Taiwan presidential election: opposition in chaos as China looms in background

News Snapshot:

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...