James Soong

Political affiliation		Candidate		Votes
		President	Vice President	Total votes	Percentage
	Democratic Progressive Party	Chen Shui-bian	Annette Lu	4,977,737	39.3%
	Independent	James Soong	Chang Chau-hsiung	4,664,932	36.8%
	Kuomintang	Lien Chan	Vincent Siew	2,925,513	23.1%
	Independent	Hsu Hsin-liang	Josephine Chu	79,429	0.63%
	New Party	Li Ao	Elmer Fung	16,782	0.13%
Total				12,786,671	82.69% voter turnout
Valid votes				12,664,393
Invalid votes				122,278

After losing the election, Soong's supporters protested in front of the KMT party headquarters and blockaded the building for a few days. They succeeded in pressuring Lee Teng-hui to resign as KMT Chairman in favor of Lien Chan. Within weeks, Soong and his supporters formed the People First Party (PFP), considered a spin-off from the KMT.

Prosecutors later dropped all charges against Soong in the Chunghsing Scandal. In 2003, the investigation was reopened, with former President Lee (now expelled from the KMT and the "spiritual leader" of the pro-independence Taiwan Solidarity Union) testifying against Soong in court. However, with the KMT allied with the People First Party for the 2004 presidential election, the KMT aided Soong in his defense, providing documents signed by Lee. KMT Chairman Lien Chan claimed the KMT was misled into filing the lawsuit against Soong. The KMT dropped the charges and is still trying to collect the money that had been returned and was deposited in the court by Soong.

2004 presidential elections

Despite the personal rivalries between Lien, the KMT chairman after 2000, and Soong, the KMT and People First Party pledged to cooperate in future elections to prevent splitting the vote. Though losses in the 2001 legislative elections made the DPP the largest single party in the Legislative Yuan, the pan-blue coalition retained a narrow majority over the pan-green coalition.

Soong ran as Vice Presidential candidate under Lien Chan in the 2004 elections. Some believe that the PFP's lack of experienced candidates in the December 2002 mayoral elections in Taipei and Kaohsiung (the PFP supported the KMT's candidates), and the PFP's poor performance the city council elections in those cities at the same time were major setbacks to Soong's chances of being the KMT-PFP candidate for president. There were widespread rumors that Soong agreed to take the Vice-Presidential post in exchange for a pledge by Lien to give him significant power including the Premiership. Many KMT members opposed the linkage as they considered Soong an opportunist and traitor. Soong's supporters pointed out that he was more popular than Lien, as consistently demonstrated by polls, and the results of the 2000 presidential elections. Though both men garnered a combined 60% of the vote in 2000 (compared to Chen's 39%) they lost to Chen in 2004 by a mere 0.22% of the vote and never conceded.

 Summary of the 20 March 2004 Taiwan presidential election results

Candidates and nominating parties	Votes	%		Votes before recount
Chen Shui-bian and Annette Lu Democratic Progressive Party(Pan-Green Coalition)	6,446,900	50.11		6,471,970
Lien Chan and James Soong Kuomintang / People First Party (Pan-Blue Coalition)	6,423,906	49.89		6,442,452
Total (turnout 80.28 %)	12,914,422	100.0
Invalid votes	337,297
Votes cast	13,251,719

After the 2004 election

After the 2004 Presidential election, Soong actively sought the merger of the KMT and People First Party. However, he ceased doing so after the ROC Legislative Election, 2004. Although the pan-blue coalition did well, the PFP did not, and Soong ended talk of a KMT-PFP merger. In February 2005, he signed a 10 point consensus program with President Chen Shui-Bian which brought heavy criticism to Chen. The possibility of DPP-PFP cooperation ended in May 2005, when Soong visited mainland China to meet with Hu Jintao of the Communist Party of China. Initially, Chen stated that Soong was to deliver a secret message to the PRC leadership, but Soong denied this.

In the 2005 KMT chairmanship election, Soong, who retains significant following within the KMT, despite initially instructing party officials not to support either Ma Ying-jeou or Wang Jin-pyng, endorsed Wang at the last minute. The endorsement appeared to backfire, however, as Ma defeated Wang by a rather large margin of 72% to 28%.

On July 22, 2005, Soong, unopposed, was reelected chairman of the PFP.

On November 17, 2005, Soong was awarded NT$10 million in a defamation suit against former President Lee Teng-hui, who had alleged that Soong was playing mahjong while his supporters were protesting on the streets in April 2004. A three-judge panel of the Taipei District Court ruled that Lee must apologize and compensate Soong, saying that Lee's "groundless" remark had damaged Soong's reputation. In addition, the court ordered Lee to publish a half-page apology in major newspapers for three consecutive days.

Visit to mainland China 2005

Soong's visit to mainland China followed quickly on the heels of the trail-blazing visit of KMT Chairman Lien Chan. A few weeks after shaking Lien's hands at the airport and wishing him luck, Soong took his turn at the spotlight. Despite early predictions by critics that the two political peers would try to out-stage each other, the two visits proved to be similar and complementary in many respects.

Soong's whirlwind 9 day, 5 city "Bridge Laying" tour began on May 5, with a trip to the traditional Chinese capital of Xi'an. There, he visited the tomb memorial for the Yellow Emperor, a near-mythical historical figure from whom the Chinese believe they are descended. He then visited Nanjing, the former capital of the Republic of China, where he visited the tomb of ROC founder Sun Yat-sen. After a brief visit to Shanghai, Soong made an emotional return to his ancestral home in Hunan province. Soong and his family visited and honored the grave of his maternal grandmother buried in Xiangtan in a widely televised emotional ceremony. Choosing to appear as familiar as possible to his mainland hosts, Soong spoke his greetings in the local dialect in each of the cities that he visited.

Beyond sentimental visits, the important political aspect of his tour comes from his visit to Beijing. There, he shook hands with the general secretary of the Communist Party of China Hu Jintao and exchanged presents with him; Soong gave Hu a work of glass art from Liuli Gongfang, and received a piece of Jingdezhen pottery from Hu.^[2] Soong was only the second major political figure from Taiwan to ever do so. The carefully scripted red-carpet ceremony was identical to the previous greeting for KMT Chairman Lien Chan. The key out-come of the meeting was the publication of a shared political platform between the Communist Party and Soong's People's First Party. Finally, Soong lectured at Tsinghua University, an echo of Lien's lecture at Peking University four weeks prior.

Soong's visit was designed to emphasize his belief in common shared roots for the Chinese people, a reflection of his pro-unification sentiment. He specifically chose to honor the historical ancestor of the Chinese people, the contemporary father of the Republic of China, and then his own direct ancestors in that precise order. His public comments addressed this continuous theme as well, receiving rapturous support from his mainland audience. The political consensus borne of the visit between the PFP and the CPC called for practical actions towards establishing links between Taiwan and mainland China, while firmly resisting Taiwanese independence.

2006 Taipei Mayoral Election

Tax issue

On August 17, 2006, Taiwan's Administrative Supreme Court handed down a ruling against Soong in a case of tax evasion. He was charged gift taxes by the National Tax Administration from events in 1994 when he wired NT$42 million from his election campaign account to that of his daughterinlaw in the United States. Soong's argument was that he had wired the money to his daughterinlaw in order to pay off remaining campaign debts and to establish a Foundation, and that he was not simply "gifting" the money to her. The Court however found that the first money was not given to the Foundation until December 2001, and ruled that the money had been used as his private assets and that therefore gift tax was payable. He was assessed NT$13 million in gift tax, with fine also of NT$13 million, for a total sum of NT$26 million.

Taipei campaign

On October 18, 2006, Soong formally announced and registered his candidacy for the Mayoralty of Taipei City, Taiwan's capital and largest city, in the local government elections to be held in December 2006.^[3] Soong registered as a "non-partisan" candidate without a party affiliation, declaring that he had taken a leave of absence from his post as Chairman of the PFP.

After his defeat in Taipei Mayoral Election on the 9th of December, 2006, he won only 4% of cast ballots, James Soong announced that he will retire from politics, which entailed giving up the chairmanship of his party, the PFP. With this announcement and with no clear goal, the PFP face an uncertain future which could speed up any merger with the Kuomintang.

2006 Taipei City Mayoral Election Result
No	Candidate	Party	Votes	%
1	Li Ao	Independent	7,795	0.61%
2	Clara Chou[lower-alpha 1]	Taiwan Solidarity Union	3,372	0.26%
3	Frank Hsieh	Democratic Progressive Party	525,869	40.89%
4	James Soong[lower-alpha 2]	Independent	53,281	4.14%
5	Hau Lung-pin	Kuomintang	692,085	53.81%
6	Ke Tsi-hai (柯賜海)	Independent	3,687	0.29%

Claims made by former president Chen Shui-bian

Chen Shui-bian claimed in an interview with a cable TV channel in May 2005 that Soong met Chen Yunlin in the United States in February that year.

Following this claim, on February 15, 2007 Taipei District Court ruled Thursday that President Chen Shui-bian must pay James Soong NT$3 million (US$91,183) in damages and apologize in the top three newspapers for his allegation that Soong met secretly with China's State Council Taiwan Affairs Office Director Chen Yunlin in 2005. The court said President Chen failed to carry out necessary verification before making his allegation. "The president exercises overall control over the executive sector resources and his responsibility to verify information must be weighted," a court spokesman said.

PFP spokesman Lee Hung-Chun called the judgment "comforting" but said it came too late. "It took more than a year for the first judgment to come out," he said, adding that this meant the public did not get the chance to learn the truth during a time when the political situation was changing rapidly. Chen's counsel said he will appeal to the High Court.

Claiming that his remarks were based on "intelligence," Chen also said Soong promised during the meeting to oppose a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow for popular referendums on future constitutional amendments, in exchange for Beijing's approval for Soong to visit China.

Soong filed a defamation suit against Chen in June 2005, demanding a symbolic NT$1 in compensation and a published apology in four major local newspapers for three consecutive days. After Chen repeated his claim in another TV interview in October that same year. Soong later extended his compensation demand to NT$50 million and asked Chen to publish an apology in four internationally famous newspapers in the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Japan, as well as in three local ones.

According to the written judgment, Chen said that the intelligence about Soong's activity was submitted to him by Bureau of Investigation Director-General Yeh Cherng-maw. However, Yeh told the court that he had warned Chen that the intelligence, some of which he admitted was drawn from media speculation, was difficult to check.

The judgment said that as president, Chen must have understood the weakness of the information and could have ordered the national security system to conduct further verification, but decided not to bother.

2012 presidential elections

After a petition, Soong, for the first time as a People First Party presidential candidate, ran the 2012 presidential election together with Lin Ruey-shiung, a National Taiwan University professor in public health. Soong described the "Blue-Green rivalry" in Taiwanese politics as en epidemic and Lin, as a doctor, was his partner to cure this "disease". He contended that Taiwanese people wanted a third party other than the KMT and the DPP, and the PFP was their choice.

 Summary of the 2012 Taiwanese presidential election results

Party		Candidate		Votes	Percentage
		President	Vice president
	Kuomintang	Ma Ying-jeou	Wu Den-yih	6,891,139	51.60%
	Democratic Progressive Party	Tsai Ing-wen	Su Chia-chyuan	6,093,578	45.63%
	People First Party	James Soong	Lin Ruey-shiung	369,588	2.77%
Total				13,354,305	100%

2016 presidential elections

Soong announced his intention to join the 2016 Republic of China presidential election on 6 August 2015 with running mate Hsu Hsin-ying of Minkuotang.^[6] The Soong–Hsu ticket finished third.^[7]

 Summary of the 16 January 2016 Taiwanese presidential election results

Party		Candidate		Votes	Percentage
		President	Vice president
	Democratic Progressive Party	Tsai Ing-wen	Chen Chien-jen	6,894,744	56.12%
	Kuomintang	Eric Chu	Wang Ju-hsuan	3,813,365	31.04%
	People First Party	James Soong	Hsu Hsin-ying	1,576,861	12.84%
Total				12,284,970	100%

PFP stance on Cross-Strait relations

Soong hopes to pursue democracy, not only to show the quality of democracy, but also look forward to the future impact of democracy in mainland China; until that day, to re-integrate into a unified China, so that Chinese people feel dignity, pride and pride. Another trait of PFP's democratic parties is to promote democratic legislative decision-making, so that everyone can participate in the development of democracy: the People First Party has no "head of party members" and no case of any "ghost party" flooded because for us, anyone willing to vote in elections to the People First Party people are recognized the People First Party, People First Party supports the spirit of the party.

In addition to the "One Chinese Roof", the PFP proposes "cross-strait two seats." The "cross-strait two seats" concept is based on the "one China" premise, to promote cross-strait differences between two seats respectively, the participation of non-political international organizations to ensure Taiwan's 23 million people's living, security, and dignity. This and Mr. Lee Teng-hui advocated "two states theory" are different. Because "two states theory" not only violates the Constitution of the Republic, but also the idea of separation of consciousness, not only conducive to cross-strait peace, but will impact the balance of the current situation on both sides. In other words, the two-state theory aims to "separate", the People First Party's "cross-strait two seats", aims to "unite". Therefore, the People First Party advocate, whether WTO or WHO, World Bank, IMF, should let Taiwan join, so that Taiwan people are not suppressed, confident, have more living space, to the public safety and peace of mind protection. Chu Yu believes that only through allowing the two sides to jointly participate in the international community, will end cross-strait relations' "sometimes tense, sometimes ease" cycle of instability and reduce the possibility of cross-strait military conflict, in order to ensure the Taiwan Strait Peace.

Notes

References

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