EDITORIAL: Hou moving backward with KingNew Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜), the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate currently trailing in the polls, earned himself a new nickname after an event at the Huang Fu-hsing (黃復興) military veterans’ branch in Kaohsiung on Saturday last week. Hou was seated next to former Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the party’s 2020 presidential candidate, as a show of unity to bolster Hou’s flagging campaign. As New Taipei City deputy mayor, Hou had called for the scheduled decommissioning of the Jinshan Nuclear Power Plant in the city’s Shihmen District (石門) and the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in the city’s Wanli District (萬里) before 2018. As mayor, he voted against the party line, opposing restarting construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao District (貢寮) in the December 2021 referendums. After King joined the campaign, Hou suddenly moved closer to policy positions remarkably similar to those of the Ma administration.
