The KMT has produced remarks Lai Ching-te made in the Legislative Yuan 17 years ago, questioning the DPP's inconsistency over the name "Chinese Taipei" — an awkward blow to the Lai administration's cross-strait narrative.

• Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han attended the APEC meeting in Nanjing under the name "Chinese Taipei," and said after returning to Taiwan that he had received the same treatment as every other country throughout, with no downgrading of status.
• KMT Culture and Communications Committee director Chen I-hsin dug up a 2009 record in which then-legislator Lai Ching-te said that using "Chinese Taipei" amounted to accepting that Taiwan is a province of China.
• Chen mocked the notion that it counts as a downgrade when the KMT uses the name but as parity and dignity when the DPP does, and called on Lai Ching-te to apologise to the Ma administration and to the public.
• The controversy has landed just as the upcoming Trump-Xi meeting approaches, pushing the question of cross-strait naming back into the spotlight.

Local election races are heating up in parallel: in Taipei mayoral polling, Chiang Wan-an leads Shen Po-yang by only about one percentage point, a result that even former DPP legislator Lin Cho-shui said took him by surprise, as he singled out the KMT's "four war criminals" for throwing their own camp into disarray. In New Taipei, the gap between Su Chiao-hui and Lee Si-chuan is just 1.1 percentage points. In Hsinchu County, Cheng Chao-fang has unexpectedly moved 6 percentage points ahead of Hsu Hsin-ying, though DPP officials themselves say the numbers are too good to believe. In Gukeng, Yunlin, a vote-buying case has broken out, with a candidate suspected of trading Mother's Day cakes and salted pork for votes; 42 people have been summoned. Separately, a delegation of KMT legislators has returned from the United States, reporting that the 2028 contender American officials mentioned most often was Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen.

Outlook: The naming dispute will not be settled any time soon, but the blue camp will keep using it to scrutinise the Lai administration, while the races in Taipei and New Taipei have both become neck-and-neck deadlocks.