By: Jens KastnerTsai and Cheng: Different shapes and sizesTaiwan is witnessing the rise of two radically differing female political opponents, illustrating a growing divergence of political attitudes as the island’s warring parties gird for next year’s polls to determine the executive and legislative leadership for Taiwan’s 22 administrative regions, which include 16 counties and six major municipalities.Both Taiwanese Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Kuomintang’s upstart outsider Cheng Li-wun are in their 50s, and both likely harbor ambitions to eventually run for Taiwan’s presidency. But observers say the two are a study in other contrasts aside from their similar ages and the generational implications that come with that.The most polarizing of the two is Cheng, the new chairwoman of Taiwan’s most powerful opposition party, the mainland-friendly Kuomintang (KMT), which nonetheless has lost three straight presidential elections to the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) since 2016 and is searching for an avenue to reinvent itself despite controlling the paralyzed 113-member Legislative Yuan through a coalition with the eight member Taiwan People’s Party.Cheng, 55, squeaked into office over former Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin and four others on October 18 with 50.1 percent of the party vote on the back of explicitly China-friendly rhetoric but is seen as a party reformer eager to infuse the flailing KMT with fresh energy and a determination to make peace across the tension-ridden Taiwan Strait.Only a very small percentage of Taiwanese favor reunification with the mainland, with the majority preferring the current ambiguous status quo or moving toward eventual independence. Cheng’s challenge is to marry her energy with statements that have alienated pro-democracy camps both at home and abroad, calling on Taiwan to make friends with Russian President Vladimir Putin, for instance, and blaming NATO, as opposed to Putin, for the war in Ukraine.Cheng is currently in the spotlight, and not favorably, for paying tribute to Wu Shi, a high-ranking CCP spy who infiltrated the KMT government in the late 1940s and was executed in 1950 for espionage. Wu has been named a “revolutionary martyr” by Beijing. The handbook for the memorial event that Cheng attended on November 8 copied Chinese government phrasing pleading for Wu to be understood within the context of “the unfinished process of national liberation and unification.”On the other side stands Taiwanese Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), who on November 7 made history as the first Taiwanese vice president to deliver a speech in the European parliament building while in office. The Japan-born Hsiao, who has an American father, earned a non-stop standing ovation for calling out rising authoritarian pressure.China’s foreign ministry branded the European organizers of her speech an “anti-China organization,” having earlier categorized Hsiao as a “diehard Taiwan independence separatist,” a designation for which China has threatened the death penalty.“Cheng projects determination and drive and has a gift for articulately making a case for post-2000 KMT ideology that appeals to the party’s core membership,” said Courtney Donovan Smith, a Taichung-based political analyst. “She honed her skills in the rough-and-tumble world of talk shows and media, where taking strong stances and mounting forceful defenses of the party’s stances is at a premium. But while Cheng’s ideological messaging is very effective in reaching the party base, which is important in winning the party chair position, it is far outside of mainstream public opinion.”Smith went on to explain that Hsiao also has a history of taking strong stances but has often taken roles that require diplomatic finesse. “She has a gift for taking stances carefully crafted with a mix of firmness and wit, while effectively communicating the administration’s or DPP’s diplomatic or political messaging,” Smith said.Steve Tsang, Director of the SOAS China Institute, also sees little in common between the two, apart from both being politicians and female. As to Cheng’s overtures for Putin, Tsang believes that for a potential leader of Taiwan, wanting to make friends with Putin comes across as naïve.“But the strength of a democracy is its capacity to respect differences in views across the political spectrum, so I don’t think Taiwan cannot accommodate these two powerful lady politicians going in quite opposite directions,” Tsang said. “The real issue is how will the majority of Taiwan’s voting public respond to them individually? It looks like to me that Ms Hsiao’s proposal has more traction than Ms Cheng’s in Taiwan as a whole.”That said, others see headwinds brewing for Hsiao and tailwinds stiffening for Cheng in the realm of economics. Although Taiwan’s exports have been booming thanks to stellar electronics demand tied to the AI boom and transshipment activity out of China due to US President Donald Trump’s erratically evolving tariff regime, the fruits are unevenly shared in Taiwan’s society.Despite the boom, wage growth is barely outpacing inflation, and Taiwan has shed 10,000 manufacturing jobs since the start of the year, creating an opening for Cheng’s opposition KMT.“If you’re not in the tech sector, you’re not feeling the boom. From conversations I’ve had with consumer-facing companies and contacts in Taipei, people outside of the tech-sector seem to be in recession mode, being worried about their jobs and incomes and are turning cautious about spending,” said Nick Marro, Principal Economist for Asia and Lead for Global Trade of the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).“It really is such a tale of two economies – the tech-sector and the non-tech sector. Which explains why there’s so much anger against the DPP, given that many average Taiwanese don’t seem to be feeling the benefits of this supercharged semiconductor cycle.”