Comradeship // Freechat

Here's a great overview of the current political conflict in Taiwan from someone living there: https://m.youtube.com/live/DU0LSsWBtx8

The pro-US DPP is losing popularity because their independence stance is hurting the economy (because China is Taiwan's largest trading parter, so cutting it off for the US is fucking stupid). All the DPP does is yell about independence and the China threat while Taiwan's econony is stagnating and living costs are increasing.

In response, a former DPP-aligned mayor Ko Wenje broke away and founded his own party, the Taiwan People's Party (TPP) in 2019. The party positions itself as centrist, but in practice votes with the KMT more often.

In the most recent 2024 legislative elections, the DPP got 51 seats and lost its majority, the KMT got 52 seats, and the TPP got 8 seats. Because in practice the TPP votes with the KMT, the DPP essentially does not have control of the legislature anymore. However, the DPP still controls the presidency and executive branch, winning 40% of the vote in the 2024 presidential elections.

In response to the KMT and TPP's success, the DPP used the executive-controlled prosecutor's office to arrest Ko Wenje on dubious corruption charges. This had resulted in massive protests against the DPP in Taiwan, denouncing them as anti-democracy.

The DPP has used its US connections to institute a media blackout on the topic. Notice that these protests have almost no visibility in the international media and are only reported on by a select few Taiwanese news outlets. ^[https://focustaiwan.tw/politics/202501110007] ^[https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/02/03/taiwan-constitutional-crisis-dpp-kmt-legislature/]

It prolly refers to Taiwan's historically pro-unification Guomindang and People's Party, led by the increasing ex-green turned blue leader Ko Wen-je, gaining more seats in the Legislative Yuan.

Yes! I also is interested in that because I can't find anything about that anywhere!