>> this island's predominantly kmt. they don't want necessarily unification here. better business ties with china because again the proximity factor, they are so much closer to mainland china than they are to taipei and the mainland island of taiwan. that includes resuming dialogue, resuming trade, resuming cross-bay visits and tourism because the island depends on it. how important is the island to the election? 127,000 people live here. they sometimes play a lot of lipservice. a local counselor says they are caught in between the battle of two superpowers. let's listen to the counselor. >> being caught between taiwan and mainland china is just how taiwan is caught between china and the you -- and the u.s. that's the way it is. we are like an ant under the feet of an elephant being trampled again and again. shery: we were just speaking to stephen engle, joining us from taiwan. the chinese president xi jinping called on south africa to join him in boosting the country's combined influence on international affairs. president ramaphosa hosted him in pretoria as a pre

in the past, terry gou has identified as a kmt member and he ran for the kmt back in 2019 and the election in 2020 he lost, but this time is a different situation because opinion polls right now, the kmt, which is the opposition party, but they are the nationalists, the big pro china engagement, much more so than the dpp, the incumbents. the opinion polls right now, the dpp vice candidate is leading, but it is a four horse race as you can see right here with william lai qing te leading, but that means the kmt candidate is trailing. terry gou in theory would cannibalize votes from hou, so i am sure terry gou's candidacy is not pleasing the opposition kmt at all because he can basically -- if the polls play out as they are right now, but essentially hands the election to the incumbent dpp in less than five months time. david: how is he in person? you spent the day with him. stephen: he is a vigorous 72-year-old. he is a self-made billionaire, worth $7 billion. he set up on high position with its tradename, foxconn. they have iphone city in zhengzhou in china, so they obviously want better bu

[intense music continues] on paper, the kmt, the nationalists, looked unbeatable.n fact, the cpc, the communists, were stronger. chiang kai-shek had lost the faith of the chinese people. since 1937, a scorched earth policy condemned the vast majority of the chinese people, who could not follow the retreating kmt troops to live in a ruined wasteland. [music] as many as 900,000 chinese died in 1938, when chiang kai-shek had dikes holding back the yellow river destroyed, hoping it would stop oncoming japanese troops. [somber music] it only delayed them. by 1946, china was in political and economic chaos. there was triple digit inflation. only the black market merchants seemed to be making money. [somber music continues] as the months went by, nationalist forces were repeatedly defeated. battered and demoralized, eventually most were in full retreat, often abandoning their heavy weapons and equipment. even more critical, it was now clear that chiang kai-shek was a terrible general. his chief opponent, communist general lin biao, had been brilliant in the fight against

there are, howie, from the opposition kmt, and also from the taiwan people's party. vote as actually as a choice between war versus peace. and they believe that if people vote for lie, that would actually means voting for war while voting for the opposition candidate would be. that would mean voting for peace. so they are arguing that it's really important for taiwan to have more conversation and exchanges with china because that's the only way to reduce the risk of war. and that takes us perfectly into the next question. what is his approach to mainland china. yeah, so lightning does spoke to us during a series of interviews and he actually speaks decent english. but most of the interviews he decided to speak mandarin. the point is that he wanted to be cautious and wanted to get his message right. so he says he says this part, particularly in english, though that's very few in the interviews. he says that we don't want to be enemies with china. we can be friends. and as long as there is parity and dignity, our door is always open to china. so he thinks that as long