Lai will make a formal announcement on his choice of 52-year-old senior diplomat Hsiao Bi-khin as his vice presidential candidate.
William Lai, a presidential candidate in Taiwan’s 2024 elections, has named Hsiao Bi-khim, the self-ruled island’s former envoy to the United States, as his running mate.
Lai, a candidate for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the man leading most opinion polls ahead of the Jan. 13 election, said Hsiao, 52, was the ideal person for the job.
In a post on his Facebook page, Lai said he would formally introduce Hsiao as his running mate on Monday afternoon.
Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said it had accepted his resignation.
“I believe Bi-khim is undoubtedly an excellent person regarding Taiwan’s diplomatic work today, and she is a rare diplomatic talent in our country,” Lai said.
“I am confident that together with Bi-khim, we will succeed in the last 50 days in uniting the consensus of the people and uniting all forces to win the elections and enable Taiwan to continue moving forward on the path to the future .”
Taiwan is heading to the polls at a time when Beijing is increasingly asserting its claims to the democratic island, which it says is part of China. It does not exclude the use of force to achieve its objective.
The DPP, which came to power in 2016 under President Tsai Ing-wen, said it was up to the Taiwanese people to choose their future.
Like Lai, Hsiao is despised by China, which has imposed sanctions on her twice, most recently in April, calling her an “independenceist.”
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office last week called Lai and Hsiao a “pro-independence double act,” adding that the Taiwanese people were “very clear” about what their partnership meant for the “situation across the Taiwan Strait.” It was not specified.
China conducted military exercises around Taiwan in August, after Lai returned from a brief visit in the USA. China’s military said its drills were a “serious warning against pro-Taiwan separatist forces colluding with external forces to provoke.”
Hsiao became Taipei’s de facto ambassador to the United States in 2020 and is widely seen as a well-connected diplomat adept at managing geopolitical tensions between Washington and Beijing.
Rupert Hammond-Chambers, chairman of the US-Taiwan Business Council who has known Hsiao since the 1990s, said she was a “tremendous politician” and would add much-needed diplomatic and security weight to Lai’s ticket.
“Bi-khim’s connections in (Washington) DC will be invaluable to President Lai if he is elected. She’s going to bring all these connections into her government and he doesn’t have any,” he told the Reuters news agency.
The United States is the island’s main international supporter and arms supplier, although like most countries it has no formal ties with Taipei.
The DPP’s handling of its election candidates contrasts with efforts by Taiwan’s two main opposition parties to agree on a common slate.
The largest opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), traditionally favoring closer ties with Beijing, is locked in conflict dispute with Taiwan’s smaller People’s Party over which of its candidates should run for president and which for vice-president, after initially agreeing to work together.
The deadline for registering presidential candidates with the electoral commission is this Friday.
Hsiao was born in Japan to a Taiwanese father and an American mother and first worked in the office of then-President Chen Shui-bian, also from the DPP, and then as a party lawmaker.
Unusually in Taiwan, she uses a Taiwanese Hokkien spelling of her name in English to emphasize her identity as being Taiwanese and not Chinese.
