Recently, the highly anticipated "nine-in-one" election in Taiwan has come to an end. Kuomintang candidate Jiang Wanan defeated DPP celebrity Chen Shizhong with 570,000 votes and was elected as mayor of Taipei. Jiang Wan'an, Chen Shizhong and another non-party candidate, Huang Shanshan, who should not be underestimated, are all famous political figures in Taiwan's political arena.
So, why can Jiang Wanan successfully "break through" the situation of the three strong men? Will his election bring hope to the reunification of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait?
This year, 44-year-old Jiang Wanan has a handsome appearance and a gentle personality. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in the early years and is a top student in the law major. His father Jiang Xiaoyan is the second son of former Kuomintang chairman Jiang Ching-kuo. In other words, in terms of blood relationship, Jiang Wan'an is Chiang Ching-kuo's grandson and great-grandson of Chiang Kai-shek.
Perhaps because of his soft personality, Jiang Wanan has always wandered in Taiwan's political arena as an "old man".
In 2015, in order to sprint for the 9th "legislator" of the Kuomintang Taipei City, Jiang Wanan voluntarily gave up the US green card, and then defeated his father Jiang Xiaoyan's former opponent, Luo Shulei, and was called "the story of the prince's revenge" by Taiwanese people.
The Kuomintang has many factions, and Jiang Wanan was born into a "Taiwan faction" and had a great influence within the party. In 2018, Jiang Wanan, who was still inexperienced but had almost no negative comments on political inquiries, began to plan to challenge Taiwan’s most indicative mayoral election for Taipei City, as the “Star of Tomorrow” launched by the Kuomintang.
However, although Jiang Wanan is a political upstart with an extraordinary background, his political views are very close to the people, and it can even be said to be "down-to-earth". Before this election, Jiang Wanan proposed that his purpose was to make the people of Taipei work with peace of mind, and said that he would strengthen Taipei's urban transportation management and implement "smart transportation" in the future to contribute to Taiwan's regional transportation. Once this proposal was put forward, it instantly hit many people.
So, some people say that Jiang Wanan's election as mayor of Taipei is a "rookie" counterattack, which is not objective.
Compared with Jiang Wanan's "smart transportation" political views, let's look at Jiang Wanan's opponent Chen Shizhong. As a celebrity in front of Taiwan’s leader Tsai Ing-wen, Chen Shi-chung is also a famous pioneer in Taiwan’s ability to pursue “independence” based on the epidemic. For a while, Chen Shizhong once made Taiwanese people sigh:
If you don’t look at Chen Shizhong today, you don’t know if you can go out tomorrow.
When the epidemic stabilized, Tsai Ing-wen allowed the DPP authorities to flatter him on the grounds that Taiwan's epidemic prevention achievements were significant and that Chen Shi-chung had made contributions to commanding him. However, everything changed later. From April 2021 to the present, two major epidemics have occurred in Taiwan, and the corruption in epidemic prevention has been serious, so that the number of confirmed cases and mortality rates of the new coronavirus in Taiwan remained high, which has seriously questioned the ability of Chen Shizhong, the person in charge of epidemic prevention.
Not only that, Chen Shizhong's deep "binding" with Tsai Ing-wen's political life also made voters on the island very disgusted. Later polls even showed that the more Tsai Ing-wen helped cheer up, the lower the polls of Chen Shizhong were. In addition, the campaign team Chen Shizhong was accompanied by was all children of the DPP's powerful people, which made the Taiwanese people exclaim that this was not an election, but a political training ground for Chen Shizhong.
, Chen Shizhong's political opinion is: will replace all public toilets within the jurisdiction with free toilets, and disinfection alcohol and cushion paper will also be provided in the toilet. In order to express his propaganda more intuitively, Chen Shizhong also created an advertising picture where a man squatted in the toilet and another person leaned over from above↓
In response to this, the Kuomintang MP bluntly said: Peeping in the toilet is a psychological shadow of many people, and Chen Shizhong regarded disgust as interesting. Obviously, such election publicity did not have a good effect, so Chen Shizhong chose to replace the advertising picture. At this point, the Democratic Progressive Party, represented by Chen Shizhong, was at a disadvantage in the political arena of Taipei's election.
In addition to his strong opponent Chen Shizhong, Huang Shanshan, the current deputy mayor of Taipei, should not be underestimated. As an independent, she has weakened the aggression and disgust of the people. In addition, as a beloved player of the current mayor of Taipei Ke Wenzhe, Huang Shanshan was once highly expected. However, Huang Shanshan did not show stronger leadership later, and exhausted her time and place, so it was not an accident that she lost to Jiang Wanan, who seemed to be a "little sheep" but actually had a firm grasp of the basics.
Can the future unification of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait depend on him?
Jiang Wanan has always been harmful to humans and animals. Perhaps this is the cleverness within him and the Kuomintang, using gentleness, such a non-impact characteristic as his protective color for charging forward. Some people say that Jiang Wanan is now the mayor of Taipei, an important public opinion position in Taiwan. Will he contribute to promoting cross-strait reunification in the future? Some experts analyzed that there are such possibilities.
First of all, as a member of the Jiang family, Jiang Wanan once expressed his intention to call on the cross-strait to resolve differences peacefully and properly. If, like the Jiang family, they always regard the great cause of unification as their mission, then according to the Chinese inheritance culture, Jiang Wanan's feelings for the country should also have.
However, although the current Taiwanese people are less and less likely to identify with a China under the influence of the DPP authorities, we can see from the current DPP authorities' miserable defeat in the "nine-in-one" election that the Taiwanese people focus on their own interests, so the DPP only ignores the livelihood and life safety of the people for the sake of the slogan similar to "anti-China and safeguards Taiwan", but ignores the people's livelihood and life safety, which will lose people's support in the end.
So, if Jiang Wanan, a descendant of the Jiang family, can make political achievements in the position of mayor of Taipei in the future, it is not impossible to turn the situation around in the future.
Secondly, Jiang Wanan is only 44 years old this year. As the youngest mayor in Taiwan, although he lacks political experience, if he can get guidance from knowledgeable people within the Kuomintang, he will have enough time and energy to gain experience in the future, and then make great achievements in the political circle of Taiwan.
The most important thing at the moment is that the political views proposed by Jiang Wan'an can be implemented one by one. If we agreed to seek benefits for the people of Taiwan, if we can't do it in the end, then our political path will encounter huge obstacles to public opinion. After all, relying solely on the identity of "descendants of Chiang Kai-shek" does not have a great advantage in the political world. Once the actual actions cannot be made later, then after the public opinion foundation collapses, it will be the time when Jiang Wanan falls. So Taiwanese media also said that although Jiang Wanan won temporarily, the real test is still to come.
However, I personally express gratitude for the Kuomintang to get back its previous "lost territory" this year, Taipei and most other cities and counties. If Jiang Wanan can make some practical performance based on his identity and support for the people in the future, and play some active role in the unification of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, then Taiwan's political atmosphere will definitely improve. The future "remedy" depends on what Jiang Wanan will do in the next time.
Jiang Wan'an's specific details, let us wait and see with the Taiwanese people. I hope he will seek welfare for the Taiwanese people as soon as possible, and will not let down the expectations of the mainland people. I hope he will make historic contributions to the great cause of national reunification as soon as possible!
