Pan-Blue Coalition

Based on Wikipedia: Pan-Blue Coalition

In November 2023, two political parties in Taiwan came tantalizingly close to forming an alliance that polls suggested would win the upcoming presidential election. They agreed on the goal: defeat the ruling party and its candidate. They agreed they needed each other. What they could not agree on was a seemingly simple question: who would be the presidential candidate, and who would accept the subordinate role of vice president?

The negotiations collapsed. Both candidates ran separately. They split the vote. Together they won sixty percent of the ballots cast—a commanding majority—yet both lost to a candidate who won with a mere plurality. The ruling party secured its third consecutive term.

This is the story of Taiwan's Pan-Blue Coalition: a political alliance perpetually on the verge of unity, perpetually fractured by the ambitions and grievances of its constituent parts. It is also, in many ways, the story of Taiwan itself—an island caught between identities, between pasts, between possible futures.

The Color of Politics

The name "Pan-Blue" comes from the party color of the Kuomintang, which translates roughly as the "Nationalist Party" of China. This is the same Kuomintang—often abbreviated KMT—that once ruled all of mainland China, that fought the Japanese in World War Two, that lost a brutal civil war to Mao Zedong's Communists, and that retreated to the island of Taiwan in 1949 with two million refugees, a national treasury's worth of gold, and an unshakeable claim to be the legitimate government of all China.

That claim sounds absurd today. The People's Republic of China controls 1.4 billion people across a vast continental landmass. Taiwan governs 24 million people on an island roughly the size of Maryland. Yet for decades, the Kuomintang maintained—officially, legally, constitutionally—that it was merely in temporary exile, that the Communist government in Beijing was an illegitimate usurper, and that someday the Republic of China would be restored to its rightful territory.

The Pan-Blue Coalition emerged from this worldview. It encompasses the KMT itself along with several smaller parties: the People First Party, the New Party, the Non-Partisan Solidarity Union, and the nearly defunct Young China Party. What unites them, beyond the color blue, is a shared orientation toward China—not necessarily a desire for immediate reunification, but a refusal to abandon entirely the idea that Taiwan and China share a common heritage, a common culture, and perhaps someday a common future.

The Other Side

To understand Pan-Blue, you must understand what it opposes. The Pan-Green Coalition—named for the color of the Democratic Progressive Party—represents a fundamentally different vision. Where Pan-Blue sees Taiwan as part of a broader Chinese civilization, Pan-Green sees Taiwan as a distinct nation with its own identity. Where Pan-Blue favors engagement with Beijing, Pan-Green views the mainland with suspicion bordering on hostility. Where Pan-Blue emphasizes what Taiwan shares with China, Pan-Green emphasizes what makes Taiwan unique.

This is not merely an abstract philosophical debate. It is an existential question about who Taiwanese people are and what future they want. Are they Chinese people who happen to live on an island? Or are they Taiwanese people who happen to speak Mandarin and share historical connections with the mainland? The answer has profound implications for everything from foreign policy to education to whether Taiwan should ever consider reunification with a China governed by the Communist Party.

The divide maps imperfectly onto demographics. Many Pan-Blue supporters trace their families to the 1949 exodus—the "mainlanders" who came with the Kuomintang. Pan-Green supporters more often descend from families who lived on Taiwan for generations before 1949, who speak Hokkien or Hakka as their native languages, and who experienced KMT rule not as liberation but as foreign occupation.

But these generalizations are increasingly outdated. Seventy-five years after the retreat from the mainland, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the original refugees are thoroughly Taiwanese. The distinctions blur with each generation.

The Architect's Betrayal

The Pan-Blue Coalition crystallized in response to what its members viewed as a betrayal from within.

Lee Teng-hui became president of the Republic of China in 1988, the first native-born Taiwanese to hold that office. He was a KMT man, educated in Japan and the United States, who had served the party loyally for decades. But once in power, Lee began steering the party—and the country—in a direction that horrified the old guard.

Lee emphasized Taiwanese identity. He suggested that Taiwan and China were separate countries. He distanced himself from the dream of reunification that had sustained the party through decades of exile. For the mainlanders who had given their lives to the Republic of China, who had lost everything in 1949, who had clung to the hope that someday they might return home, Lee's words felt like the desecration of everything they believed.

The first split came in the early 1990s, when anti-Lee dissidents broke away to form the New Party. They were the true believers, the hard-liners who refused to abandon Chinese nationalism even as the political winds shifted.

A larger rupture followed in 2000. Lee, nearing the end of his presidency, arranged for his preferred successor Lien Chan to receive the KMT nomination for president. This infuriated James Soong, a charismatic politician who was more popular than Lien and believed he deserved the nomination. Soong left the party and ran independently under the banner of a new People First Party.

The split was catastrophic. Soong and Lien divided the conservative vote almost evenly. Chen Shui-bian, the Democratic Progressive Party candidate, won the presidency with just 39 percent of the vote. For the first time since the KMT retreated to Taiwan, an opposition party controlled the executive branch.

The Expulsion

What happened next would cement the Pan-Blue alliance.

The KMT rank and file were furious. They blamed Lee Teng-hui for the defeat—for splitting the party, for alienating traditional supporters, for steering the organization away from its founding principles. Within months, Lee was expelled from the party he had led for over a decade.

Lee responded by forming his own party, the Taiwan Solidarity Union, which became a cornerstone of the Pan-Green Coalition. His expulsion from the KMT was thus both an end and a beginning: the end of his influence over the party of Chiang Kai-shek, and the beginning of a new political alignment that would define Taiwanese politics for the next quarter century.

With Lee gone, the KMT lurched back toward its traditional positions. The party began cooperating informally but intensively with the People First Party and the New Party. The three organizations maintained separate structures—their leaders still harbored grudges, their members still competed for votes—but they coordinated their efforts against the common enemy: the DPP government of Chen Shui-bian.

This loose alliance became known as Pan-Blue. Despite never officially merging, the coalition functioned as a single political force in opposition.

The Bicycle Built for Two

By 2004, the Pan-Blue parties had learned from their mistake. James Soong and Lien Chan, whose rivalry had handed the presidency to the DPP four years earlier, agreed to run together. Lien would be the presidential candidate; Soong would accept the vice presidency.

Their campaign symbol was a two-seat bicycle. The front rider was blue, for the KMT. The rear rider was orange, for the People First Party. The image was meant to convey partnership, cooperation, two parties pedaling together toward a common destination.

They lost anyway—narrowly, controversially, amid allegations of vote manipulation and an assassination attempt on the incumbent Chen Shui-bian the day before the election. But the coalition held together.

In the legislative elections that same year, the three Pan-Blue parties coordinated meticulously. Taiwan's electoral system at the time rewarded such coordination: voters in multi-member districts could split their support among multiple candidates, and parties that failed to manage the distribution of votes among their own candidates risked electing fewer seats than their total vote share warranted.

The KMT and PFP divided up districts. The New Party ran almost all its candidates under the KMT banner. The strategy worked for the KMT, which gained eleven seats. It worked less well for the PFP, which lost twelve. James Soong was livid, accusing his supposed allies of sacrificing his party for their own gain.

The Dance with the Enemy

What followed was a characteristic episode in Pan-Blue history: a flirtation with the other side that ultimately went nowhere.

In February 2005, James Soong did something extraordinary. He met with President Chen Shui-bian—the man he had spent years attacking, the man whose presidency represented everything Pan-Blue opposed. The two issued a joint declaration supporting the status quo in relations with China and endorsing practical steps to improve cross-strait ties.

It was a political earthquake. The leader of a Pan-Blue party was cooperating with the DPP president. Was the coalition fragmenting? Was Soong defecting?

Then, just months later, Soong traveled to mainland China along with other Pan-Blue leaders. He met with Communist Party officials. He visited historic sites. The trip infuriated Chen Shui-bian and the Pan-Green camp, who saw it as consorting with the enemy. Whatever partnership Soong had been building with the DPP collapsed.

This pattern would repeat throughout Pan-Blue history: cooperation, betrayal, reconciliation, renewed cooperation, renewed betrayal. The coalition was held together not by trust or affection but by electoral necessity and shared opposition to the Pan-Green alternative.

The Ma Ying-jeou Era

The year 2008 marked Pan-Blue's greatest triumph.

Ma Ying-jeou, the photogenic former mayor of Taipei, won the presidency in a landslide. In the legislative elections, the Pan-Blue Coalition captured 86 of 113 seats—a supermajority sufficient to override presidential vetoes, recall the president, and pass constitutional amendments.

The coalition had perfected its coordination. The KMT, PFP, and New Party divided up districts under a new single-member constituency system. Candidates who were sympathetic to Pan-Blue but technically independent—running under the banner of the Non-Partisan Solidarity Union—faced no competition from official coalition candidates. The People First Party ran almost all its candidates under the KMT banner.

Ma governed for eight years, pursuing warmer relations with Beijing and emphasizing economic development. Under his administration, Taiwan and China signed numerous agreements expanding trade, tourism, and transportation links. Direct flights connected the two sides for the first time since 1949.

But Ma's tenure also revealed the tensions within Pan-Blue ideology. How much engagement with Beijing was too much? At what point did warming relations shade into something that looked like capitulation—or reunification by stealth?

The Fall

In 2016, the edifice collapsed.

The KMT lost the presidency to Tsai Ing-wen of the DPP. More significantly, the party lost control of the legislature for the first time in the history of the Republic of China. The democratic Progressive Party held a majority in its own right, without needing coalition partners.

James Soong, the perennial dissident, the man who had founded the People First Party in a fit of pique sixteen years earlier, took yet another surprising turn. Despite remaining nominally part of the Pan-Blue Coalition, he cooperated with Tsai's administration. He became the representative of "Chinese Taipei"—Taiwan's awkward official name in international organizations that recognize Beijing—at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

It was a remarkable journey for a man who had spent his career championing Chinese nationalism against Taiwanese independence.

The White Wild Card

The political landscape grew more complicated with the emergence of a third force: the Taiwan People's Party, led by Ko Wen-je, the eccentric former surgeon who had served as mayor of Taipei.

Ko positioned his party as neither blue nor green but white—centrist, pragmatic, above the tired old divisions that had defined Taiwanese politics for decades. He appealed especially to young voters frustrated with both establishment camps.

In practice, the Taiwan People's Party often aligned with Pan-Blue positions. Ko's willingness to engage with Beijing, his skepticism of the DPP's confrontational approach to China, his emphasis on economic development over identity politics—all these marked him as closer to blue than green, whatever his protestations of neutrality.

This brings us back to November 2023, and the negotiations that almost reshaped Taiwanese politics.

The Failed Alliance

Polls showed that either combination—the KMT's Hou Yu-ih as president with Ko Wen-je as vice president, or Ko as president with Hou as vice president—would defeat the DPP's Lai Ching-te. The numbers were clear: 46.6 percent for one ticket, 46.5 percent for the other, both comfortably ahead of Lai.

The parties entered negotiations. The stakes could not have been higher. A third consecutive DPP term would cement policies that Pan-Blue opposed: a harder line against Beijing, deeper military ties with the United States, a continued emphasis on Taiwanese identity over Chinese heritage.

The negotiations collapsed on November 18, 2023. The parties could not agree on how to choose who would lead the ticket. Each candidate believed he deserved the top spot. Neither was willing to subordinate his ambitions for the greater good of the anti-DPP cause.

Hou and Ko ran separately. They split the opposition vote. Lai won with a plurality, just as Chen Shui-bian had won twenty-four years earlier when Lien and Soong split the Pan-Blue vote. History repeated itself, almost exactly.

The Mathematics of Defeat

The numbers tell a brutal story. Hou and Ko together won sixty percent of the votes cast. Lai won with roughly forty percent. Had the blue-white alliance held, had either Hou or Ko accepted the vice presidency, the DPP would almost certainly have lost.

Instead, Lai Ching-te became president. He brought with him a worldview fundamentally at odds with Pan-Blue principles: skepticism of engagement with China, support for Taiwanese identity, and a defense policy oriented around resistance to Beijing rather than accommodation.

Yet even in defeat, the opposition found a way to cooperate. Since February 2024, the KMT and Taiwan People's Party have formed a legislative coalition, combining their seats to outnumber the DPP. They have passed bills expanding legislative oversight of the executive branch. They have blocked DPP initiatives they opposed.

The cooperation comes too late to change the outcome of the presidential election, but it demonstrates a persistent truth about Pan-Blue politics: the parties can work together when they have no choice.

The Question of China

What does Pan-Blue actually want regarding China?

The coalition's position has evolved dramatically since its formation. In the early years, many members still dreamed of reunification—not joining the People's Republic, but somehow reconstituting the Republic of China as the government of all China. They imagined the Communist regime collapsing, democracy sweeping the mainland, and the descendants of 1949 refugees returning in triumph.

Today, that dream has faded to fantasy. The Communist Party shows no signs of collapse. China's economy has grown into the second largest in the world. The People's Liberation Army fields technology that matches or exceeds what Taiwan can deploy. No serious person believes the Republic of China will ever govern Shanghai or Beijing again.

Pan-Blue has adapted by embracing the status quo. The coalition now argues that Taiwan should maintain its current ambiguous position: functionally independent, not formally so, engaging economically and culturally with China while preserving its separate political system. Reunification remains theoretically possible, the argument goes, but only if China democratizes—only if the mainland becomes a place where the values of Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Republic, could actually flourish.

This is a significant retreat from the original position. But it allows Pan-Blue to distinguish itself from Pan-Green, which increasingly moves toward formal independence and a purely Taiwanese identity that severs ties with the Chinese past.

Identity and Its Discontents

At its core, the Pan-Blue versus Pan-Green divide is about identity. Who are the people of Taiwan? Where do they come from? Where are they going?

Pan-Blue answers these questions by emphasizing continuity with China. The Mandarin language, Confucian values, traditional Chinese culture, the historical experience of the Chinese people—all these, in the Pan-Blue view, connect Taiwan to a civilization thousands of years old. Taiwanese identity is not false, but it is nested within a larger Chinese identity, just as Texan identity exists within American identity or Bavarian identity within German identity.

Pan-Green answers differently. Taiwan has been shaped by indigenous peoples, by Dutch and Spanish colonizers, by Japanese rule, by the unique experience of building democracy in the shadow of a giant authoritarian neighbor. The Chinese heritage is real but partial. Taiwan is not a province of China any more than Vietnam or Korea are provinces of China, despite their deep cultural debts to Chinese civilization.

These are not questions that can be resolved through argument. They are matters of feeling, of belonging, of how people understand their own lives and histories. The genius of Taiwan's democracy is that it allows both visions to compete peacefully at the ballot box, election after election, without either side imposing its answer by force.

The Future

What comes next for Pan-Blue?

The coalition faces serious challenges. Each generation of Taiwanese voters is more likely to identify exclusively as Taiwanese, less likely to feel any connection to mainland China, less likely to vote for parties that emphasize Chinese identity. Demographic trends favor Pan-Green.

The international environment also grows more hostile to Pan-Blue positions. The United States, Taiwan's most important unofficial ally, increasingly views China as a strategic rival. American policy encourages Taiwan to strengthen its defenses, to reduce economic dependence on China, to prepare for the possibility of conflict. These priorities align more naturally with Pan-Green than with Pan-Blue.

Yet Pan-Blue retains significant support. The 2024 election showed that sixty percent of voters preferred alternatives to the DPP. Many Taiwanese value stability over confrontation, economic growth over ideological purity, pragmatic engagement over principled resistance. These voters provide a base for Pan-Blue politics even as the broader trends run against the coalition.

The fundamental question—what is Taiwan's relationship to China?—will not be answered definitively in any single election. It will be contested and reconsidered for as long as Taiwan remains a democracy and China remains an authoritarian state with unresolved claims to the island.

In this ongoing argument, Pan-Blue represents one answer: that Taiwan is Chinese as well as Taiwanese, that engagement with Beijing is possible and desirable, that the dream of a democratic China—however distant—is worth preserving. Whether this answer commands majority support will be tested again and again, in election after election, for decades to come.