TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — As President Lai Ching-te’s (賴清德) reaches the halfway point of his term, observers have weighed in on his performance so far.
Under his administration, Taiwan has seen significant economic growth due to its tech and AI boom, Nikkei Asia reported on Tuesday. The country’s GDP grew 13.7% in the first quarter of this year, and its stock market surpassed those of Canada and the UK.
Lai also made great strides in bolstering defense and resilience, pledging to increase defense spending to more than 3% of GDP. Last year, he announced 17 national security measures about military readiness, domestic policies, critical infrastructure, and cybersecurity, per Nikkei Asia.
However, Lai has struggled to get support from opposition parties on certain legislation in the Legislative Yuan, where the KMT holds the majority.
Nikkei Asia cited an April My Formosa poll, noting that 47.5% of respondents were disappointed with the president’s performance, while 44.5% were satisfied.
Chen Fang-yu (陳方隅), associate professor of political science at Soochow University in Taipei, said that while the stellar economic performance deserves praise, there needs to be more support for those left behind, according to Nikkei Asia. Chen suggested Lai could do more to form a clear policy agenda and promote it to the public.
The president should also pursue a "carrots and sticks" approach when engaging with individual opposition legislators to garner support for specific bills, he said.
KMT veteran Jaw Shau-kong (趙少康) called Lai "so stubborn." He mentioned that Lai declined KMT Chair Cheng Li-wun’s (鄭麗文) request to meet before or after her trip to China in April.
On relations with the US, George Chen (陳澍), a partner at The Asia Group, said there are two signs to watch. "The first strong indicator is the timing of the next U.S. arms package for Taiwan," he said. "The other interesting indicator to watch is whether [Lai] is allowed to transit through the United States," according to Nikkei Asia.
Roy Lee, a former Taiwanese diplomat, said Taiwan faces two major challenges in the next few years. Lee expected China to continue undermining Taiwan’s global participation and expressed concern that friendly nations would downgrade Taiwan's security as a less urgent issue as the wars in Ukraine and Iran wage on.
"That," he said, "provides an opportunity for China to manipulate and leverage this situation to ensure that the Taiwan issue will never go back to the top priority of many countries."
