Taiwan’s two primary opposition parties have fallen into open conflict over a mayoral candidacy dispute, unravelling an alliance that came close to unseating the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in 2024. For Beijing, which has long viewed a fragmented opposition as its clearest route to a friendlier government in Taipei, the rupture could prove to be a sign of its patience paying off.
The row between the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and the Kuomintang (KMT) over candidate selection in Hsinchu County has threatened to unravel opposition coordination ahead of November’s local elections and the 2028 presidential contest.
A Coalition That Nearly Succeeded
The stakes are grounded in January 2024’s electoral arithmetic. KMT candidate Hou Yu-ih and TPP founder Ko Wen-je together captured roughly 60 per cent of the presidential vote, but their failure to unite behind one candidate let the DPP’s Lai Ching-te win with just 40.1 per cent – the second-lowest winning share in Taiwan’s direct presidential elections, behind only Chen Shui-bian’s 39.3 per cent in 2000. The result made it evident that opposition cooperation is a precondition for any credible challenge to the DPP in 2028.
The Jhubei Flashpoint
The immediate dispute concerns the mayoral race in Jhubei City, part of Hsinchu County and adjoining Hsinchu City’s science park cluster – the hub housing research and manufacturing operations for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC) and United Microelectronics Corporation, and widely regarded as the centre of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry. Both parties have claimed the right to field their own candidate, and neither has been willing to concede.
TPP spokesperson Jou Yi-ting confirmed last week that negotiations had broken down, calling the atmosphere “deeply unproductive”. KMT secretary-general Justin Huang declined to comment on the state of talks but acknowledged that “trust-building remains a work in progress”.
“The dispute is symptomatic of a deeper incompatibility,” Chen Fang-yu, a political scientist at Soochow University in Taipei, told local media. “If they cannot agree on a candidate in a tech-sector city with clear shared interests, coordinating a presidential ticket for 2028 becomes extraordinarily difficult. Each failure at the local level erodes the credibility of any future pact.”
Where the Parties Stand on China and the US
It helps to set out where each of Taiwan’s major political forces stands on cross-strait relations and on the island’s relationship with Washington – the two axes around which Taiwanese politics most consequentially turns.
The DPP, founded in 1986 and now led by President Lai Ching-te, rejects the so-called 1992 Consensus, the framework Beijing and the KMT have historically used to manage cross-strait relations, and regards Taiwan as a de facto independent political entity. Beijing has branded Lai a “separatist” and a “troublemaker”, while his administration has deepened Taiwan’s security and economic ties with Washington. The DPP’s relationship with the US is the closest of any Taiwanese party, anchored in the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, which commits Washington to helping Taiwan defend itself, alongside sustained arms sales and diplomatic engagement.
The KMT – the Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party – governed Taiwan under martial law from 1949 to 1987 and remains most closely associated with a shared Chinese civilisational identity, though its current leadership stops short of advocating unification. It upholds the 1992 Consensus, which acknowledges “one China” while allowing differing interpretations – a formulation Beijing accepts and Washington views warily. Under former President Ma Ying-jeou, the party pursued deep cross-strait economic integration, including the 2010 Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement. It supports the US security relationship but maintains warmer Beijing ties than any other major party – a positioning complicated since 2020, when Hong Kong’s national security law triggered a steady decline in Taiwanese trust towards the mainland.
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), founded in 2019 by former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je, positions itself as a pragmatic, anti-establishment alternative drawing largely on younger, urban voters. Ko has advocated maintaining economic and cultural ties with China while resisting political integration, criticising the DPP’s confrontational posture without endorsing the KMT’s 1992 Consensus. On the US, the TPP broadly backs the existing security relationship, though Ko has occasionally questioned how sustainable Taiwan’s reliance on American commitments really is. Most analysts view the TPP’s stance as a genuine middle ground, one that widens its electoral appeal but makes it an unstable partner for either rival.
Beijing’s Calculus
Beijing has long pursued “peaceful reunification” through economic incentives, cultural diplomacy and sustained political pressure, with the KMT historically its preferred interlocutor given the party’s acceptance of the 1992 Consensus. The DPP’s rejection of that framework, and Lai’s explicit framing of Taiwan as a distinct political entity, has led Beijing to suspend formal cross-strait dialogue for the duration of DPP governance.
Chinese state media have reported extensively on the KMT-TPP rift, understanding it as evidence of instability within Taiwan’s political system. The Global Times, a state-affiliated outlet whose editorial line reflects official Communist Party positions, has described the feud as demonstrating the limitations of Taiwan’s democratic model – coverage consistent with Beijing’s longstanding argument that liberal democracy is ill-suited to Chinese societies.
A weakened opposition serves Beijing’s interests in two concrete ways. It raises the odds of a DPP victory in 2028, extending the tenure of a government that Beijing regards as hostile to cross-strait engagement. And, according to analysts, it creates conditions in which voices favouring closer accommodation with the mainland find a somewhat more receptive audience among voters disillusioned with the performance of democratic institutions.
Those voices, while not yet dominant, are measurably present. A March 2025 survey by National Chengchi University’s Election Study Centre – which has tracked cross-strait identity and preference data continuously since 1992 and remains the most widely cited source on the subject – found a modest uptick in support for “eventual unification” among respondents over 50, particularly in central Taiwan, even as a clear majority continued to favour maintaining the status quo indefinitely.
