In late November 2023, when a proposed alliance between the KMT and the TPP fell through, KMT legislator Yeh Yuan-chih (葉元之) hired a poster artist to rework a giant campaign billboard that he rented. The original poster design featured KMT presidential contender Hou Yu-ih (left) alongside TPP founder Ko Wen-je (center). KMT vice presidential candidate Jaw Shau-kong’s face (right) was painted over Ko’s figure in the revamped billboard at Banqiao, New Taipei.
Taiwan achieved 71% in voter turnout at this year’s general elections — the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) presidential ticket won by a simple majority. The current vice president, William Lai Ching-te (賴清德), and the former Taiwanese representative to the United States, Bi-khim Hsiao (蕭美琴), will be inaugurated on May 20 as the 16th executive team to lead the country for the next four years.
The Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) nominees, Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜) and Jaw Shau-kong (趙少康), have respectively returned to their posts as New Taipei mayor and media personality. Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) has retained the chairmanship of his Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) while his running mate Cynthia Wu (吳欣盈) has been named the new chairwoman of Shin Kong Life Foundation, the philanthropic arm of her family-owned Shin Kong conglomerate.
Lai and Hsiao face a divided parliament: their DPP now holds 51 of the 113 seats, while 52 went to the KMT and 8 to the TPP. No small parties managed to capture a legislative seat in this round of votes but the midterm elections of 2026 may provide another opportunity for new political representation.
Elections are boisterous, community-building movements in Taiwan. Temples, metal bands, YouTubers, loudspeaker-blaring trucks and bicycles, and neighborhood groups at all levels are mobilized to campaign for votes. Families and friends trade barbs and debate with fervor over their preferred candidates. Rally mementos like flags, stickers, face masks, tissue packets, and caps are often treated as collectibles, even though the majority of these freely distributed items are manufactured by China.
The power to vote sparks conversations, conflict, and memes. Here are nine anecdotes that offer a taste of how elections with Taiwanese characteristics work.
AIR RAID ALERT 防空警報
Smartphones and social media buzzed over an automated Presidential Alert warning of potential satellite debris from China launching the Einstein Probe over southern Taiwan airspace on Jan. 9, 2024. Unfortunately, the accompanying English text — “[Air raid Alert] Missile flyover Taiwan airspace,be aware.” — did not accurately reflect the original Mandarin message. Sent just 96 hours before voting day, it induced a general sense of unease until the Ministry of National Defense (MND), issuer of the botched alert, apologized an hour later for the misleading English text.
Taiwan’s Public Warning Cell Broadcast Service sends alerts for air raids, air raid drills, cold weather in agricultural regions if forecast dips below 6°C, critical disasters, discharging reservoirs, earthquakes, epidemic updates, emergency water outage due to poison or contaminants, evacuation orders, forest fires, gas pipeline or refinery explosions, industrial fires, landslides, nuclear accidents, power outages, road closures, torrential rain, toxic and chemical disasters, tsunamis, typhoons, volcanic activity, and unhealthy air quality levels.
Drafted by various national bodies responsible for keeping Taiwan safe and running, these bilingual alerts have proven to be most useful, often reassuring, and somewhat stressful at times. It should also be noted that China’s the third-largest Earth-based polluter of space responsible for 23.4% of our orbital rubble, behind the United States (25.1%) and Russia (31.4%). Viewership of “Falling from the Sky (天降)” by independent filmmaker Zhang Zanbo (張贊波), a 2009 documentary on how unregulated Chinese space debris impact a rural village in Hunan Province, spiked on YouTube after the MND alert in Taiwan.
DEATH GRIP 死亡之握
A long-running gag in Taiwanese politics has been the “handshake of doom” practiced by former President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), a steely clasp directing his inner negativity to drain his opponents of energy or even the will to live. It is said that those with a lower level of Qi or prior injuries and without a good replenishing source of positivity will succumb to their internal wounds within days, although some targets have managed to survive for several years before yielding to the deleterious effects of Ma’s Death Grip.
Proponents of this theory cite Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s recent history of ailing health as proof of Ma’s reputation. Some netizens have even extrapolated that this was Ma’s plan all along — to knowingly kowtow to China for seven years with the very aim of setting up the feted Ma-Xi summit at Singapore in 2015. Their 80-second handshake has spawned several memes:
Left: ‘Should History Be Kinder to Ma?’
Xi: Let go… of my hand!
Ma: Long live… the Republic of China!
Xi: The Americans are cold to us, the Hongkongers refuse to obey us… who did this.
Right: ‘To Be Continued…’
Summarized caption: Sustained loss in global trade and technology wars, sluggish Belt-and-Road and other economic prospects, rising regional debts and defaulting banks, bankrupted businesses and spiraling unemployment, a resistant Hong Kong, exploding factories and catastrophic public infrastructure failures, onslaught of swine and rat plagues, inflating commodity costs and dwindling food supplies, unprecedented flooding and coronavirus woes… TBC
Because of the disastrously alienating effect of Ma’s pro-Xi comments in a DW exclusive interview last month that led to the former president not being invited to his own Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) final campaign rally, Ma’s Death Grip made the 2024 elections news cycle over renewed and enthused speculations whether the toxicity of his handshake extended to those KMT candidates he sought to endorse.
FROZEN GARLIC 凍蒜
This iconic catchphrase meaning “to your victory” or “we are rooting for you” is used as a rallying cry and echoed as a fervent crowd chant at countless election campaigns in Taiwan. Derived from the Taiwanese phrase 當選 for “(to) become elected,” it is pronounced tòng-suán and cheekily transliterated as 凍蒜 in local Mandarin reportage by borrowing the homophone characters of “frozen” and “garlic.”
The standard exchange goes —
Loudspeaker from rally stage or campaign truck: Tsai Ing-wen!
Supporters respond with: tòng-suán!
Loudspeaker: Tsai Ing-wen!
Supporters: tòng-suán!
Loudspeaker: Tsai Ing-wen!
Supporters: tòng-suán!
Loudspeaker: Tsai Ing-wen — Tsai Ing-wen — Tsai Ing-wen!
Supporters: tòng-suán — tòng-suán — tòng-suán!
*flags flap and banners glide and air-horns blare*
Other translations include “may you win the elections” while some international outlets like the New York Times have chosen to preserve the saying in full flavor as “Frozen Garlic” in English. Any discussion of tòng-suán would also be remise without mentioning Academia Sinica researcher Nathan Batto’s eponymous blog on elections in Taiwan.
LET’S GO PICK UP TSAI ING-WEN FROM THE BEACH 去海邊把蔡英文接回來
When the DPP’s “On the Road” campaign video debuted on Jan. 2, a new event on social media appeared, for coded Facebook Event titles have become a new flashpoint for Taiwanese fanfare. The campaign story goes — at the helm of a car coasting through Taiwan, President Tsai Ing-wen is accompanied by DPP vice presidential nominee Bi-khim Hsiao sitting in the back, and DPP presidential nominee Vice President William Lai Ching-te riding shotgun. They comment on staying true to one’s course before Tsai gives her seat to Lai, who drives off as Tsai waves goodbye from a beach. Concerned citizens then created a Facebook Event named “Let’s go pick up Tsai Ing-wen from the beach” lest she be stranded and unable to find a way home.
Other politically titled Facebook Events with no real intent of facilitating a physical gathering of folks include:
- Let’s return the KMT to China (把中國國民黨還給中國)
- Let’s shower traitors of the Sunflower Movement with sunflowers (把太陽花丟到今非昔比的人臉上)
- Batter up! Let’s intercept China’s satellite with a sports racket (用球拍把衛星打回去)
Ahead of a Jan. 5 campaign event in New Taipei, the Tsai team embraced the beach meme by sending out a LINE message to subscribers saying, “Hello, this is Tsai Ing-wen, I am not marooned on a beach. I invite you to join me at Bi-khim’s rally tonight….”
SMA脊髓性肌肉萎縮症
A disability rights lawyer by the name of Chun-Han Chen (陳俊翰), who lived with a hereditary condition known as Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), ran for public office as a legislative candidate on the DPP’s 2024 election-party list; he failed to secure a seat as contender #16 as the Jan. 13 party votes tallied only enough to put 13 of the DPP’s 34 nominees through.
Chen was hoping to give voice to 5% of the Taiwanese population who live with a disability or rare disease. Taiwan’s Health Promotion Administration (HPA) recorded 539 people with SMA in 2023. Born without the muscular strength to walk, he grew up in a wheelchair and was able to hold onto a pencil until 8th grade. As the first test-taker to pass the country’s college entrance examinations by dictating to an assigned scribe, Chen served as the precedent for other persons with disabilities to request testing accommodations as needed.
During college, an electronic lap blanket that overheated and caught on fire resulted in the amputation of his scorched lower limbs. Chen went on to graduate from National Taiwan University (bachelor’s degrees in law and business administration), Harvard Law School (master of laws), and Michigan Law School (doctor of juridical science).
Chen’s advancing SMA had left him with only control over his eyes, mouth, and the very tip of his fingers, but he remained a postdoctoral member of Taiwan’s top national research institute Academia Sinica before passing away on Feb. 11 due to health complications exacerbated by a flu. He was 40. Rest in power, Chen Chun-han (June 15, 1983 — Feb. 11, 2024).
Rights groups have been lobbying Taiwanese political parties to not just include candidates like Chen on their roster, but to actually place them on the “safe list” for legislator-at-large seats — a move that would actually guarantee they become elected lawmakers representing their constituency and Taiwan’s commitment to defending universal rights.
TAYLOR SWIFT 泰勒絲
During a live and televised debate on Jan. 1, the KMT’s VP candidate Jaw Shau-kong claimed that millionaire singer Taylor Swift turned down his invitation to perform in Taiwan due to “geopolitical risks” between the two countries separated by the Taiwan Strait. The claim has yet to be verified or debunked, but concertgoers in Taiwan have speculated that his offer was scrutinized as a possible scam instead, given the confusingly named Broadcasting Corporation of China (BCC) title of Jaw’s Taipei-based company that issued the invite. The ball remains in the blue camp, however, as Taipei Mayor Wayne Chiang (蔣萬安), a great-grandson of the infamous Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, has promised to bring Swift to the brand-new Taipei Dome.
THESIS-GATE 論文門
Disinformation concerning the academic credentials of incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen, who was awarded a PhD in Law in 1984 by the London School of Economics, tends to proliferate like mushrooms during the countdown to recent elections. “President Tsai’s PHD was valid and properly awarded by the University,” stated the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s independent body for upholding information rights, in response to incessant disclosure requests regarding the president’s LSE degree and “the subsequent whereabouts of her PHD thesis.”
“The intent of these requests is clearly to try to add weight to theories around the falsification of President Tsai’s PHD, which have already been considered at length by the Commissioner and the Tribunal and found to be entirely lacking in substance,” the ICO concluded in 2022.
Tsai has provided the London School of Economics with a copy of her thesis for the public to read, and “a digital version of her personal copy to the National Central Library of Taiwan,” the university reiterated in 2019. It is titled “Unfair trade practices and safeguard actions” and dedicated to her parents.
VOTE RIGHT, VOTE WHITE 支持白色力量是正確的選擇
Spotted briefly on the TPP’s campaign website last July, a hastily discarded graphic proclaiming “Vote Right, Vote White” was attributed to the lapse of judgement and unfamiliarity with English of an intermediate-level digital editor (小編) working independently from Ko Wen-je’s core election team. The color reference was meant to paint the TPP as a third-party champion “untainted” by the current political factions characterized by various shades of blue (KMT) and green (DPP), although the TPP itself flies a banner of light blue. And instead of a right-wing nod, “right” apparently meant “making the correct choice.”
The unfortunate TPP graphic not only evaded internal proofreading during production, it was emblazoned with a motto that mirrored the 1964 slogan of a white supremacy group from Knoxville, Tennessee: the National States Rights Party. The racist tagline was also embraced by supporters of Alabama Governor George Corley Wallace, a segregationist determined not to be “outniggered” by winning back the support of the Ku Klux Klan in 1962, and Bernard E. Epton, the Republican who canvassed openly as “Epton for mayor… Before it’s too late” in the Chicago mayoral election of 1983.
As for the TPP founder, Ko is affectionately nicknamed “Ko P” — which is short for Professor Ko, because “professor” is used as a reverential title in Taiwan slang for someone perceived as elite and academically gifted, such as doctors or educators. His supporters are known as “Ko fans (柯粉)” and sometimes an oyster emoji 🦪 is used to denote Ko-related affiliation, as the Mandarin word for oyster 蚵 is a homophone of Ko’s family name, 柯.
WUHAN PNEUMONIA 五漢廢言
Once upon last summer, former President Ma Ying-jeou tried to broker an alliance between his party, the Chinese Nationalists (KMT), and the up-and-coming Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) that was surfing the tides of youth discontentment. Weeks went by without actual concessions made to secure consensus, so Foxconn tycoon Terry Gou (郭台銘) agreed to help arrange one last meeting with fellow presidential hopefuls, Hou Yu-ih (KMT) and Ko Wen-je (TPP) at Grand Hyatt Taipei on Nov. 23; the hope was to present a united front through a live broadcast by inviting the media, and then for a final round of negotiations to take place behind closed doors at the hotel’s presidential suite (aka room #2538).
Yet Ma and his successor Eric Chu (朱立倫), the KMT chair and former New Taipei mayor who mentored the KMT’s presidential candidate Hou, showed up at the Hyatt as unexpected guests. The evening deteriorated from there: eyes were rolled, handshakes were rejected, personal chat messages were read publicly, someone brought a countdown clock, and most comments offered were laced with malice and devoid of cooperative intent. The potentially disruptive “blue-white alliance” between the KMT and TPP never materialized.
A new Taiwanese meme was born forth from the monumental convergence of these five men — Ko, Gou, Ma, Hou, and Chu — through a wordplay mimicking the phrasing of the Mandarin for “Wuhan Pneumonia (武漢肺炎),” the original description of a mysterious illness (region + dominant symptom) reported by the late Chinese whistleblower, Dr. Li Wenliang (李文亮, 1985–2020). Its designation was then replaced with Covid-19 (新冠肺炎) as the global epidemic spread. This homophone meme 五漢廢言, however, stands for “five men spewing nonsense” after their egoistical showdown at the Hyatt.
Chuckles and word play aside, the specter of misinformation continues to infect Taiwan’s information ecosystem. A polarized media environment is not an effective Fourth Estate. Deep fakes and AI-generated content are inseminated through Taiwan’s unfettered access to the internet, especially via China’s state-controlled social media and video platforms like TikTok and Little Red Book. Influencers of all nationalities, including some from Taiwan, are being recruited to amplify the CCP’s preferred narratives regarding Taiwan’s autonomy.
Much of the farmed content is designed to weaken the Taiwanese through perception, such as casting doubt on the country’s defense and economic capabilities, eroding trust in global and local governance, milking the atrocities of armed conflicts in hopes of cowering us into submission without a fight, and painting a picture of diplomatic isolation when in fact Taiwan has steadily linked up with more like-minded, democratic nations through a combination of pragmatism and mutual respect.
I ask policymakers from around the world to stand with Taiwan, which is to stand against authoritarianism. I also ask the people of Taiwan to be more conscientious about where they get their information and entertainment from, and don’t be afraid to present a rebuttal to fake news. Some of my favorite fact-checking resources and digital literacy tutorials from Taiwan are:
· LINE Fact Checker (LINE 訊息查證)
· MyGoPen
It can be stressful to actively question the validity of each article or piece of multimedia. One can boost digital literacy and immunity to cheap fakes by keeping a weekly eye on recent lists of debunked disinformation, such as those curated by the Taiwan FactCheck Center and the Associated Press (NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week), and searching for Taiwan-related analysis on investigative platforms like AFP Fact Check, Google Fact Check Explorer, Polygraph.info (backed by VOA), Retraction Watch, Snopes, and VERA Files.
Taiwan has been called the “canary in the coal mine for disinformation against democracy,” the battleground “for reality,” and “ground zero for disinformation.” This means we are in a unique position to explore the latest digital resilience strategies against foreign influence operations and contribute to defending the integrity of the world wide web.
Happy fact-checking!
