Taiwan Legislative Yuan Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), not known for a short fuse, erupted twice during the August 11 cross-party budget negotiations — a five-minute tirade to open the session and a parting shot to close it — both aimed at his own Kuomintang (KMT) caucus whip, Fu Kun-chi (傅崐萁), for skipping the talks without even delegating a stand-in. Fu was rattled enough to skip a press conference altogether, choosing instead a thousand-word written statement calling his absence a "soft protest against the executive branch's bullying of the legislature." Both men have a case to make, but Han holds the obvious edge: legislative combat requires showing up and sparring in person, and Fu did neither.
The real casualty, though, is not Fu. It is the KMT itself, with the Taiwan People's Party (TPP) taking collateral damage. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is the clear winner, since Han's roar vented two years of DPP frustration and, if only for a moment, offered the illusion of vindication after last year's crushing defeat in a wave of recall votes against opposition lawmakers.
The KMT Cannot Function Without Fu Kun-chi
Han's anger did not come out of nowhere. Tension had been building since July 29, when Fu cursed during a negotiation over freezing four months of Premier Cho Jung-tai's (卓榮泰) salary, prompting Han to adjourn the session abruptly. Fu then missed four straight rounds of talks through early August and skipped again on August 11. What pushed Han over the edge was not just the absence itself, but that no one beneath Fu, including KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥), was willing to sign off in his place. Han told Fu that as caucus whip he had three options: show up himself, formally authorize someone else, or resign, which Han called the easiest of the three.
When Lin then said publicly that he could not sign, and that his signature would not bind the caucus anyway, Han grew angrier still, mocking Fu as an "Empress Dowager Cixi ruling from behind a curtain," playing mahjong with one hand while deciding whether to sign with the other. The comparison is a little off historically. Cixi shared power as a regent; Fu, as caucus whip with no formal title over the government, looks more like a retired emperor pulling strings from offstage. With only the DPP caucus willing to sign before talks wrapped, Han erupted again, accusing the chamber of being steered by "dark forces" and demanding to know how lawmakers could justify an extended session that accomplished nothing.
That outburst targeted more than Fu. It targeted a KMT caucus that cannot function without him, and it exposed Han's own limits as a mediator in the process. Brokering compromise in a tense negotiation is the core of a speaker's job, an art Han has yet to master the way his predecessor Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) once did. The rest of the KMT caucus showed no more skill at it, and a TPP caucus without former legislator Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) could only watch from the sidelines.
Skipping Talks Barely Registers With The Cabinet
Using the general budget as leverage is nothing new for the legislature, which has long relied on tools such as sending bills back for revision or delaying review. Fu's statement raised a fair point: the Executive Yuan, Taiwan's Cabinet, has ignored laws the legislature already passed, including police and military pay raises it failed to fully fund, and now risks doing the same to the newly passed Future Accounts Act for children's savings, reportedly without even triggering formal reconsideration procedures.
That grievance, however, has nothing to do with Fu's absence. Had the KMT wanted real leverage, it could have sent the budget bill back for a redraft or halted review outright. Instead, Fu skipped the talks, then declared victory in a statement once he was scolded, a face-saving move that recalls Ah Q, the self-deluding antihero of Lu Xun's satire who reframes every defeat as a triumph. In practice, Fu has neither united his caucus behind a clear negotiating line nor organized its more than a thousand budget-freeze proposals into a coherent strategy. For the Cabinet, his single absence changes nothing: it had already written off passing the budget by the end of August, confident that freezing funds for Taiwan's public broadcaster, including its international channel Taiwan Plus, would draw international pushback on its own. With several sitting legislators eyeing mayoral runs in this year's local elections and wary of a budget standoff, none dared object, leaving Fu's gambit to put the KMT's election prospects on the grill.
Fu's Huang Kuo-chang Comparison Falls Apart
Fu's statement also invoked Huang Kuo-chang, saying Huang once skipped negotiations too as a "soft protest" against the ruling party's heavy-handedness. The comparison does not hold up. Huang refused only the negotiations he saw as placating theater, but otherwise showed up religiously, and when he did walk out or refuse to sign, he did so loudly and with a clear rationale. Skipping talks and withholding authorization at once, as Fu has done, is a tactic of his own making.
Fu's deeper error is treating absence itself as a defense of legislative dignity. Cross-party negotiations carry the same legal standing as floor votes and committee sessions under the law governing the legislature's powers. Lawmakers defend their institution through questioning, votes, budget cuts and public argument, not by declining to show up. Carried to its logical end, that reasoning would argue for adjourning the legislature altogether rather than extending its session.
Han's public break with Fu laid bare an old verdict on the KMT: like Liu Shan (劉禪), the hapless third-century ruler whose name became shorthand in Chinese for a hopeless case beyond saving no matter how much help he received, the party keeps sabotaging even favorable positions back to square one. The one silver lining is Fu's promise to work with the TPP to bring opposition budget proposals down toward Han's target of roughly one hundred. Even that remains fragile; a single error or mismatched figure could unravel it at the last step. The DPP, holding the presidency and the Cabinet while watching its rival flounder, can afford to sit back and enjoy the show. The KMT cannot.
