August 29, 2023: On Monday, Foxconn Founder Upends Taiwan Vote by Launching Presidential Bid but dropped out after failing to win the nomination for Taiwan’s main rival party, the Kuomintang, or KMT, which traditionally favors close ties with China.

He made a second bid to be the KMT’s nominee for the presidential election in January earlier this year, but the party chose Hou Yu-ih, the mayor of New Taipei City, instead.

Gou has spent the past occasional weeks touring Taiwan and holding campaign-such as rallies, fueling speculation he was planning to run as an independent.

“Under the rule of the Democratic Progressive Party in the past seven years or so, internationally, they ruled Taiwan towards the danger of war. Domestically, their policies are filled with mistakes,” Gou said, adding that “the era of entrepreneur’s rule” has started.

“Give me four years, and I swear that I will obtain 50 years of peace to the Taiwan Strait and build the most profound foundation for mutual trust across the strait,” he said in a plea to Taiwan voters.

“Taiwan must not evolve Ukraine, and I will not let Taiwan become the next Ukraine.”

According to elections regulations, gou must gather close to 300,000 voter signatures by November 2 to be trained as an independent candidate. The Central Election Commission will review the signatures and announce the results by November 14.

Taiwan Vice President William Lai, the presidential candidate for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, is the favorite to win the election as he leads the polls.

Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-Je of the small Taiwan People’s Party has generally been driving second in the polls, with Hou a distant third.

Gou’s central theme in his pseudo-campaign events is that the only way to evade war with China, claiming Taiwan as its territory, is to get the DPP out of office.

China dislikes Lai for comments he has yet created about being a “worker” for Taiwan sovereignty, a red line for Beijing.