TAICHUNG (Taiwan News) — After months of sliding in the polls and dodging questions on whether he’s running for president and what he actually stands for, New Taipei Mayor Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜) on Tuesday (April 11) took his first tentative step toward answering them.
However, it was heavy on political signalling and light on substance.
Hou has for years avoided making any comments on anything to do with national sovereignty, national identity, defense, the "1992 consensus," "one-China" or anything to do with foreign policy other than to vaguely state he supports the Republic of China, Taiwan and foreign “friends.” When asked, he smiled broadly and dodged the questions by saying he was just focused on doing his job well as New Taipei mayor.
That was a good strategy because it kept him away from any controversy and broadened his appeal across the political spectrum. People appreciated that he concentrated on being mayor and that foreign policy and sovereignty issues weren’t part of the job.
For many years, it saw him ranked the most popular politician in the country in every poll taken, though often he polled second to Vice President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) if asked who they wanted to be the next president, probably due to Hou’s Kuomintang (KMT) affiliation. That’s finally changed. For the first time in recent TVBS polling history, Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen’s (盧秀燕) satisfaction ranking was 67%, knocking Hou into second place with only 61%.
In December, after the blowout KMT victory in the November local elections, Hou’s star rose even higher, overtaking Lai in a potential presidential run. Since then, he’s lost a lot of support. For example, in My-Formosa polling from late March, he was down 13.7%, had dropped back behind Lai and was only 5.9% ahead of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Ko Wen-je (柯文哲).
Even worse for Hou, Lai was beating him by a larger margin than the national average in Hou’s own city of New Taipei, which had to hurt. While Hou remains popular, he’s clearly been sliding downwards fast.
Why the slide?
The big question is why? The "just doing my job as mayor" routine worked very well, but now that he’s being seriously considered as the KMT’s presidential nominee, that no longer applies. People want to know what he thinks on the big issues.
Hou has tried to keep the magic going by dodging the question of whether he’s going to run and reminding people he’s still mayor. The problem is that he has had opportunities to declare definitively that he isn’t running every day, and hasn’t.
This means pretty much everyone now assumes he’s going to. He’s even dropped hints, like saying “at the right time I’ll be prepared to take to the field.” However, his refusal to declare his positions on key issues has started to raise questions.
There has even been talk of Hou being a Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) 2.0, the KMT candidate in the 2020 election whose poll numbers started high and continued sliding until losing in a landslide on election day. Many have been openly stating that Hou has waited too long, and that is hurting his popularity.
3D three principles
Hou is a savvy politician and no doubt knew he needed to do something. So, on Tuesday he made his first foray into nationally important issues by announcing his 3D “three principles.”
The 3Ds are: Democracy, Defense and Defrost. Using the 3Ds in English is sloganeering intended to give it an international flair. In Chinese the words are "‘deepen democracy," "strengthen national defense" and the awkward "defrost" is "reducing hostility" in Chinese, presumably in relations with China.
This is what he had to say about it when asked by the press: “Protect the Republic of China’s democracy, freedom, sovereignty, uphold public safety, and with the greatest strength let our Republic of China be able to have peace, prosperity and sustainability.” In all the TV news clips and articles, that’s the entirety of his platform as far as I can find, and he hasn’t even posted anything on local politicians’ standard medium of communication, Facebook.
Reading his platform, don’t you now feel you know where he stands on the issues? Of course not, and neither will voters.
Signaling on three levels
However, he is signalling with this on three levels. First, I’m certain his intent is letting voters know that he is indeed thinking about these issues.
Over the longer term, his strategy may be to drip-drip out more details on his positions over time to maximize press attention. Or conversely, he may want to get it all out of the way in one big blitz by dropping his entire platform on the public in one day to get any controversies over quickly long before election day.
I’m curious to see how he handles this. It will be fascinating to watch him handle issues of substance, not only on what the substance will be, but the election strategy that he’ll choose to reveal … or not.
Another signal he’s giving to voters is through the use of the 3D format. KMT chair Eric Chu (朱立倫) — and by extension the party — have been touting their 2D platform, based on the English words "Defense" and "Dialogue."
Hou is treading a tricky line here by both flattering and bucking Chu at the same time. By using a formula so similar to Chu’s, that makes it harder for Chu to complain.
But by changing it from the official party version, he’s also signaling independence from party central in a subtle way. A big part of Hou’s popularity has come from periodically bucking the party line publicly and showing some independence, but he can only do that now in very subtle ways, at least until he’s secured the party’s nomination.
Walking a fine line
He was also clever to add Democracy to the Ds, and to put it first. Taiwanese are justifiably proud of the nation’s hard-won democracy, and there is no way Chu would make an issue of it.
He was smart to directly copy Chu on Defense. Chu will also be hard-pressed to object to Defrost (except on linguistic grounds) because it implicitly includes Chu’s Dialogue within it.
His other signaling was on repeating Republic of China (ROC) twice, and not saying Taiwan once. There is one group he is definitely signaling to, but there is also potentially a second one.
The one we can be certain of is the deep blues within the KMT, especially those from 49er families who fled the Chinese Civil War. They are very suspicious of Hou, who comes from a family that has been in Taiwan for hundreds of years.
Many of them form the core of opposition to his nomination in the party and throw around comments like he has “blue skin and green bones,” which means they fear he is only nominally KMT but is actually a secret DPP supporter. By not using Taiwan and repeatedly using ROC he is signalling to them that he isn’t a “separatist” or “pro-independence” type and can be trusted with the party’s nomination.
Genuine ROC patriot
It is, however, possible he genuinely is an ROC patriot, but by referencing sovereignty and democracy, he may be signalling to more centrist voters that he is in favor of strongly defending the status quo, which is popular with many voters. I’ve noticed in the past he’s used the ROC formulation a lot, so it may be genuine.
That would make sense for someone of his generation, which tends to support the ROC the strongest. He also started life as a police officer when Taiwan was still a one-party state under the KMT. He had to know he was entering a profession that enforced authoritarian diktats.
Clearly, the police had no doubts about his loyalty or patriotism when they appointed him the officer in charge of raiding the office of democracy and free speech activist Nylon Deng (鄭南榕). He famously committed suicide by self-immolation rather than submit to being arrested by the former police officer who might soon be the KMT’s presidential candidate.
