Terry Gou Tai-ming, founder and chairman of Taiwan’s Foxconn Know-how, speaks through the Canton Tower Science & Know-how Convention Guangzhou on December 8, 2016 in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province of China.
Vcg | Visible China Group | Getty Photographs
Terry Gou, the billionaire founder of main Apple Inc provider Foxconn, mentioned on Monday he was coming into the race to be Taiwan’s subsequent president as an unbiased candidate in 2024 elections.
Gou stepped down as Foxconn chief in 2019 and made a presidential bid that 12 months, however dropped out after he didn’t win the nomination for Taiwan’s predominant opposition occasion, the Kuomintang, or KMT, which historically favors shut ties with China.
He made a second bid to be the KMT’s candidate for the presidential election to be held in January earlier this 12 months, however the occasion selected as a substitute Hou Yu-ih, the mayor of New Taipei Metropolis.
Gou has spent the previous few weeks touring Taiwan and holding campaign-like rallies, fueling hypothesis he was planning to run as an unbiased.
“Underneath the rule of the Democratic Progressive Occasion prior to now seven years or so, internationally, they lead Taiwan in the direction of the hazard of warfare. Domestically, their insurance policies are stuffed with errors,” Gou mentioned, including “the period of entrepreneur’s rule” has begun.
“Give me 4 years and I promise that I’ll convey 50 years of peace to the Taiwan Strait and construct the deepest basis for the mutual belief throughout the strait,” he mentioned in a plea to Taiwan voters.
“Taiwan should not change into Ukraine and I can’t let Taiwan change into the following Ukraine.”
Gou should collect near 300,000 voter signatures by November 2 to be certified as an unbiased candidate, in accordance elections rules. The Central Election Fee will evaluation the signatures and announce the outcomes by November 14.
Taiwan Vice President William Lai, the presidential candidate for the ruling Democratic Progressive Occasion, or DPP, is the favourite to win the election as he leads the polls.
Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je of the small Taiwan Individuals’s Occasion has typically eager operating second within the polls, with Hou a distant third.
Gou’s predominant theme in his pseudo-campaign occasions has been that the one solution to keep away from warfare with China, which claims Taiwan as its personal territory, is to get the DPP out of workplace.
China has a selected dislike of Lai for feedback he has beforehand made about being a “employee” for Taiwan independence, a purple line for Beijing.
The DPP champions Taiwan’s separate identification from China, however the authorities it leads has repeatedly supplied talks with China which have been rebuffed.
The run as much as the election is going down at a time of elevated tensions between Taipei and Beijing, as China phases common navy workout routines close to the island to claim its sovereignty claims.
