Taiwan elections: what do KMT's gains mean for the 2024 presidential race? - South China Morning Post

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1. Taiwan elections: what do KMT's gains mean for the 2024 presidential race?  South China Morning Post
2. Attention turns to 2024 presidential poll after Taiwan ruling party thrashing  CNA
3. Beijing-friendly KMT's huge win in local elections does not mean Taiwan is pro-China: Analysts  The Straits Times
4. Taiwan elections set stage for tighter presidential race in 2024  Bangkok Post
5. Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen resigns as head of ruling Democratic Progressive Party following local election losses  CNA
6. View Full coverage on Google News

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2022-11-27 11:45:54Z
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Attention turns to 2024 presidential poll after Taiwan ruling party thrashing - CNA

TAIPEI: Attention is turning to Taiwan's next presidential election in 2024 after the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was thrashed at local elections on Saturday (Nov 26), with President Tsai Ing-wen's move to focus on China backfiring with voters.

The main opposition party the Kuomintang, or KMT, romped to victory in the mayoral and county elections.

The KMT won 13 of the 21 seats up for grabs, including the wealthy and cosmopolitan capital of Taipei, in line with expectations, although none of those elected have a direct say in policies on China.

China views the island as its own territory and has been ramping up military activities to assert those claims, fuelling global concern especially given Taiwan's major role as a semiconductor producer.

The KMT traditionally favours close ties with China but strongly denies being pro-Beijing. It had been on the back foot since 2020's presidential election loss, and also suffered a blow last December after four referendums it had championed as a show of no confidence in Tsai's government failed.

Speaking to reporters late on Saturday at party headquarters, its chairman Eric Chu said the KMT understood that only by uniting could it win the next presidential election.

"Taiwan's people have given us an opportunity," he said. "Being selfless is the only chance that the KMT could win the 2024 election."

Ms Tsai resigned as DPP chairwoman after the defeat, the worst showing in the party's history, and is now left with just five mayor or county chief positions.

She had framed the vote as being about showing defiance to China's rising bellicosity, especially after it held war games near the island in August and President Xi Jinping, who has vowed to bring Taiwan under Chinese control, won an unprecedented third term in office last month. 

ELECTION STRATEGY BACKFIRED

But Ms Tsai's strategy failed to mobilise voters, who disassociated geopolitics from the local elections, which traditionally focus more on bread-and-butter issues from crime to pollution.

Turnout on Saturday was at record low, just 59 per cent for Taiwan's six most important cities, compared to an overall figure of around 75 per cent in 2020. 

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2022-11-27 05:38:05Z
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Shanghai hit by COVID-19 protests as anger spreads across China - CNA

ANGER NATIONWIDE

Shanghai's 25 million people were put under lockdown for two months earlier this year, an ordeal that provoked anger and protest.

Chinese authorities have since then sought to be more targeted in their COVID-19 curbs, but that effort has been challenged by a surge in infections as China faces its first winter with the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

While low by global standards, China's case numbers have hit record highs for days, with nearly 40,000 new infections reported by health authorities on Sunday for the previous day.

On Friday night, crowds took to the streets of Urumqi, chanting "End the lockdown!" and pumping their fists in the air after the deadly fire, according to videos circulated on Chinese social media.

Many of Urumqi's 4 million residents have been under some of the country's longest lockdowns, barred from leaving their homes for as long as 100 days.

In Beijing, 2,700 km away, some residents under lockdown staged small protests or confronted local officials on Saturday over movement restrictions, with some successfully pressuring them into lifting the curbs ahead of a schedule.

A video shared with Reuters showed Beijing residents in an unidentifiable part of the capital marching around an open-air car park on Saturday, shouting: "End the lockdown."

The Beijing government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.

The next few weeks could be the worst in China since the early weeks of the pandemic both for the economy and the healthcare system, Mark Williams of Capital Economics said in note last week, as efforts to contain the outbreak will require additional localised lockdowns in many cities.

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2022-11-27 05:10:48Z
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Not all Malaysians happy about PM Anwar's Nov 28 holiday - The Straits Times

GEORGE TOWN - Holidays, ironically, can become a headache as well.

Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (FMM) Penang chairman Lee Teong Li explained that the last quarter of the year was usually a crucial time for companies as they would rush to complete their production and shipment before the festive period starts.

“Thus, unplanned off days are a bane and the government should take into account these issues when declaring a holiday,” he said.

He said that overtime payments for workers could run into hundreds of millions of ringgit throughout this period.

“These expenses are not budgeted, which creates difficulties in production and financial planning.”

Public holidays were declared for Nov 18 and 19 to allow voters to get home for polling.

And Nov 28 is also a public holiday, following the appointment of Anwar Ibrahim as Malaysia’s 10th Prime Minister.

“This is taxing for companies,” said Mr Lee, noting that Christmas and New Year holidays were approaching as well.

And despite the three-day weekend, the Malaysian Association of Hotels (MAH) did not see a surge in bookings.

That’s because the public announcement holiday for Monday came too suddenly, which meant that holiday-makers could not make arrangements for hotels and flight tickets, said MAH Kedah/Perlis chairman Eugene Dass.

“The occupancy rate is still hovering around 50 per cent to 55 per cent, including in Langkawi,” he said.

Many people, he added, had not expected a day off tomorrow, so they decided to stay put and take a longer break during the school holidays, which is only about 10 days away.

The situation is similar in Penang, too.

MAH Penang chairman Tony Goh said the occupancy rate was at 55 per cent to 60 per cent currently in Penang, as people were waiting for the December holidays.

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2022-11-27 03:52:36Z
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Taiwan's Tsai quits as party leader after heavy local election losses - Nikkei Asia

TAIPEI -- Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen resigned as leader of her ruling party after the opposition Kuomintang retook its traditional strongholds in local elections held on Saturday.

She will remain Taiwan's president until her second term expires in early 2024. It has been a poor election night for her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which was facing a difficult electoral cycle as the party's term-limited incumbents stepped down. Premier Su Tseng-chang also offered to resign but was retained by Tsai.

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2022-11-26 18:30:00Z
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China's Xinjiang loosens some restrictions after lockdown protests - CNA

People in Urumqi largely marched peacefully in big puffy winter jackets in the cold winter night.

Videos of protests featured people holding the Chinese flag and shouting “Open up, open up." They spread rapidly on Chinese social media despite heavy censorship. In some scenes, people shouted and pushed against rows of men in the white whole-body hazmat suits that local government workers and pandemic-prevention volunteers wear, according to the videos.

By Saturday, most had been deleted by censors. The Associated Press could not independently verify all the videos, but two Urumqi residents who declined to be named out of fear of retribution said large-scale protests occurred Friday night. One of them said he had friends who participated.

The AP pinpointed the locations of two of the videos of the protests in different parts of Urumqi. In one video, police in face masks and hospital gowns faced off against shouting protesters. In another, one protester is speaking to a crowd about their demands. It is unclear how widespread the protests were.

In one video, which the AP could not independently verify, Urumqi's top official, Yang Fasen, told angry protesters he would open up low-risk areas of the city the following morning.

That promise was realised the next day, as Urumqi authorities announced that residents of low risk areas would be allowed to move freely within their neighborhoods. Still, many other neighborhoods remain under lockdown.

Officials also triumphantly declared Saturday that they had basically achieved “societal zero-COVID," meaning that there was no more community spread and that new infections were being detected only in people already under health monitoring, such as those in a centralised quarantine facility.

Social media users greeted the news with disbelief and sarcasm. “Only China can achieve this speed,” wrote one user on Weibo.

On Chinese social media, where trending topics are manipulated by censors, the “zero-COVID” announcement was number one trending hashtag on both Weibo, a Twitter-like platform, and Douyin, the Chinese edition of Tiktok. The apartment fire and protests became a lightning rod for public anger, as millions shared posts questioning China's pandemic controls or mocking the country's stiff propaganda and harsh censorship controls.

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2022-11-26 13:56:00Z
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Deadly Xinjiang fire stirs anger at China's zero-COVID policy - CNA

BEIJING: A deadly fire in China's northwest Xinjiang region has spurred an outpouring of anger at the country's zero-COVID policy, as Beijing fights growing public fatigue over its hardline approach to containing the coronavirus.

Ten people were killed and nine injured when the blaze ripped through a residential building in the regional capital Urumqi on Thursday night, according to state news agency Xinhua.

Online posts circulating on both Chinese and overseas social media platforms since Friday have claimed that lengthy COVID-19 lockdowns in the city hampered rescue attempts.

Some videos appeared to show crowds of people taking to the streets of Urumqi to protest against the measures.

The action comes against a backdrop of mounting public frustration over the government's zero-tolerance approach to COVID-19 and follows sporadic protests in other cities.

China is the last major economy wedded to a zero-COVID strategy, with authorities wielding snap lockdowns, lengthy quarantines and mass testing to snuff out new outbreaks as they emerge.

Footage partially verified by AFP shows hundreds of people massing outside the Urumqi city government offices during the night, chanting: "Lift lockdowns!"

In another clip, dozens of people are seen marching through a neighbourhood in the east of the city, shouting the same slogan before facing off with a line of hazmat-clad officials and angrily rebuking security personnel.

AFP journalists were able to verify the videos by geolocating local landmarks, but were unable to specify when exactly the protests occurred.

A wave of anger simmered on the Weibo social media platform on Friday amid claims that parked electric vehicles left without power during lengthy lockdowns blocked fire engines from entering a narrow road to the burning building.

"I'm also the one throwing myself off the roof, trapped in an overturned (quarantine) bus, breaking out of isolation at the Foxconn factory," read one comment referencing several recent incidents blamed on zero-COVID strictures.

Chinese authorities censor online content deemed politically sensitive and appeared to have scrubbed many posts and hashtags relating to the fire by Saturday morning.

Urumqi police said in a Friday post on Weibo that they had detained a woman surnamed Su for "spreading online rumours" relating to the number of casualties from the blaze.

RARE APOLOGY

An initial investigation showed the blaze to have been caused by a board of electric sockets in the family bedroom of one of the apartments, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

Rescue attempts were complicated by "a lack of parking spaces and a large number of private vehicles parked on both sides" of a narrow road to the building, city fire and rescue chief Li Wensheng told reporters late Friday, CCTV said.

Urumqi mayor Maimaitiming Kade offered a rare formal apology for the blaze at the briefing, according to the broadcaster.

But officials also pushed back against some of the online allegations, denying that residents' doors had been clamped shut with iron wiring.

COVID-19 controls have confined some communities in Urumqi - a city of 4 million people - to their homes for weeks on end.

But in the wake of the protests, officials on Saturday said the city "had basically reduced social transmissions to zero" and would "restore the normal order of life for residents in low-risk areas in a staged and orderly manner".

Pandemic fatigue has been growing in China, with violent protests erupting at a vast COVID-hit factory in the central city of Zhengzhou in recent days due to a dispute over pay and labour conditions.

China recorded 34,909 new domestic infections on Saturday, the vast majority of which were asymptomatic, according to the National Health Commission.

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2022-11-26 05:25:00Z
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