Kaohsiung, Taiwan – On Super Sunday, as Taiwan's three main political parties converged on the southern city of Kaohsiung, Vivian, 28, and her nervous dog Kimmy stood together on the sidelines of a rally for presidential candidate Ko Wen. heh.
Ko was once mayor of Taipei, but he and his small Taiwan People's Party (TPP) never held national office.
That doesn't worry his followers.
“I think that although Ko is a completely new election, judging by his policies and the debate, you can understand his logic,” Vivian told Al Jazeera, standing in an auxiliary section at the crowded January 7 rally. He makes it easy for me to understand what he wants to do.”
Four years ago, in the 2020 presidential election, Vivian, who did not want to share her full name, says she voted for the current Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). So did many other young people, who turned out in droves and helped President Tsai Ing-wen win a second term in a landslide.
But this time it's different. Vivian wants a change from the usual two-party competition between the DPP and the Kuomintang (KMT), and that could be a worrying sign for this year's DPP presidential candidate, William Lai Ching-te.
Its appeal to young people (voters must be 20 or older in Taiwan) is the latest challenge for a political party that previously had to deal with issues such as martial law, the once-powerful KMT, which has led Taiwan since the 1990s. 1940 to the year 2000. and several years in the political desert after the arrest in 2008 of its first president, Chen Shui-bian, accused of corruption.
The DPP's fortunes revived with the 2014 Sunflower Movement, a pivotal student protest against a controversial trade deal that would have given Beijing more influence over Taiwan. When the PPD absorbed many of Girasol's activists and political platforms, the party gained lasting popularity among many Millennials and eight years in the presidential palace.
The party also learned a thing or two about marketing from its young supporters, rebranding technocrat Tsai as an “iron cat lady,” taking on China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory, while flanked by its various photogenic mascots.
Now, a decade later, Taiwan The next generation of Gen Z voters and younger Millennials, born in the late 90s and early 2000s, are emerging as a political force, and they see the PDP not as the party of outsiders who can bring about change, but as part of the establishment.
The next generation steps forward
Some DPP members even have a name for this group of young voters: the mingzhu fuerdai, or “second-generation democracy.” The term is a play on fuerdai, a Mandarin Chinese word for people who grew up with inherited wealth, often the children or grandchildren of a hard-working businessman.
In Taiwan, mingzhu fuerdai grew much after the end of martial law in 1987 or the White Lily student movement of 1990 that led to the island's first democratic elections. These voters, aged between 20 and 29, represent more than 14 percent of the electorate, according to the Central Election Commission, with 2.8 million eligible voters out of a total of 19.5 million.
They are followed by voters aged 30 to 39, making up a slightly older 16.5 percent, born shortly before Taiwan's first democratic elections in 1996 or earlier, according to government data. Voters over 40 make up almost 70 percent of the electorate.
“Young people have no experience in fighting for democracy. The history of democracy in Taiwan is only in textbooks; They learn from it, but they don't know how people like our president and, in fact, many [others] I fought for this,” DPP legislative candidate Huang Jie, 30, told Al Jazeera from her campaign office in Kaohsiung.
Huang wondered if this slight feeling of apathy could also be a sign of the success of Taiwan's democracy; that people no longer have to fight for their political and civic freedoms. “Maybe it's a good thing for the younger generation because they can enjoy freedom and democracy and they don't need to think about it,” he said.
This year's campaign is primarily focused on domestic issues, Huang says, while regional and global events that shaped the 2020 election, such as the Hong Kong democracy protests, have taken a backseat. The protests gave Taiwanese voters, albeit briefly, a glimpse of what the future under Chinese rule could look like, with images of young protesters fighting riot police or being subsequently arrested. Many feared what they saw.
The worries of daily life outweigh the rest
Many of the concerns of young Taiwanese are similar to problems faced by young people in other parts of the world, such as the rising cost of living in big cities and a housing market that favors older generations over first-time buyers.
Al Jazeera interviewed six people under the age of 40 who attended last Sunday's political rallies in Kaohsiung, and they all cited affordable housing as a key concern, something the DPP has failed to address over the past eight years.
Others may long for something different from Taiwan's old two-party system.
“Many young people are tired of the old political culture based on blue and green party culture,” said Huang Ching-in, 31, a prominent TPP member and Taipei city councilor, using common nicknames for the “KMT “blue” and DPP “green”.
“With the TPP, they see a different political model,” he said.
Ko's supporters spoke on Sunday about how much they liked his direct communication style and his use of social media, particularly sites like YouTube that allowed him to connect with voters away from the glare of Taiwan's highly partisan media landscape.
Huang also highlighted these differences and other tools, such as the TPP's use of live streaming on Facebook and Instagram, which she said made young voters feel closer to the party and able to ask questions directly to the party. its members.
Ko is notably the only major candidate trending on TikTok in Taiwan, where on January 11 #柯文科2024 (#Ko Wen-je 2024) was among the top 20 hashtags with 312 posts and four million views. The hashtag #總統大選 (#PresidentialElection) trended in fifth place with more than 1,000 posts and 25 million views and #選舉 (#election) in eighth place with 742 posts and 17 million views.
Some skepticism
But the former Taipei mayor hasn't won over everyone, including Chen Shu-wei, 26, who spent Sunday at the DPP rally in Kaohsiung.
“They are more international and more open-minded to foreigners, and not just to those from China,” Chen said of the DPP against the roaring backdrop of the demonstration. “That is the most important [reason] “For me to vote for the PDP.”
Chen said he thought that while Ko knew how to talk to voters and tell them what they wanted to hear, he lacked the necessary leadership experience and credentials.
A similar point was made by Wilson, 26, who also preferred not to share his full name, as he stopped at the KMT rally in Kaohsiung, standing out among the crowd of otherwise much older party supporters, many of whom they could have done it. He was a contemporary of his grandparents.
Wilson told Al Jazeera that he made a point of attending every political rally in the city and had yet to choose his preferred candidate, but he was still a little wary of Ko despite his popularity among other voters his age.
At 64, Ko was still part of the older generation, Wilson said, making him a contemporary of DPP candidate Lai, who is also 64, and KMT candidate Hou Yu-ih, who is a couple of years older. Ko also lost some support among voters after a failed attempt to run jointly with the KMT in November, leaving doubts about his negotiating skills and political astuteness.
Despite positioning himself as something of an iconoclast, some of Ko's policies are similar to those offered by other parties.
He has called on Taiwan to resume talks on the same KMT-led trade deal with China that sparked the Sunflower Movement a decade ago.
Similarly, his call for a “third way” to dialogue with China falls between the “polarized” views of the KMT and the DPP, but his support for Taiwan's continued “status quo” is very similar to that of both parties. Some analysts have already predicted that Taiwan China policy will remain largely the same regardless of who wins the presidency.
Lev Nachman, an assistant professor at Taiwan's National Chengchi University who researches Taiwanese electoral politics, cautioned against thinking of young voters as a unanimous bloc, despite Ko's clear appeal to some of them.
“We have this idea that all young people care about wages and housing, and I think that's an overstatement,” Nachman said. “I don't think young people have these well-thought-out political platforms that we attribute to them. Certainly many of them care about wages and housing, but many simply don't like the PDP because they are the PDP. It's as simple as that.”
