Taiwan parties mass for rallies on eve of pivotal vote
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00:00 The rhetoric is surprisingly aggressive. If you attend some of these presidential rallies,
00:05 a lot of time is spent shouting abuse or accusing the opposition parties of corruption, of being
00:12 willing to undermine peace in the region. And all of the parties here actually claim that they are
00:17 pro-maintaining a peaceful status quo. But they all also accuse the other parties of being willing
00:22 to undermine that peaceful status quo. The KMT, the Kuomintang, the party that descends from the
00:28 Chinese nationalists that lost the civil war in 1949 to the communists in China, they have
00:33 historically been much closer to China. They see themselves as being Chinese, as being part of a
00:37 broader Chinese identity. And they want to improve relations with Beijing by increasing economic and
00:43 political exchange across the Taiwan Strait. But they're accused by their political opponents of
00:48 being willing to sell out Taiwanese sovereignty and of being pro-CCP. The Democratic Progressive
00:53 Party, the party of government here, the DPP, well they have historically been much less close
00:58 with China. But the opponents of them, their opponents, they accuse them of being to blame
01:04 for the relations, for the bad relations that we've seen with Beijing that some here have been
01:08 characterizing as being at an all-time low.