Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan President Han Kuo-yu’s presence at the second inauguration of Donald Trump earlier this week was an unusual political event. In particular, Han serving as Taiwan’s representative at the inauguration takes place at a moment in which the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of President Lai Ching-te and the Kuomintang (KMT) are at political loggerheads, with the KMT seeking to cut or freeze significant portions of the national budget, and to paralyze the Constitutional Court’s ability to make judicial interpretations.
Han traveled to the United States along with a bipartisan delegation that included three KMT legislators, three DPP legislators, and one Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) legislator. Han is himself a KMT politician and served as the party’s 2020 presidential candidate.
This is not the first time that Taiwan has had a delegation in attendance at a U.S. presidential inauguration. A Taiwanese presidential delegation was present at Trump’s first inauguration in 2017. The 2017 delegation was also headed by the president of the Legislative Yuan (at the time, Yu Shyi-kun of the DPP), and featured legislators from the DPP, KMT, and third parties. That exchange took place shortly after Trump, as president-elect, broke from decades of precedent to take a phone call from then-President Tsai Ing-wen in December 2016.
Likewise, in 2021, Taiwan’s representative to the United States, Hsiao Bi-khim, attended Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration. This made Hsiao the first Taiwanese envoy to the U.S. to be invited to a presidential inauguration since Taiwan and the U.S. severed official diplomatic ties in 1979. Hsiao, who is a DPP politician, currently serves as vice president and is seen as a potential successor to current president Lai Ching-te.
This year, Han and Taiwan’s current representative to the U.S., Alexander Yui, watched the inauguration on a screen at the Capitol Visitor Center. The seven legislators who traveled with Han watched at a VIP area in the Capital One Arena, where the inauguration was also being broadcast.
Originally, the full delegation planned to attend the inauguration in person, but these plans were thrown into disarray when the inauguration ceremony was moved indoors due to cold weather. Given the change in venue, there were not enough seats for all of the originally scheduled guests. Despite uncertainty about whether they would, in fact, be able to attend the ceremonies, after discussion, the delegation still set out for Washington, D.C. anyway.
Plans were then amended so that Han, Yui, and half the delegation would be present at the VIP area of the Capitol Visitor Center, while the other half would sit in the regular seating area. DPP legislator Wang Ting-yu, who was the ranking DPP lawmaker on the delegation, later stated to the media that shifts in these plans had to be kept secret to prevent interference from China.
Taiwan’s Central News Agency, citing anonymous diplomatic sources, later reported that Taiwanese diplomatic staff in the United States focused on at least getting Han – as head of the delegation – into the inauguration. A priority was placed on accomplishing some representation by Taiwan at the inauguration, seeing as Chinese Vice President Han Zheng was to be present. China usually sends its ambassador in Washington to presidential inaugurations; this year, Han Zheng was dispatched to signal the importance that the Xi administration places on relations with the Trump administration.
The CNA report credited Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung as having played an active role in leveraging Taiwan’s diplomatic ties to allow for a Taiwanese presence at the inauguration. This report also mentioned that the budget for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has come under scrutiny from the KMT and TPP in current contentions between the KMT and DPP about the budget for next year. Diplomatic staff in the United States were aware that a potential incident could wind up being used as political ammo in the ongoing controversy, CNA noted.
Han’s acceptance of an invitation from Lai Ching-te to represent Taiwan at the Trump inauguration, as well as the delegation’s bipartisan nature, proved somewhat unusual at a moment of partisan tensions in Taiwan.
Despite serving as president of the Legislative Yuan, Han is sometimes seen as less directly involved in current antagonisms between the DPP and KMT in the legislature. Instead, KMT legislative caucus leader Fu Kun-chi is often understood to be responsible for the hard line the KMT has drawn regarding cuts to the national budget and its attempt to freeze the Constitutional Court – or at least, this is how the DPP has framed his leadership of the KMT caucus. It is unclear if this reflects splits in the KMT, where Han may be more open to political dialogue with the DPP than Fu.
Han’s attendance at the inauguration at Lai’s request is not the first time that a DPP presidential administration has invited a pan-Blue politician to serve as Taiwan’s voice at an international event.
In 2016 and 2017, James Soong of the People First Party (PFP) accepted Tsai Ing-wen’s invitation to serve as Taiwan’s representative to APEC, one of the few economic frameworks where Taiwan has membership status in. The PFP is a splinter party from the KMT that is considered to have a stronger pro-unification position than the KMT, which is the major party of the pan-Blue coalition.
As such, it was surprising that Soong was willing to accept an invitation from Tsai, who was often described (incorrectly) as pro-independence during her time as president. The Tsai administration presumably hoped that China would be less likely to engage in some form of reprisal against Soong’s presence at APEC, seeing as Soong is a pan-Blue politician who is considered friendlier to China.
This is likely also the case with Han, though there is, of course, the diplomatic precedent of Legislative Yuan presidents heading Taiwan’s delegation to the U.S. presidential inauguration. Still, the odds of China reacting to Taiwan’s presence at the Trump presidential inauguration were lowered by Han serving as Taiwan’s representative, rather than, say, a high-ranking DPP politician. Thus far, Beijing has not reacted to the Taiwanese delegation’s trip to the United States to attend the presidential inauguration.
But it is also possible that the Lai administration may be hoping to capitalize on splits in the KMT through friendlier ties with Han. The current budget debacle and the pan-Blue camp’s attempt to freeze the Constitutional Court may set Taiwan on the path to both a constitutional crisis and fiscal crisis. In the past, the pan-Green camp has sometimes leveraged factions within the KMT as an off-ramp during political crises.
One prominent case in point centers on the Sunflower Movement in 2014, starting with the month-long occupation of the Taiwanese legislature by student activists opposed to the Cross-Strait Services Trade Agreement (CSSTA). Back then, the pan-Green camp focused its fire on President Ma Ying-jeou of the KMT. By contrast, the pan-Green camp avoided criticizing then-Legislative Yuan President Wang Jin-pyng. This left open an off-ramp to the crisis, as Wang agreed to withdraw the CSSTA as a compromise measure.
There is some evidence that this may be what the DPP intends at present. Lai, who avoided making any strong comment on the current controversy until yesterday, started off the new year on January 1 by inviting Han to have coffee with him in order to try and resolve the differences between the KMT and DPP. It was confirmed shortly after that Han would represent Taiwan at the Trump inauguration.
Some KMT legislators criticized the idea of Lai working directly with Han to resolve inter-party differences. Even so, Han and Lai had coffee on January 16, with Lai suggesting that follow-up talks should take place over coffee again – this time including DPP legislative caucus leader Ker Chien-ming, who had criticized Han’s trip to the U.S. for the inauguration as a pleasure trip. There are some indications of splits in the DPP between Ker and Lai, with the DPP legislative caucus voting down one of the nominees for the Constitutional Court from Lai.
In his send-off remarks to Han and the delegation, Lai leaned into the political bridge-building aspect of the trip. “I want to stress that in Formosa, there is no hostility that cannot be let go, and no hardship that cannot be overcome. Unity is the most important,” Lai said. “… I ask that Speaker Han exercise his wisdom to help generate some warmth between the ruling and opposition parties through cooperation, which they can then bring back to Taiwan.”
Indeed, it is notable that the DPP has mostly framed Fu Kun-chi as the mastermind of the KMT’s political offensive. The DPP has accused Fu of taking cues from China in launching new political offensives shortly after now-regular trips to China, during which he meets with Chinese government officials. The DPP has also sought to highlight Fu’s checkered political record, including jail stints on charges of insider corruption, allegations of bribing the media, and sentencing for a false divorce before a lengthy prison sentence in order to let Fu appoint his wife Hsu Cheng-wei as acting magistrate of Hualien county.
Until relatively recently, this history of lawbreaking made Fu a controversial figure in the KMT. He had been kicked out of the KMT in 2009, which led to internal controversy in 2020 about whether Fu should be allowed back into the party. It may be that the DPP hopes to target Fu to create an off-ramp by which Han can eventually serve as the face for some means of political compromise, perhaps taking advantage of how views on Fu were historically divided in the KMT.