China-Taiwan Weekly Update, February 7, 2025
Authors: Matthew Sperzel, Daniel Shats, Alison O’Neil, Karina Wugang, and Grant Morgan of the Institute for the Study of War;
Alexis Turek of the American Enterprise Institute
Editors: Dan Blumenthal and Nicholas Carl of the American Enterprise Institute
Data Cutoff: February 4, 2025
The China–Taiwan Weekly Update is a joint product from the Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute. The update supports the ISW–AEI Coalition Defense of Taiwan project, which assesses Chinese campaigns against Taiwan, examines alternative strategies for the United States and its allies to deter the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) aggression, and—if necessary—defeat the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The update focuses on the Chinese Communist Party’s paths to controlling Taiwan and cross–Taiwan Strait developments.
Key Takeaways
Cross-Strait Relations
Taiwan
Taiwanese civil society groups are leading a large-scale recall campaign targeting legislators from the Kuomintang (KMT) opposition party. These recalls could erode the current KMT-led majority in the Legislative Yuan (LY). The Central Election Commission (CEC) has received recall petitions against 19 KMT legislators.[1] The legislative minority leader of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Ker Chien-ming, has called for mass recalls against all 41 KMT and KMT-aligned legislators in response to the KMT and its allies passing controversial cuts and freezes to the national budget, which could paralyze the government, and measures that are temporarily preventing the Constitutional Court from functioning ordinarily.[2] The DPP has criticized the budget cuts and freezes and measures against the Constitution Court, describing these actions as damaging to Taiwan’s ability to resist PRC efforts to undermine its sovereignty. The KMT retaliated by initiating recall petitions against four DPP legislators, two of which have received enough signatures to be submitted to the CEC. [3]
Taiwanese billionaire and United Microelectronics founder Robert Tsao has helped lead the anti-KMT recall campaign.[4] Tsao has previously accused the KMT and its allies of “sabotaging” the government to the benefit of the PRC. Tsao is an active supporter of strengthening Taiwan’s resilience against a potential PRC invasion, which is also a primary focus of President Lai Ching-te’s administration.
The CEC is reviewing the petitions at time of writing to assess whether they meet the threshold to initiate a recall election. Recall petitions meet the threshold if 1 percent of the electorate submits a valid signature. Any recall petitions that got the requisite number of signatures will trigger a recall election. The next step is to pass the recall motion in the recall election. The CEC currently mandates that a recall motion is passed “if the number of valid votes in favor is greater than the number of votes against” and “the number of votes in favor reaches more than one-quarter of the total number of voters in the original electoral district.”[5] Not every legislator targeted by recall petitions is from a politically competitive district; it is thus likely that many recall elections will fail to remove the targeted official.
Successful recalls of KMT legislators could empower the DPP in the LY and neutralize the opposition parties’ efforts to counter Lai’s agenda. Recall efforts offer the DPP the opportunity to regain control of the LY for the first time since the January 2024 elections. The LY currently has no majority party, with the DPP holding 51 seats, the KMT holding 54 (including two KMT-aligned independents), and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) holding eight seats. The TPP has aligned with the KMT in the LY, giving the opposition a majority in practice.[6] The DPP needs to flip at least six seats (for a total of 57) in order to gain control of the LY; a mere plurality would be insufficient as long as the TPP continues to vote with the KMT.
KMT and TPP-sponsored amendments to the Public Officials Election and Recall Act may help preserve their influence in the LY, however. They passed an amendment that requires citizens to provide copies of their ID cards — rather than just their ID numbers and addresses — when initiating or signing recall petitions. The DPP-controlled Executive Yuan returned this amendment to the LY for reconsideration on February 2, which is unlikely to prevent the amendment’s passage again but will buy additional time for recall petitions to move forward before the ID requirement is in place. The LY has 15 days to pass a bill on a second review, after which President Lai must sign the bill within 10 days.[7] KMT legislators have also proposed (but not yet passed) an amendment to raise the threshold for a recall to succeed. The amendment stipulates that a recall will only remove an official from power if more voters vote to recall the official than voted to elect the official originally.[8]
Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) blocked 13 Shanghai officials from entering Taiwan for the Taipei Lantern Festival in response to allegations that the PRC obstructed PRC-based Taiwanese businesspeople from returning to Taiwan for cross-strait events. The 13 officials included the director of Shanghai’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) Jin Mei. Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Chiu Chui-cheng said that the decision to block the Shanghai delegation was largely based on the PRC obstructing Taiwanese businesspeople living in the PRC from returning home to join activities organized by the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF). The ...
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