07/10/2019??Asian Politics, Society, History, and Culture
Lecture Topic: Electoral Politics in Taiwan
Class taken by Dr. Eric Chen-hua Yu
Dr. Eric Chen-hua Yu is an associate research fellow of the Election Study Center and an associate professor of department of political science at National Chengchi University. He divided the lecture into three parts which are early development, basis of electoral competition and recent development. First and foremost, the professor mainly talked about election and democratization process of Taiwan’s electoral development. When discussing democratization in Taiwan, he pointed out that Lei Chen, an early leading figure in the movement to bring full democracy, played an important role in the democracy development of Republic of China. Secondly, factional politics and party organization were two major points in basis of electoral competition. For instance, KMT had a huge influence on local elections by taking some action to replace local faction leaders with party officials. Mafia was also another key factor to try to affect local faction politics. Lastly, Dr. Yu specifically explained the significance of the 2016 presidential election with President Tsai Ing-Wen winning the election such as identity issue between cross-strait interactions. Continuing to address the signature student movement and reflecting on the current movement in Hong Kong, the professor talked about the Sun Flower Movement in 2014.
The last 30 minutes of the lecture was open to allow students to speak freely and to respectively share the electoral politics in their own countries. We had students from India, Indonesia, the Czech Republic, Poland, South Korea and Vietnam volunteering to share and discuss the electoral politics with the professor.
