Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Tsai Ing-wen/Facebook
THE KMT HAS hit out against former president Tsai Ing-wen, claiming that green energy investments by the Tsai administration were due to illicit ties between Tsai and green energy companies.
Such allegations focus on an offshore floating solar energy project developed by Sun Rise E&T Corp, which received over 100 million NT in government subsidies. Public attention was drawn to the project after the structure collapsed because of the impact of Typhoon Danas.
The KMT claimed that Tsai met with Sun Rise E&T Chairman Tung Chi-hsu before taking office, as well as that DPP members as former county magistrate Tsao Chi-hung appointed to Sun Rise E&T as an independent director. The KMT also claims that former Environmental Protection Bureau chief Lu Tai-ying was endorsed as an independent director by former Pingtung County Magistrate Pan Meng-an.
Spokespersons for Tsai have denied that the meeting took place, while stating that Tsai supported the development of green energy but did not ever seek to promote a specific project. Spokespersons also stated that using subsidies for the development of green energy is a common practice worldwide.
Attacks on green energy have become increasingly common from the KMT. In the 2024 election cycle, the KMT leaned into attacks suggesting that the DPP is only interested in the development of green energy because of illicit links between DPP legislators, such as Lai Pin-yu, and green energy companies. As part of this, the KMT also sought to cast doubt on the reliability of green energy, suggesting that green energy was new, dangerous, and untested as a form of technology.
By contrast, the KMT called for a return to nuclear energy. The KMT argued that nuclear energy funded the growth of the Taiwanese economy in its heyday and that, in this light, Taiwan should return to nuclear energy. The KMT has often tried to criticize energy policy when this involves drawing on new forms of energy infrastructure, in this way targeting new ideas as a whole.
Yet the KMT has also demonstrated a pattern of attacking any project that DPP presidential administrations attempt to tout as a matter of national pride. This includes Taiwan’s accomplishments in the semiconductor industry, its development of domestic vaccines, and Taiwan’s domestic submarine program. The KMT’s attacks on Taiwan’s development of domestic vaccines to make up for a shortfall during the COVID-19 pandemic proved similar, in that the KMT framed the Tsai administration as only interested in domestic vaccine development because of members of the Tsai administration’s investments in pharmaceuticals.
Indeed, though Tsai was accused in 2016 of a conflict of interest over shares in pharmaceutical company OBI Pharma over the fact that her brother is a board member of a company that is a major stockholder, such charges did not stick. At the same time, the KMT is very interested in framing the DPP as politically corrupt, seeking to repeat what it views as the successful means by which it took down Chen Shui-bian using corruption charges.
Indeed, similarly, in November of last year, the KMT sought to allege that Nvidia sought to purchase 10 terawatt-hours of green energy for its first Asian research center and Taipei-1 supercomputer. This would again be drawing on familiar skepticism regarding green energy.
Yet, as Nvidia’s accomplishments in the field of AI and its reliance on Taiwanese semiconductors have become touted by the Lai administration, the KMT has sought to take Nvidia down a peg. Indeed, in recent times, Huang has come to command a great amount of public attention in Taiwan, pledging that American tech giant Nvidia would commit to the construction of new facilities in Taiwan. Huang, who was born in Taiwan but educated in the US, neatly fits the profile of Taiwanese who return to Taiwan after establishing themselves abroad in order to benefit their mother country. This is not too unlike how Morris Chang of TSMC fame returned to Taiwan to take up leadership of TSMC after a successful career at Texas Instruments in the US. As such, it may not be surprising as to why the KMT would criticize Nvidia.
It is to be expected that KMT attacks on green energy will continue. This is the latest example in point.