Notes

Much ado in Taipei. On July 26, Taiwan held recall elections for 24 members of the Legislative Yuan, the country’s legislature. To be clear, 24 is more than 20 percent of the Yuan as a whole.

The center-right Kuomintang (KMT) and their ally, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), won a majority in the Yuan after last year’s elections, but the center-left Democratic People’s Party (DPP) backed the recall effort to try to flip control of the chamber.

The DPP had controlled it—and the country’s presidency—since 2016, but President Lai Ching-te, a.k.a. William Lai, has met immovable opposition in the Yuan since the last elections.

The recall effort failed, but the campaign—and the months of divided government—have shown a deepening and dangerous partisan polarization in the country. The KMT wants a friendlier approach to mainland China, while Lai and the DPP see Beijing as an existential threat and want closer ties with the U.S. and the West.

But now the Kuomintang and the TPP are pushing to give the legislature greater powers over the presidency and to freeze spending—which the DPP says serves the interests of China.

The KMT-TPP allies say Lai and the DPP want a war with China and are using anti-democratic means to silence opposition: The government indicted TPP leader Ko Wen-je on corruption charges last December. During the recall campaign, KMT leader Eric Chu compared the DPP to the Nazis and Lai to Adolf Hitler. Yuan members from opposing parties even got into a huge brawl inside the chamber in May of 2024.

And amid all this, the Chinese Communist Party is stepping up social-media propaganda campaigns to demonize Lai and the DPP and to promote misinformation and conspiracies.

Is Taiwan’s democracy in trouble?

—Michael Bluhm