Political Chaos Deepens in Taiwan's Congress

Squabbling camps launch competing recalls as instability creates opening for Beijing

By: Jens Kastner

Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan, its 113-member unicameral legislature, is nearing paralysis, at a time when its main protector the United States government in chaos and promises of security growing uncertain as China grows bolder with its reunification demands across the 180-km Taiwan Strait. A total of 44 legislators of Taiwan’s main opposition party the Kuomintang (KMT), and the governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) are facing competing recall vote campaigns, meaning well over one-third of the parliament are preoccupied with defending seats that were earned in free democratic elections.

Despite Taiwan’s nominal position as a recalcitrant Chinese province, it is enormously important to the west, manufacturing nearly 70 percent of the world’s semiconductors and around 90 percent of the most advanced chips. Were the world to lose its production capacity, no other economy could fill the gap readily. It also anchors the so-called first island chain extending from the Japanese islands to the Philippines, critical to US efforts to retain a foothold in the South China Sea and to defend US interests in the Indo-Pacific region…