Lawfare and Subversion in Taiwan's Legislative Yuan

Unlike most Taiwanese Lunar New Years, which traditionally commence with quiet family gatherings, in 2025 the Year of the Snake started with nationwide mobilisation as citizens took to the streets. They began gathering signatures for petitions to recall as many as 50 lawmakers from a total 111 seats in the Legislative Yuan (LY)in a fight for the survival of the island’s democracy. The ‘Recall War’, led by Robert Tsao – a chip billionaire who forsook retirement abroad and moved back to Taiwan, staking his personal fortune to establish the paramilitary Kuma Academy whose sworn aim is to prevent the ‘Hong Kong-isation of Taiwan’ – is the latest battle in the silent war for Taiwan’s future.

Stress-testing the Legislative Yuan: Power Grabs, Budget Blocking and the Recall War

The immediate trigger for the Recall War was budget-blocking and swingeing cuts imposed by the LY. The cuts froze NTD 207.5 billion – equivalent to approximately £4.83 billion and comprising up to 34% of total Executive Yuan spending – without accounting for the total elimination of a $100bn subsidy. The subsidy, paid to the Taiwan Power Company was designed to shield consumers from a spike in prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The annual budget, which should have been approved by 30 November 2024, was hurriedly passed in politically fraught circumstances after only two days of review on 21 January 2025. Budget slashing was in turn preceded by an abortive attempt by the Kuomintang (KMT)-dominated LY to fundamentally reengineer the balance of power in Taiwan’s political system by passing legislation to arrogate vast powers from the executive and judiciary and dismantle checks and balances.

Walking the cat even further back, that constitutional coup was launched in May 2024 a month after the KMT’s chief whip Fu Kun-chi led a 25-member delegation to Beijing to meet with Wang Huning, Xi Jinping’s ideologue-in-chief who, officially number four on the CCP hierarchy, heads the United Front and is in charge of Taiwan policy.

If polarisation between natives (benshengren) and the rump of the KMT that fled to Taiwan in the aftermath of China’s civil war (waishengren) is the root of almost all political disputes in Taiwan, the proximate cause of this constitutional crisis is the hung parliament delivered by the electorate in 2024. Despite winning the presidency and more votes than any other party in the LY elections, the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) only won 49 seats in the LY, whereas the KMT took 54 with the balance of power being held by the Taiwan People's Party’s (TPP) nine legislators.

That result partly reflected Taiwan’s complex hybrid electoral system, disaffection with the DPP who have been in power since 2016, as well as established voting patterns whereby the electorate tends to vote according to national security considerations in the presidential elections and along economic lines in LY elections. Significantly, TPP supporters voting for Taipei’s techno-populist former mayor Ko Wen-je comprise a young demographic primarily motivated by economic factors such as house prices and job creation.

While divided government is not new for Taiwan’s resilient democracy – Chen Shui-bian’s two administrations from 2000-2008 mirrored the present insofar as the DPP and KMT respectively controlled the executive and legislature – then-leader of the LY Wang Jin-pyng was a consummate deal-maker who frequently reached across the aisle to find common ground.

In lieu of such a parliamentarian, today the incumbent Speaker is Han Kuo-yu, the former firebrand mayor of Kaohsiung whose credentials to run for President in 2020 were questioned by his own party members. They alleged alcoholism, gambling, womanising and a distinctly lacklustre work ethic. In that election Han enjoyed a large lead in the polls over Tsai Ing-wen until the brutal crackdown in Hong Kong, during which Han made a politically-disastrous, high-profile visit to demonstrate solidarity with the HKSAR government.

The other key difference is the subversion factor: during the KMT Administration of Ma Ying-jeou from 2008-16, comprehensive Cross-Strait engagement enabled the United Front Work Department (UFWD) and China’s intelligence services to comprehensively penetrate the ganglia of Taiwanese society, including political and military elites and right down to organised crime and grass roots organisations.

Although the term ‘fifth column’ is not currently used in PRC doctrine, it frequently appears in memoirs of underground CCP operatives who infiltrated the KMT and perhaps turned the tide in China’s civil war. More recently, former deputy director of the Taiwan Affairs Office and PLA Maj Gen (ret.) Wang Zaixi floated the ‘Beiping Model’, a reference to a month-long siege of Beijing in 1949 culminating in the encircled KMT commander’s surrender following secret talks that were facilitated by his wife and secretary, both of whom were underground agents of the CCP.

Allegations of subversion are necessarily difficult to prove. However, a report published by the National Security Bureau in January highlighted an uptick in convictions, increasing fourfold in as many years, two thirds of which were of retired and serving military personnel. Previously hypothesised links between politicians and the UFWD are now supported by evidence.

For example, an undercover documentary exposing how Taiwanese influencers are targeted with junkets and hospitality in Xiamen included a visit to the offices of a UFWD newspaper adorned with personal calligraphy professing the wisdom of Han Kuo-yu. That documentary also revealed as many as 200,000 PRC passports had been covertly issued to Taiwanese; and informal conversations with intelligence officers confirm that there is active monitoring and investigations of LY members suspected of being agents of Beijing and holding PRC passports.

What is beyond any shadow of a doubt is deep-blue members of the KMT are following a deliberate strategy to paralyse the LY in their bid to undermine the Administration of Lai Ching-te. Thus there is a clear convergence of interest between elements of the KMT and China, which is the main beneficiary of legislative chaos.

This should be assessed in the context of well-known linkages between these elements and the Chinese Communist Party. Moreover after Xi jettisoned the ambiguity of the ‘One China Respective Interpretations’ (yi zhong ge biao) formula in 2019, leaving space only for ‘peaceful reunification’ under Hong Kong-style One Country Two Systems, the architect of the 1992 Consensus pivoted to become a key proponent of the ‘America Scepticism Theory’ (yimei lun) propagating ‘abandoned chess piece’ narratives which insinuate the US cannot and will not defend Taiwan in event of a PLA invasion under any circumstance.

How things might play out

The KMT-TPP legislative power-grab has largely failed. In October 2024 the Constitutional Court ruled that most aspects of the reforms enacted were unconstitutional, including empowering the LY to summon the President to answer questions, conferring on the LY the power to set up ‘investigative committees’ (beyond the scope of pre-existing legislative committees). These were endowed with vast powers to inquire into government agencies and impose criminal penalties on uncooperative witnesses and criminal sanctions for ‘reverse interpellation’, meaning government officials cannot express disagreement, request clarification or disagree with the interrogating legislator; and the power to extensively question nominees before approving or rejecting their nomination.

The grounds cited by the Court for ruling the foregoing unconstitutional were the separation of powers. The subtext of this decision being that the proper way to drastically remake Taiwan’s political system would be through constitutional amendment (a mathematical and political impossibility at present). In response to the ignominy of defeat, the KMT has renewed rhetoric of ‘green terror’, refused to process the nominations for seven of the 15 grand justices whose term expired in November 2024 and passed (likely unconstitutional) legislation requiring a majority of 10 grand justices for all Constitutional Court decisions, effectively paralysing the Judicial Yuan.

One interpretation of this spectacular overreach might be that a similar UFWD playbook was deployed successfully in Hong Kong to consolidate CCP authority over the legislature and courts. However, a key distinction – apart from the formidable capabilities of Taiwanese counter-intelligence – is that in Hong Kong after 1997 the PRC wielded a de facto veto power over the courts through article 158(3) of the Basic Law. 

This short-circuited the rule of law by vesting the power of final interpretation in the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, and through a judicial appointment system whose members included government officials and were legally gagged from discussing deliberations. Thus, a system was created that was ripe for infiltration, manipulation and abuse.

Furthermore, PRC objectives in Hong Kong were limited by comparison. They merely sought to silence political dissent in a city over which Beijing already exercised military control. The maximalist goal of PRC grey zone activities in Taiwan is to take over an entire independent island with its own armed forces and backed by an international coalition of powerful allies. Besides, in Taiwan the ability of PRC agencies to infiltrate the fabric of society is manifestly not matched by their grasp of the niceties of constitutional law, hence the magnitude of this miscalculation.

As regards the ongoing Recall War, the aim of which is for the DPP to clawback a legislative majority in the absence of a mechanism to dissolve parliament, this is unlikely to succeed due to procedural barriers that effectively require petitions signed by 11% of the relevant electorate, followed by a majority in a referendum with a turnout of at least 25%.

The outcome will probably not be known before September 2025, however, of the first 28 from 50 cases, 19 have passed, all of which were initiated by the DPP. Nine KMT petitions failed because too many signatures were invalidated. Notably, in New Taipei City hundreds of signatures were from dead people, most of whom had passed away before signing the petitions, implying forgery.

Implications for Cross-Straits Stability and Policy Recommendations

While legislative brawls have been a feature more than a bug of Taiwan’s rambunctious democracy for almost three decades (to which political scientists have dedicated monographs), this latest twist has serious implications for Cross-Strait stability, perhaps no more so than in respect to budget cuts and freezes.

Against the backdrop of Trump Administration officials calling for Taiwan to spend as much as 5-10% of its GDP on Defence, pro-China groups within the LY have a coordinated strategy to drive a wedge between Taipei and Washington, the calculation being to impose a dilemma on the Lai Administration by making it impossible to increase defence spending. This dilemma could turn abandonment by the United States into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Thus, despite proposing to continue the past decade’s increase of defence spending to NTD 647 billion (around 2.5% of GDP), in fact the LY cut spending by 3% in 2025. Substantively, several key programmes instrumental to the island’s defence are impacted: 50% of the Indigenous Defense Submarine programme has been frozen; as has 50% of the budget of the Aerospace Park in southern Taiwan, a private sector collaboration to manufacture dual-use drones; and the Ministry of Digital Affairs’ cyber resilience budget has been slashed by 56% to NTD 300 million, increasing Taiwan’s vulnerability to hybrid warfare.

Although fear of abandonment looms large in Taiwan’s public psyche following Washington’s switch of diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979, the strategy of strangling the LY may still backfire. Firstly, political support for the king-making TPP is collapsing following the jailing of its charismatic leader on corruption charges in December 2024. Ko Wen-je himself is a technocrat who never discussed Cross-Strait relations during his election campaign. His platform while presiding over the Shanghai-Taipei forum as mayor of Taipei was simply to have a good working relationship with Beijing so that Taipei could focus on the economic issues that younger voters cared most about.

Instead, in coalition with the KMT the TPP’s populist vote for Ko has been hijacked; and notably a number of TPP members had originally defected from the KMT going back to the 9-in-1 local elections in 2022, which raises questions about infiltration. It remains to be seen whether the TPP will continue to support the KMT, especially as the Lai Administration enhances counter-intelligence as through the recently announced17 measures; if the legislative tide turns, in addition to reintroducing military courts, Lai will likely heed calls from experts such asPeter Mattis to increase prison sentences for espionage-related offences.

Secondly, Taiwan’sdefence spending is not low in absolute terms (in fact it is more than Singapore’s) or as a proportion of overall government spending (15% comparable to South Korea and Israel). There is significant scope to increase it further through taxation and borrowing; Taiwan’s tax burden is only 9.2% of GDP, which is very low by OECD and even Asian standards, and its borrowing is 24.2% with scope to increase up to 40.6% of GDP averaged over three years under the terms of the Public Debt Act. In other words, were the KMT-TPP coalition to continue its lawfare campaign in the LY until the next election in 2028, mechanisms exist to enable the Lai Administration to continue to fulfil the defence commitments it has pledged.

Finally, there is scope for like-minded partners and allies to shore up peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific through strategic communications pushing back against narratives of abandonment. Given the Trump Administration’s suspension of Voice of America and Radio Free Asia broadcasting, the BBC and DeutscheWelle could revive their dormant capacities. Diplomats can communicate to Washington the underappreciated impact of an attempted constitutional coup akin to Hitler’s 1933 Reichstag Enabling Act that snuffed out the democratic flame of the Weimar Republic.

With respect to counter-subversion assistance, liaison relationships could be deepened by embedding Western officers in Taiwan’s national agencies who would be able not only to contribute deep professional expertise but also would stand to learn from frontline deployments about how to tackle CCP subversion at home. In the face of supply-side issues with US arms sales, like-minded partners and allies might consider selling weapons to Taiwan and there is significant untapped potential for thinking more creatively in terms of military assistance and financing structures for arms deals. Beyond the geo-strategic and economic implications of Taiwan being annexed by the PRC, ideationally, extinguishing the sole remaining beacon of Chinese democracy would feed the fallacy that China is unsuited to democracy and render the prospect of political liberalisation that could stabilise strategic competition even more remote.

The author is a researcher specialising on Chinese subversion and electoral manipulation techniques, who publishes work under a pseudonym.

© Langdon Kelly, 2025, published by RUSI with permission of the authors.

The views expressed in this Commentary are the authors', and do not represent those of RUSI or any other institution.

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