In Taiwan, main opposition party the Kuomintang (KMT) will be choosing its next chairman on May 20. Currently, six candidates have registered to contest the election for the chairmanship.

Most polls show a tight three-way race among the KMT Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu, former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin and former vice president Wu Den-yih.

“This election itself is crucial for the Kuomintang Party because of three reasons. Firstly, for the first time there is an open contest among eligible candidates. Secondly, the KMT is facing life-and-death issues within Taiwan because the ruling party DPP is trying to use all its political mighty to destroy the KMT. And the third thing is there are major shifts in global geographical political alignments,” Joanna Lei, a former Taiwan legislator, said on CGTN talk show “Dialogue with Yang Rui” on Tuesday.

Taiwan affairs commentator Gregory Yingnian Tsang added that the sovereignty of Taiwan is always an important issue for both the Chinese mainland and the United States, but the importance of Taiwan has varied through the decades. At the moment, Tsang believes, the importance of Taiwan has been weakened for US President Donald Trump after he met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Florida.

Speaking of the KMT chairmanship election itself, Harvey Dzodin, a freelance columnist for China Daily, said that the KMT has so many different factions but they don’t have the luxury to fight with each other as they did before, because for the first time the DPP party has not only control the leadership of Taiwan but also its legislature.

If the KMT wants to win back power in th‍e general election of 2020, the party must address the issue of young people in Taiwan, according to Dzodin.

With the KMT in opposition, many people had said the party would be marginalized, but Tsang doesn’t agree with that forecast. He said the KMT is still important for cross-Strait relations.