Taiwan Tech Billionaire Terry Gou To Run For President Again

Technology billionaire Terry Gou will seek Taiwan’s presidency once again, the candidate announced on Wednesday.

Gou, the founder of Apple supplier Hon Hai Precision, will compete for the nomination of the opposition Kuomintang this year, the Central News Agency reported. The Kuomintang, or KMT, is known in English as the Nationalist Party,

“Taiwan’s current wealth is built on stability across the Taiwan Strait, regional mutual benefit, and global prosperity,” Gou was reported to have said. “As a pivotal part of the ongoing tensions between the U.S. and China and an important economic link between the U.S. and China, Taiwan has the ability to resolve the conflicts as long as the country has a leader who has a vision to pursue and maintain peace.”

Guo ranked No. 317 on the 2023 Forbes Billionaires List unveiled yesterday with an estimated fortune worth $7.2 billion. He stepped down as Hon Hai chairman in June 2019, after 45 years as leader.

Taiwan’s next presidential election, to be held in January 2024, comes amid heightened geopolitical tension between the U.S. and China. A meeting in California today between Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen and U.S. House of Representative leader Kevin McCarthy has triggered threats of reprisals by the Communist Party-led mainland. Beijing claims sovereignty over the self-ruled island of 24 million people.

Tsai, who ranked No. 17 on the latest Forbes list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women last year, can’t run for president again due to rules that limit her to two four-year terms.

The stakes are big. Taiwan is the world’s No. 22 economy and a vital source of semiconductors. Its chip industry leader Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, one of the world’s largest chip makers, plans to invest $40 billion — one of the largest outlays by a foreign company in U.S. history — in a facility in Arizona. Other Apple suppliers from Taiwan besides Hon Hai include Pegatron, Lite-On Technology, Inventec, Catcher Technology, Largan Precision and Compeq Manufacturing.

A rags-to-riches entrepreneur, Gou ran for president in 2019, citing a message from sea goddess Matsu, only to lose and then quit the KMT. His image as a business success was hurt at the end of last year by labor woes at Hon Hai’s huge iPhone factory in the mainland.

Lai Ching-te, the incumbent vice president from the governing Democratic Progressive Party, is expected to be nominated as its presidential candidate in mid-April, CNA said.

The differences between the KMT and DPP on policy toward the mainland could be more perceived than real, Gallup pollster Tim Ting said in an interview last December. (See post here.)

The DPP will play up its willingness to stand up against mainland bullying; its economic policies would create more business distance between the two sides, Ting said. The KMT, though founded on the mainland in 1919, isn’t likely to promote a change in the status quo in the self-governing democracy that Beijing claims sovereignty over, he said.

The KMT is strong in northern Taiwan, where many mainland families settled in the late 1940s after then KMT leader Chiang Kai-Shek lost a civil war to the Communist Party’s Mao Zedong and moved its capital to Taipei.

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@rflannerychina