Terry Gou Tai-ming, founder and chairman of Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology, speaks throughout the Canton Tower Science & Technology Conference Guangzhou on December 8, 2016 in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province of China.
Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images
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 impartial candidate in 2024 elections.
Gou stepped down as Foxconn chief in 2019 and made a presidential bid that yr, however dropped out after he didn’t win the nomination for Taiwan’s principal 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 yr, however the occasion selected as an alternative Hou Yu-ih, the mayor of New Taipei City.
Gou has spent the previous few weeks touring Taiwan and holding campaign-like rallies, fueling hypothesis he was planning to run as an impartial.
“Under the rule of the Democratic Progressive Party in the past seven years or so, internationally, they lead Taiwan towards the danger of war. Domestically, their policies are filled with mistakes,” Gou mentioned, including “the era of entrepreneur’s rule” has begun.
“Give me four years and I promise that I will bring 50 years of peace to the Taiwan Strait and build the deepest foundation for the mutual trust across the strait,” he mentioned in a plea to Taiwan voters.
“Taiwan must not become Ukraine and I will not let Taiwan become the next Ukraine.”
Gou should collect near 300,000 voter signatures by November 2 to be certified as an impartial candidate, in accordance elections laws. The Central Election Commission will assessment the signatures and announce the outcomes by November 14.
Taiwan Vice President William Lai, the presidential candidate for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, is the favourite to win the election as he leads the polls.
Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je of the small Taiwan People’s Party has usually eager operating second within the polls, with Hou a distant third.
Gou’s principal theme in his pseudo-campaign occasions has been that the one approach to keep away from struggle 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 “worker” for Taiwan independence, a pink line for Beijing.
The DPP champions Taiwan’s separate id from China, however the authorities it leads has repeatedly supplied talks with China which were rebuffed.
The run as much as the election is going down at a time of elevated tensions between Taipei and Beijing, as China levels common army workouts close to the island to say its sovereignty claims.
Source: www.cnbc.com”