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Cheng Li-wun will take over the leadership of Kuomintang party on November 1.<\/em><\/p>\n Published On 19 Oct 2025<\/span>19 Oct 2025<\/span><\/p>\n Click here to share on social media<\/p>\n share2<\/p>\n Taiwan\u2019s main opposition party has chosen a new reformist leader who is critical of high defence spending but envisions peace with neighbouring China, whose sovereignty claims over the island have long roiled ties.<\/p>\n Members of the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party, which traditionally has had warm ties with Beijing, voted to elect former lawmaker Cheng Li-wun as chairperson on Saturday.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/p>\n Cheng, 55, who defeated former Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin and four others, will take over the party leadership on November 1.<\/p>\n The election of Cheng, who warns against letting Taiwan \u201cbecome the sacrifice of geopolitics\u201d, has deep implications for domestic politics at a time of heightened military and political tensions with China.<\/p>\n While the KMT does not control the presidency, the party and its ally \u2013 the small Taiwan People\u2019s Party \u2013 together hold enough seats to form a majority bloc in the legislature, creating a headache for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) trying to get the budget and its legislation passed.<\/p>\n Speaking at party headquarters in Taipei, Cheng said the KMT under her leadership would be a \u201ccreator of regional peace\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe KMT will make our home the strongest shelter for everyone against life\u2019s storms. Because we will safeguard peace across the Taiwan Strait,\u201d she said. \u201cWe must not let Taiwan become a troublemaker.\u201d<\/p>\n Cheng, who started out in politics in the DPP, said during the campaign that she did not support increasing the defence budget, a key policy of President William Lai Ching-te\u2019s administration that also has strong backing from the United States.<\/p>\n Cheng beat the establishment candidate Hau, 73, with more than 50 percent of the vote, though turnout was less than 40 percent of the party members.<\/p>\n But accusations of Chinese interference in the election from a key supporter of Hau\u2019s, the KMT\u2019s vice presidential candidate last year, Jaw Shau-kong, overshadowed the campaign. Jaw said social media accounts had spread disinformation about Hau.<\/p>\n The head of Taiwan\u2019s National Security Bureau, Tsai Ming-yen, said it found more than 1,000 videos discussing the election on TikTok, in addition to 23 YouTube accounts posting related content, with over half of the YouTube accounts based outside of Taiwan. He did not say which candidates these videos supported or directly answer whether they were based in China.<\/p>\n DPP spokesperson Wu Cheng claimed that Chinese interference was obvious and the KMT should carefully guard against it, saying his party hoped that the new chair would prioritise Taiwan\u2019s safety over party interests.<\/p>\n Cheng rejected the allegations of China influencing her party as \u201cvery cheap labels\u201d.<\/p>\n Beijing, for its part, said the election was a KMT matter and that some online comments from mainland China internet users did not represent an official stance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cheng Li-wun will take over the leadership of Kuomintang party on November 1. Published On 19 Oct 202519 Oct 2025 Click here to share on social media share2 Share Taiwan\u2019s main opposition party has chosen a new reformist leader who is critical of high defence spending but envisions peace with neighbouring China, whose sovereignty claims<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29075,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[2153,5453,135,150,8805,2523,464,122,8974],"class_list":{"0":"post-29074","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-china","9":"tag-elects","10":"tag-leader","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-opposition","13":"tag-peace","14":"tag-sea","15":"tag-south","16":"tag-taiwan"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
Accusations of Chinese interference<\/h2>\n