Taiwan Solidarity Union

Lee Teng-hui (2004) - President of the Republic of China and party leader of the Kuomintang from 1988 to 2000. In 2001, Lee was co-initiator of the establishment and spiritual mentor of the Taiwan Solidarity Union.

Huang Kuen-hui (2015), 2007 to 2016 party chairman of the TSU

The Taiwan Solidarity Union ( TSU , Chinese  台灣 團結 聯盟 , Pinyin Táiwān Tuánjié Liánméng , English Taiwan Solidarity Union ) is a political party in the Republic of China (Taiwan) . It was the third to fourth largest political party in the Republic of China in terms of votes from 2000 to 2012.

Party history

The TSU was officially founded on August 14, 2001 and is part of the so-called pan-green coalition . Programmatically, she advocates a policy that seeks a full declaration of independence from mainland China. It is the first political party in the Republic of China to officially use the name “Taiwan” (and not “Republic of China”) in its party name. The TSU was founded mainly by former Kuomintang (KMT) party members . The establishment was preceded by the defeat of the KMT in the presidential election in March 2000 , which was unexpectedly won by candidate of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chen Shui-bian . Chen had only won the election with a relative majority of 39.3% of the votes, which was only possible because the KMT had been weakened by internal party disputes and had not been able to agree on a common popular top candidate. As a result, there had been two top candidates ( James Soong and Lien Chan ) on the Conservative political spectrum, both gaining only 36.8% and 23.1% of the vote, respectively.

After the KMT lost the election, the main culprit was the previous President of the Republic of China and KMT chairman Lee Teng-hui . A few days after the election, he was forced to resign from the KMT party leadership. The inner-party critics Lees expressed the assumption that Lee had deliberately driven the defeat of the KMT by not making the popular James Soong the top candidate of the KMT, but instead the rather inconspicuous Lien Chan. Soong then ran his own candidacy and was expelled from the KMT with his supporters. It was only through this split and weakening of the KMT that Chen Shui-bian's election victory became possible. As Lee's motive, it was assumed that he wanted to advance Taiwan's declaration of independence, while the reunification with mainland China is officially stated in the KMT party program as a party goal.

After Chen Shui-bian took office, however, it became clear that he was by no means pushing the declaration of independence forward as he had sometimes demanded and promised in the election campaign. As a result, supporters of a more radical independence policy founded the TSU in July 2001. Lee was chosen as its spiritual leader (albeit without official party membership), who also played an important role in the selection of candidates for the new party. Lee was then expelled from the KMT. In the 2001 , 2004 , 2008 , 2012 and 2016 legislative yuan elections of the Republic of China , the TSU garnered 8.5%, 8.3%, 3.5%, 9.0% and 2.5% of the vote and between 0 and 6% of parliamentary seats. The 2012 result, however, was largely due to loan votes from DPP supporters who wanted to help the TSU, which is allied with the DPP, over the 5% hurdle. Overall, the party is in decline in terms of its share of the vote, which is in part certainly due to the fact that in the TSU, apart from the spiritus rector Lee Teng-hui, no other convincing personalities have distinguished themselves. After the election defeat in 2016, party chairman Huang Kuen-hui ( 黃昆輝 ) resigned and Liu Yi-te ( 劉一德 ) took over the office of chairman on May 16, 2016. Because of its poor performance in the 2016 election, the TSU also lost its entitlement to state subsidies (party funding), so that on January 22, 2016 it announced that it would lay off all of its previous 22 employees.

Legislative yuan election results so far

choice	Won seats	modification	Total votes	Votes in percent	Result	Top candidate
2001	13/225	▲ 13	801.560	8.5%	in opposition	Huang Chu-wen
2004	12/225	▼ 1	756.712	8.28%	in opposition	Huang Chu-wen
2008	0/113	▼ 12	344,887	3.5%	not represented in the Legislative Yuan	Huang Kun-huei
2012	3/113	▲ 3	1,178,896	8.96%	in opposition	Huang Kun-huei
2016	0/113	▼ 3	305,675	2.51%	not represented in the Legislative Yuan	Huang Kun-huei
2020	0/113	▬	50,435	0.36%	not represented in the Legislative Yuan	Huang Kun-huei

literature

• Thomas Weyrauch: Taiwan's common color. The Democratic Profile of the Republic of China . Heuchelheim: Longtai 2015, ISBN 978-3-938946-26-8 .

Web links

Commons : Taiwan Solidarity Union  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• 台灣 團結 聯盟 全球 資訊 網: Taiwan Solidarity Union - Homepage

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wen-hui Tsai, George P. Chen: Building a Democratic State in Modernizing Taiwan: The 2001 Legislative Election and the Push for Pluralism. In: Hungdah Chiu (Ed.): Maryland Series in Contemporary Asian Studies . 2001 (English, umaryland.edu ).
2. ↑ Will the Taiwan Solidarity Union Disappear? ketagalanmedia.com> The Oracles Library, September 3, 2015, accessed December 16, 2015 . 
3. ^ Aaron Tu: TSU elects new party chairman in landslide win. Taipei Times, accessed December 27, 2019 . 
4. ^ Abraham Gerber: All TSU staff laid off after legislature losses. Taipei Times, January 22, 2016, accessed December 27, 2019 .