James Soong

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Soong in 2012 when he announced his candidacy for president

James Soong ( Chinese  宋楚瑜 , Pinyin Sòng Chǔyú , also Soong Chu-yu ; born March 16, 1942 in Xiangtan , Hunan ) is a Taiwanese politician, chairman and presidential candidate of the Qinmindang party .

Life

Soong was born in 1942 in the Chinese province of Hunan. His father was an officer in the armed forces of the Republic of China . At the age of seven, he and his family fled to Taiwan with the Kuomintang party , which was defeated in the Chinese Civil War , where he grew up and graduated from Chengchi National University in 1964 with a degree in international relations . After his military service, Soong went to the United States to study, where he earned masters degrees from the University of California (political science) and the Catholic University of America (library science), and a doctorate in political science from Georgetown University in 1974 .

Political career

Early career

Soong had already joined the Kuomintang as a student and after his return from the USA made a career as secretary to the Prime Minister and later President of the Republic of China Chiang Ching-kuo . From 1979 to 1984 he also headed the Government Information Bureau of the Republic of China. After Chiang's death in 1988, Soong campaigned for the successor and then Vice President Lee Teng-hui as the new president within the dictatorial Kuomintang . This was explosive in that Soong opposed the majority of the mainland Chinese ( Waishengren ) party elite, who were suspicious of Lee, who came from the island of Taiwan.

Governor and presidential candidate

After Lee took office, Soong was appointed governor of Taiwan Province by the new president . In the first and only democratic gubernatorial election in 1994, Soong was confirmed in office and held it until 1998. Soong, who was popular with the population at the time, intended to run as a candidate for the Kuomintang in the presidential election in 2000 , was unable to prevail against incumbent Vice President Lien Chan within the party . When Soong announced that he wanted to run for office anyway, he was expelled from the party. He ran as an independent candidate, as he finished second behind election winner Chen Shui-bian ( Democratic Progressive Party ).

Soong founded his own party, the Qinmindang , and ran in the 2004 presidential election in the so-called Pan-Blue coalition alongside the new Kuomintang candidate Lien Chan as a candidate for the office of vice president. The election was narrowly lost.

After the election defeat, the Pan-Blue coalition pursued the strategy of rapprochement with the People's Republic of China (Lien Chan's and Soong's brief visits to China in 2005), but the Qinmindang was too much overshadowed by the Kuomintang and increasingly lost politically in importance. In the 2006 election as mayor of Taipei City , Soong failed with only 4.14% of the vote. Despite speculation about his retirement from politics and a possible unification of his party with the Kuomintang, Soong ran again as a candidate for president in the 2012 presidential election, but won only 2.77% of the vote. On August 6, 2015, Soong announced that he would run for the office of president again in the January 2016 presidential election. In the election he reached 12.84% of the vote and thus took third place. On November 13, 2019, Soong announced that it would also run for the January 2020 presidential election. This was his fifth candidacy. In the election, he and his vice-presidential candidate Yu Hsiang (余 湘, Sandra Yu) achieved 4.26% of the vote.

APEC special envoy

In November 2016, Soong represented Taiwan as special envoy at the APEC summit in Lima on behalf of President Tsai Ing-wen .

Web links

Commons : James Soong  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ James Soong announces presidential bid , Focus Taiwan, August 6, 2015
  2. ^ Website of the Central Election Committee
  3. ↑ Taiwan's PFP Chairman James Soong announces presidential bid , Taiwan News, November 11, 2019
  4. ↑ Lin Liang-sheng, Jonathan Chin: APEC Summit: Soong engages China's Xi at APEC summit in Lima. Taipei Times, November 21, 2016, accessed November 29, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Soong, James
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 宋楚瑜 (Chinese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Taiwanese politician, chairman and presidential candidate of the Qinmindang party
DATE OF BIRTH March 16, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Xiangtan , Hunan