The Taipei mayoral election battle is heating up between blue and green.
The Facebook fan page "Voice and Politics" posted an article stating that since Mayor Chiang Wanan returned to Taiwan from Singapore, the municipal confrontation with DPP challenger Shen Boyang has "become very boring" because he is obviously unable to withstand Shen Boyang's successive municipal offensives and often relies on his staff Yin Wei to block the arrows. Although this "substitute attack" method successfully shifted the battlefield in the short term, it also exposed his political image crisis of "not understanding Taipei".
"Volume Depends on Politics" further stated that the most obvious change in Jiang Wanan's camp after Yin Wei answered questions at the meeting was that they were no longer willing to confront Shen Boyang on a topic-by-issue basis. Instead, Yin Wei's stand-in attack technique exposed Jiang Wanan's more serious political image problem. Because of the municipal attacks and defenses some time ago, from the escape room murder case, Beishike Substation, Wenhu Line AI, Taipei Zongtong, to the pressure on civil servants, every question asked the same thing: Does Jiang Wanan understand Taipei? Can you answer municipal questions yourself?
According to fan analysis, judging from the number of views of YT live broadcasts in the 30 days, Jiang Wanan’s green voice has always outnumbered his blue voice. Pan-green discussions about Jiang Wanan once surged from 30,000 to more than 50,000 people, while pan-blue discussions only had about 5,000 to 10,000 people. The voice represented by Jiang Wanan is increasingly not generated by his own positive issues. Overall, he has begun to be chased and defined by his opponents (for Jiang Wanan, green means negative voice, while blue means positive and volume; the opposite is true for Shen Boyang). Yin Wei's stand-in attack only made this problem even more ugly.
Fanzhuan mentioned that after the Yin Wei incident, Jiang Wanan took advantage of the opportunity not to face Shen Boyang head-on in Taiwan before going to Singapore to receive the award, and began to shift the battlefield to the central and local conflicts over the abolition of the Supervisory Yuan, the Singapore City Award, the Straits Forum and Pineapple Sakya, 2028 Rumors, and the Drone Regulations. These questions seem scattered, and they seem to raise the profile, but the strategy is very consistent, that is, do not stay in the Taipei Municipal Government issue setting framework set by Shen Boyang and be tested. This trick is indeed useful in the short term, because it has been proved before that when Jiang Wanan is dealing with municipal details, it is indeed difficult for his team to escort him. However, if the position is brought back to constitutional government and the blue-green confrontation between the two sides, the supporters will return to a state of easy mobilization.
Fans believe that when the issue of confrontation between Shen and Chiang changes from "Will Chiang Wanan handle Taipei municipal affairs?" to "The DPP is suppressing local leaders in the blue camp again," supporters will easily return to the familiar position of blue and green in the past. This is also reflected in the increase in the number of viewers of Panlan's live broadcast in the later period, from the original 5,000 to 10,000, and finally to about 20,000. This is not a recovery of voters' trust in Chiang Wanan's municipal government, but a mobilization and return of defense by the basic base.
Fans said bluntly that the problem is that Jiang Wanan can escape Shen Boyang, but cannot escape his identity as the mayor of Taipei. It can be seen from the data chart of the number of live broadcast views that although the number of views of Jiang Wanan's pan-green live broadcast once dropped to about 18,000 in the middle, it later returned to more than 30,000 or 40,000. This shows that Jiang Wanan's temporary move to shift the battlefield can only temporarily cool down the situation, but cannot truly relieve the crisis.
"Because when he talks about abolishing prisons, others ask him, what about the Taipei Municipal Government? When he talks about the Straits Forum, others ask him, why does the mayor of Taipei defend Taitung pineapple custard apples, and what about his own young farmers in Taipei? When he goes to Singapore to receive the award, others ask him, so why is Taipei flooded and full of cockroaches? What to do with the continuous traffic jams in Beijing and Neihu, the development of Shezi Island, and the heavy pressure on civil servants? In other words, when Chiang Wanan's avoidance becomes his new style of work, his opponents no longer need to pursue every policy detail. They only need to repeat one sentence: Chiang Wanan does not talk about or cares about Taipei."
Fanzhuan said that Jiang Wanan’s original supporter mentality was based on the current advantages: good image, good family background, young, moderate, and sufficient administrative resources. He looks like a political star who can slowly accumulate. However, after the Yin Wei incident, the psychology of supporters began to deteriorate, from appreciative support to defensive support. In other words, supporters are no longer mobilizing because "Jiang Wanan has done a good job in municipal administration", but because "Jiang Wanan was beaten by the DPP, so we have to save him." This mentality can consolidate the base, but it is difficult to expand the middle voters. Because defensive support will only make the stratosphere more united, but will not make those on the sidelines feel more at ease. The more supporters need to help him explain, the more it proves that the mayor's authority has been weakened.
Fans pointed out that Shen Boyang's voice volume has also changed from the live broadcast voice volume chart over the past month. When it first entered the market in late May, the number of viewers of Pan-Green's live broadcast once reached more than 70,000, and then dropped back to around 20,000 to 30,000, indicating that the initial newcomer bonus has receded and it has begun to stabilize its offense and defense. But the key is that Shen Boyang was not marginalized. Instead, he gained a new political position after Jiang Wanan escaped from the municipal battlefield. He went from being the one laughed at by the blue camp to the one who made the current mayor Jiang Wanan have to change the battlefield and have to avoid talking about municipal offense and defense.
Fanzhuan believes that this is very important for the mayoral candidate who is a challenger. Shen Boyang does not need to defeat Jiang Wanan every day at this stage. He even only needs to convince his supporters that "Jiang Wanan does not dare to accept the challenge", and Jiang Wanan will become increasingly disadvantaged. Once Jiang Wanan's fear of confronting Shen Boyang was gradually established, Shen Boyang slowly changed from a candidate striving for popularity and recognition to Jiang Wanan's municipal examiner; Jiang Wanan slowly changed from the current mayor to the one who was defeated.
The fanzhuan said that for Jiang Wanan, escaping is not completely useless. In the short term, escaping can stop the bleeding, avoid Shen Boyang's strongest municipal battlefield, and can also call back supporters of the blue camp to protect the base. But the ceiling of this strategy is very low, because it can only divert attention and self-protection, but cannot rebuild Jiang Wanan's municipal personality. In the long run, escaping will slowly rewrite the image of a young man created by Jiang Wanan's original blue camp into an image of someone who can only read manuscripts, must rely on staff, can only push questions to the central government, is anti-journalist and answers questions A and B, and finally escapes from the Taipei Municipal Government.
The fanzhuan emphasized that when these labels are accumulated, Jiang Wanan's problem is not just that he cannot answer a certain municipal question, but his entire political personality and mayor's persona are redefined. Therefore, Jiang Wanan, although it is shameful to evade, it may be useful in the short term; but if you only evade, what will be highlighted in the end is not the strategic flexibility of your overall election team, but the incompetence of the current mayor Jiang Wanan.
