Third-Party Candidate Ko Wen-je Says Taiwan Needs To Talk To China
The Taiwan People’s Party presidential candidate for next year's elections, ex-doctor Ko Wen-je, says the country needs to talk to China.
Transcript
00:00 Taiwan's presidential elections are in less than three months' time and the third party
00:04 candidate, ex-Taipei mayor Kuo Wenzhe, is painting himself out as the candidate of change.
00:10 He says Taiwanese voters are fed up of the two main parties and they want a third way
00:16 and he's offering that.
00:17 Now today in the hotel behind me he sat down with foreign journalists who were very keen
00:22 to ask him about, well, what would you do about China?
00:25 Kuo said he was keen not to be painted as a very pro-China party but equally not as
00:31 a party against China.
00:33 He says it's important to have dialogue with China given that over the past eight years
00:38 under the ruling party and President Tsai, relations have deteriorated.
00:42 Now how would he go about trying to have dialogue with China?
00:46 He says it's important not to start off talking about politics.
00:51 He says he would start off talking about less controversial things like sport, culture,
00:57 then move on to trade issues and then get down to the really hard stuff about politics.
01:03 He also says he would appeal to China by talking about Taiwan's shared Chinese history, the
01:09 shared language, the shared culture with China.
01:13 That said, he did also say it's important to prepare for a possible war with China and
01:19 he said he would raise Taiwan's defence spending from around 2.5% of GDP at the moment to 3%.
01:26 Now Kuo's party's only been around for four years.
01:29 He has a handful of representatives in the legislature.
01:33 But he says when he started his campaign for president many people saw it as mission impossible.
01:38 Well he says they're not seeing it like that now.
01:40 He's the leading opposition candidate in the polls.
01:43 He's definitely one to watch in January's elections.
01:46 I'm Colin Wong and Louise Watt in Taipei for Taiwan Plus.
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