In the first televised Taipei mayoral debate, held at noon on October 31 ahead of the November 28 local elections, KMT incumbent Chiang Wan-an and DPP candidate Shen Po-yang clashed over urban renewal, relocating Songshan Airport and fiscal allocation. What follows are the candidates' own claims and have not been independently verified.
According to United Daily News and TVBS, the two-hour debate began at 12:00 on the 31st and was co-hosted by TVBS and SET. A TVBS poll released on the 17th found 60 percent planned to watch, up 10 points from 50 percent before the 2022 debate. In the same poll, 41 percent expected Shen to perform better and 30 percent Chiang, though that measures expectations, not voting support.
광고 문의 · 300×250Chiang pointed to his four-year record, citing the Taipei Dome and the Beitou-Shihlin Technology Park, and stressed that he keeps his promises. Shen argued that governance should rest on data and citizen input, saying his team used AI to analyze councilors' posts and views from many sides, and that an anonymous feedback channel drew more than 70,000 responses.
Urban renewal: ‘7599’ versus accompaniment and execution
Chiang laid out supply-side tools: a ‘7599’ mechanism in which the city begins trial calculations at 75 percent resident consent and takes over at 99 percent, and a ‘5099’ public-led model triggered by majority consent, with a 30 percent floor-area bonus tied to disaster-prevention renewal. Shen said Chiang cites only approval-stage case counts, leaving out accompaniment and execution, and claimed no ‘7599’ project has broken ground.
Shen noted that about 70 percent of Taipei's buildings are over 30 years old and pledged to raise the whole-building renewal fund by 20 percent, add staff, and adopt a Tokyo-style rights-conversion system. He named property disputes, review delays, developer exits, valuation gaps and weak city enforcement as bottlenecks. The size of the floor-area bonus Chiang cited may be misreported, and we could not confirm the correct figure.
Songshan Airport and the ‘nine questions’
Chiang called relocating Songshan Airport and turning the site into an AI park bold yet carefully designed, and argued that airport height limits have blocked many renewal projects. Shen countered that the plan is ‘eight years away’, too slow for global AI competition, and shows little grasp of Taipei's industrial makeup. The TVBS poll found 41 percent opposed to the relocation and 31 percent in favor.
Chiang then put nine past statements by Shen to him in a row, touching on the twin-city forum as an infiltration gap, abolishing the death penalty, cash handouts and constitutional change. Shen did not answer directly, saying Chiang was digging up posts 10 to 15 years old, mostly on central-government matters, and told him to ‘go back to being a legislator and let me be mayor’. He also criticized the fiscal allocation law as forcing borrowing and inflating budgets.
United Daily News described the debate as Chiang on the offensive and Shen on the defensive, while a Global Views-affiliated outlet quoted experts saying both sides firmed up their bases. No confirmed survey yet shows how it affected centrist voters, so any effect on the race awaits later polling.