Terry Gou: The Taiwan iPhone billionaire who wants to be president

BBC News:

Terry Gou, a 72-year-old billionaire and founder of iPhone maker Foxconn, has become the latest to join the race for Taiwan’s presidency.

Mr Gou is a charismatic businessman with a great rags-to-riches story, pots of cash, and serious name recognition. Observers in Taipei say if he was the only candidate standing against the governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Mr Gou would have a good shot. But he isn’t.

Instead, his candidacy will split the opposition vote three ways in the January 2024 presidential election.

In a winner-takes-all presidential system, when there are already two opposition candidates vying to unseat the incumbent party, adding a third probably isn’t going to make the task easier.

The scenario is a classic case for the “law of holes”, which says that if you are in a hole and it’s difficult to get out, the first thing to do is stop digging. And Taiwan’s opposition appears to be digging its own electoral grave.

That is exactly what happened on Monday when Mr Guo announced his candidacy for an election that has profound consequences well beyond Taiwan. The self-governed island will elect a new president amid growing threats from Beijing, and an increasingly militarised region.

Like another charismatic businessman across the Pacific, Mr Gou first attempted to get himself made the candidate of Taiwan’s main right-of-centre party, the old nationalist KMT (Kuomintang). Unlike in the United States, he failed.

The KMT chose another candidate, and Mr Gou quit the party in disgust. But the KMT isn’t Mr Gou’s only problem.