On the eve of the deadline to formally register as a candidate for Taiwan’s presidential elections in January, the ruling party’s pick for vice-president held a slick and short press conference at a Taipei convention centre. Hsiao Bi-khim, Taiwan’s high-profile diplomatic representative to the US, took few questions from the massive crowd of press. She presented herself as an experienced and pragmatic deputy to presidential candidate Lai Ching-te in a Democratic Progressive party (DPP) administration.
An administration run by Lai and Hsiao, she said, would continue to defend Taiwan’s democracy from Beijing’s authoritarian threats of annexation and preserve “the status quo”.
