Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Former British prime minister Winston Churchill famously said: “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” The COVID-19 pandemic presents Taiwan with an exceptional opportunity to find a new wave on which to catapult its economy, while helping protect the world from this and future pandemics.

The opportunity refers to making Taiwan a global leader in pandemic control. The challenges to reaching this goal are significant, but Taiwan is in an excellent position to pursue this rare opening and the rewards could be substantial.

We are now less than a month away from the vote to recall Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), scheduled for June 6. There has been a perceptible change on the ground in Kaohsiung in the dynamics of the campaign surrounding the vote.

This change has been in the shift from the mobilization of political forces to considerations and discourse surrounding the rational choice of individual residents. Unfortunately for Han, this shift is part of a tide that is going to be difficult to turn back.