Post-Election Analysis of Taiwan’s 2024 Elections
Oxford Taiwan Studies Seminar
Vote counting in Taiwan's 2024 elections. Source: Bo-jiun Jing
Introduction
On 13th January 2024, 14 million Taiwanese voters went to the polling stations and elected the new president, vice president, and legislators of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Securing 40% of the votes, William Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won the presidential race against his opponents: Hou Yu-ih of the Kuomintang (KMT) with 33.5%, and Ko Wen-je of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) with 26.5%. In the parliamentary race for the 113 seats in the Legislative Yuan, the KMT won 52 seats, the DPP won 51 seats, the TPP won eight seats, while the remaining two seats were won by KMT-leaning independents. In this panel discussion, Dr Monique Chu, Dr Michael Reilly, and Dr Jing Bo-jiun will analyse the election outcome, unpack crucial campaign issues, and assess the implications for Taiwan’s future and the broader geopolitical landscape in the regional and international arenas.
About the Panellists
Dr Monique Chu, a Chinese politics lecturer at the University of Southampton with MPhil and PhD degrees in international relations from the University of Cambridge, has conducted extensive research on semiconductors’ geopolitics, sovereignty, and cross-Strait relations. Formerly at SOAS and the University of Oxford, she is renowned for her groundbreaking monograph: The East Asian Computer Chip War (Routledge, 2013), and co-editorship of Globalization and Security Relations across the Taiwan Strait (with Scott L. Kastner, Routledge, 2014). Her contributions extend to esteemed journals like The Journal of Strategic Studies, The China Quarterly, and China Perspectives. Currently, she is working on her second monograph: Achilles Heel of the Dragon – Problematic Sovereignty along China’s Periphery. She has been a sought-after interviewee by major international media outlets, including the BBC, National Public Radio, and Australian Broadcasting Corporation, offering insights on the geopolitics of semiconductors, Chinese foreign policy, cross-Strait relations, and Sino-US relations.
Dr Michael Reilly has been a Senior Fellow in the Taiwan Research Hub in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham since 2015. A former British diplomat, his final position was as the British representative in Taiwan from 2005 to 2009. From 2011 to 2014, he served as the chief representative in China for the aerospace company BAE Systems. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Global Taiwan Institute and was a Visiting Fellow at Academia Sinica in Taipei in 2016 and 2019. Dr Reilly has written and co-edited several books about international relations and trade policy, mainly focusing on East Asia, including The Great Free Trade Myth: British Foreign Policy and East Asia since 1980.
Dr Jing Bo-jiun is a Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Taiwan Studies Programme within the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (OSGA). His research and publications primarily focus on Taiwan-Southeast Asia relations, Taiwan’s cybersecurity strategy, and the international relations of the Indo-Pacific region. Dr Jing is the author of the monograph titled Taiwan and Southeast Asia: Opportunities and Constraints of Continued Engagement (University of Maryland School of Law, 2016). He holds a PhD in International Political Economy from King’s College London. Previously, he served as the Head of the Taiwan Studies Project and Research Fellow at the Institute for Security and Development Policy (ISDP) in Sweden, a Research Associate at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, and an Associate Researcher at the Mainland Affairs Council in Taiwan.
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