine that affirmed his support of the understanding.

“I support the 1992 Consensus, the approach to cross-strait dialogue agreed to by Taiwanese officials and counterparts from the mainland,” he wrote.

The relationship with China is the top issue facing Taiwan’s voters.

China, which regards the self-governing Taiwan as its territory to be reunified with it, has in recent years regularly carried out military drills around the island as it seeks to assert its sovereignty claims and pressure Taipei. Taiwan rejects China’s sovereignty claims.

With the US having long been the guarantor of the island’s security, that has fuelled concerns about a potential military conflict between the world’s two biggest economies.

In addition to dialogue, Mr Hou stressed that he would seek to bolster Taiwan’s military capabilities by increasing defence spending to more than 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP).

He said he was open to spending increasing to 3 per cent or more of GDP, though he emphasised the need to spend wisely because of the disparity in military budgets between Taiwan and China.

“No matter how the mainland changes, we must be prepared and we must have strength,” Mr Hou said. “Sun Tzu’s Art Of War said: ‘Don’t rely on the enemy not coming, rely on me being prepared to wait for him.’”

As Mr Hou was travelling in the United States, where he met members of the US Congress, as well as State Department and national security officials, China’s People’s Liberation Army sent a record 103 warplanes and nine ships into the vicinity of Taiwan on Sunday and the early hours of Monday.

Those sorties coincided with visits to Taipei by US Undersecretary of Commerce Laurie Locascio, and the governors of Arizona and New Mexico. Beijing has long protested visits by American officials to the island.

The current state of ties across the Taiwan Strait is a far cry from what it was eight years ago, during the final days of the last KMT president’s term in office.

Then President Ma Ying-jeou travelled to Singapore in November 2015 for a historic face-to-face meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Since then, there has been a US-China trade war, a global pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a series of American sanctions that have cut off Beijing’s access to advanced semiconductors.

Asked if he would seek a meeting with Mr Xi as Mr Ma did, Mr Hou downplayed the possibility, emphasising Taiwan’s current need for stability in the relationship. To do that, he said, Taiwan has to first improve its own defence capabilities before seeking dialogue with Beijing.

“The situation at that time was completely different from how things are now,” Mr Hou said. “At this stage, Taiwan is facing constant conflicts, and it would be easy to spark a conflict accidentally and trigger a war. We must be prepared to face a conflict that could trigger a full-on war at any time.” BLOOMBERG