Taiwan's ruling KMT party has new chairman

MORE TO BE DONE

The 53-year-old Eric Chu is confronted with severe challenges in revitalizing the century-old KMT party, such as handling party's assets in a transparent manner, recruiting young members, and nominating the party's candidate for the Taiwan leader election in 2016.

Chu himself will not run for Taiwan leader in 2016.

Professor Zhu hopes Chu will make progress in reaching peace agreement and establishing mutual military trust mechanism with the mainland,

Chu also needs to settle the doubts among some people over the future of Taiwan-mainland relations, especially among the young people, which has been reflected in massive protests over a cross-Strait service trade pact last year, according to Zhu Weidong, a professor with Taiwan Research Institute under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

Largely deemed as a boost to Taiwan's lackluster economy, the pact aims to open up 80 of the mainland's service sectors to Taiwan and 64 Taiwan service sectors to the mainland.

However, protests had been waved by college students, initially opposing what they saw as undemocratic tactics used by KMT to pass the pact in the legislative body. They later demanded the scrapping of the pact and supervision on future cross-Strait agreements.

The passing of the pact will become an important subject and a test for Chu, said Leng Bo, deputy head of the CASS Taiwan Research Institute.

But Su Jia-hong said he believe Chu is able to effectively convene and coordinate with the legislators from the KMT to push the passing of the pact.