The boss of the back of the Howard Desk basketball team is a green camp political family
Recently, there was a major news in the basketball circles of Taiwan Province: Dwight Howard, a former draft champion of the American Professional Basketball League, signed a one-year contract with the Yongfeng Cloud Leopards in Taoyuan, Taiwan Province, becoming the biggest American foreign aid in the history of basketball on the island.
The major shareholder behind the Taoyuan Yongfeng Clouded Leopard Club signed by Howard is Taiwan's Clouded Leopard Energy Technology Company, and the company's chairman Lai Jinlin is the representative of the former legislature.
Lai Jinlin is not only a colleague of Tsai Ing-wen, but also served as her deputy when Chen Ju worked on the Labor Council. Now, Lai Jinlin's daughter Lai Pinyu has also become a representative of the legislature, inheriting her father's political mantle.
However, it remains to be seen whether Howard's joining the Taiwanese basketball team is behind the island's political conspiracy.
Lai Jinlin: Grassroots Worker Leader in the Wave of Opposition to the Kuomintang in Taiwanese Society Lai Jinlin, a native of Yunlin County, Taiwan Province, was born in 1962 and graduated from the Department of Political Science of National Taiwan University.
In the era when he was growing up, there was a strong anti-Kuomintang trend in Taiwanese society. In addition to the struggle of the island's elite against the Kuomintang for power, the discontent of the grassroots workers against the Kuomintang was also rising.
After Taiwan's rapid economic take-off, although the wages of workers have been improved, they have borne the heavy work pressure and the pressure of business owners, working longer and fewer holidays.
Around 1980, Taiwanese companies hired a large number of non-regular workers in the name of "labor flexibility" to reduce costs, which led to complaints from workers who were not worth mentioning because their remuneration was a drop in the bucket compared to that of business owners.
In this context, Lai actively participated in the workers' movement, fighting for more holidays, more suitable working conditions and more humane working hours. The 1988 Miaoli Passenger Transport Strike was a concentrated outbreak of this contradiction, in which Lai Jinlin, as a grassroots worker leader, participated in the struggle for workers' rights.
His experience reflects the struggle of the working class in Taiwanese society against the Kuomintang.
Cooperation with the workers' movement was reached at the beginning of its establishment, and the two sides fought side by side against the dominance of the Kuomintang. After Lai Jinlin joined ***, he briefly served as the secretary general of the Taiwan Labor Movement Support Association, and served in public opinion organs at all levels on the island.
In 1999, he entered the Taiwan Provincial Legislature as a representative of public opinion, and was successfully re-elected in 2002. Tsai Ing-wen, the current leader of Taiwan, also became a representative of the legislature in 2004, and the two were former colleagues.
In 2000, Chen Ju, a major tycoon, became the director of the Labor Commission, the executive body of the Taiwan Provincial Government, at a time when the focus of the labor movement was to shorten working hours and reduce work pressure.
According to the statistics of the World Competitiveness Yearbook, the average person in Taiwan Province worked more than 2,200 hours a year on average, and many people even had to work overtime on their rest days.
In order to alleviate the acute labor conflicts, Chen Ju invited Lai Jinlin, who has rich experience in the labor movement, to serve as a part-time deputy director to share the work pressure for her.
Lai Jinlin once served as Chen Ju's deputy and became a reserve cadre trained by the "New Trend" faction. However, he is more interested in business than in politics.
He has served as the Honorary President of the Taiwan Business Association for International Development and the Deputy General Manager of Shuofeng Digital Technology Company. In 2016, during his tenure at Shuofeng Digital Technology Company, he was investigated by the Taiwan authorities for suspected insider trading.
But with Tsai Ing-wen coming to power in 2016, these veterans have been reused, and Lai Jinlin is no exception and has been entrusted with important tasks. In September 2016, he successfully served as the chairman of Taiwan's Shennao International Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Chunghwa Telecom, a Taiwanese public company, with an annual salary of more than NT$2 million.
He is also seen as one of the beneficiaries of Tsai's mediocrity politics and founded Clouded Leopard Energy Technology. Clouded Leopard Energy Technology is the contractor for solar panels in Taiwan's legislature.
In 2021, it was discovered that the solar panels produced by Clouded Leopard Energy Technology actually used inverters from well-known technology companies in mainland China.
The story of Lai Jinlin and Clouded Leopard Energy involves the layout and conspiracy planning of the first world in politics and business. In the course of the Lai family's hard work in the business world, the cooperation between Lai Pinyu, Lai Jinlin and Clouded Leopard Energy has attracted people's attention.
Lai Pinyu is the daughter of Wu Ruping, a well-known ** person in Taiwan, she inherited her father's political mantle, and she is also a young representative in Taiwan. In the 2020 legislature election, Lai Pinyu was successfully elected with her own efforts and strength, becoming the youngest legislature representative in this session.
Lai Pinyu began to get involved in political and social movements when she was in high school, especially in the world, and was actively active in cross-strait affairs, becoming a "pioneer."
In 2013, when the two sides of the strait were about to sign an agreement in the field of service, Lai Pinyu, Huang Yanru, Lai Yutong and others led more than 20 students to the entrance of the Taiwan Strait Exchange Foundation (SEF) in Taiwan Province, and even clashed with the police who were present to maintain order.
When Zhang Zhijun arrived in Taiwan Province for a visit in 2014, Lai Pinyu and others once again repeated their old tricks, and even became more radical.
Lai Pinyu and others learned of Zhang Zhijun's itinerary in advance, and they set up obstacles on the road in advance, sealed the road with iron chains and ropes, and wrapped iron chains around their bodies to obstruct the progress of Zhang Zhijun's convoy.
However, the Taiwanese police escorting the convoy once again thwarted their plan, and the police who arrived at the scene unchained Lai Pinyu and others within 10 minutes, carried Lai Pinyu and others away, and arrested them.
In January 2015, a Taiwan District Court found them suspected of "endangering public safety," and the procuratorate prosecuted them. However, Taiwan's courts are also influenced by domestic politics.
In 2016, Tsai Ing-wen won, and on February 9, 2017, the Taiwan District Court ruled that Lai Pinyu and others were not guilty. Lai Pinyu took advantage of this incident to attract the public's attention and became the assistant of Lin Changzuo, the representative of the legislature of the ** group "Power of the Times", thus stepping into **.
Lai Pinyu narrowly defeated Li Yongping, a veteran KMT general, by 2,000 votes, becoming the youngest representative of the legislature, and served as the convener of the Education and Culture Committee on March 7, 2022.
Her election was not accidental, it was actually an important step in the *** knot. Lai Pinyu and her father Lai Jinlin use their political and business connections to fight for the interests of the company in various fields, including culture and sports.
They use anime, the Internet, and things that young people like to please young people, such as Lai Pinyu, who appeared in public many times in "cosplay" makeup during the election campaign.
Founded in 1992, the Paper Windmill Troupe is an important tool to promote "de-sinicization" and "culture", and is a performance group with children's drama as the main performance content.
In recent years, the relationship between the Paper Windmill Troupe and *** has become closer and closer, and it has been in charge of dance and repertoire in important celebrations of *** many times. In 2020, the Paper Windmill Theater Company's warehouse in New Taipei City was destroyed by fire.
Lai Pinyu personally fought for the warehouse land for the Paper Windmill Troupe as a representative of public opinion, and finally she even said that she even said that Taiwan's defense department leased the old No. 3 Ammunition Depot Camp in Xizhi District, New Taipei City to the Paper Windmill Troupe, which shows the energy of this troupe.
Since Tsai Ing-wen came to power, the Paper Windmill Troupe has won a large number of first-class departmental bids, and in just five years, it has won 114 bids, totaling more than NT$280 million, which is self-evident in its close relationship with the Tsai Ing-wen authorities.
The main creators of the troupe, Wu Nianzhen and Ke Yizheng, are all supporters of the "**" with a clear position, so their political colors are also very obvious. Recently, Taipei Mayor Chen Shizhong was photographed behaving intimately with a married woman at a high-end restaurant dinner convened by the Paper Windmill Troupe, which once again confirmed the close relationship between the Paper Windmill Troupe and ***.
** has long been involved in Taiwan's cultural and sports circles, trying to use these fields to promote the "cultural**" argument.
A few days ago, American basketball star Howard joined the Taoyuan Yongfeng Clouded Leopards team of the Taiwan Professional Basketball League T1 League, and the boss behind the team is the clouded leopard energy technology company of Lai Jinlin and Lai Pinyu's family.
Howard's monthly salary is reportedly in excess of $200,000, while the Taiwanese league's salary cap for foreign players is only $20,000. This time, the official gave Howard the green light, which is in line with the political and economic power of the Lai family.
It is worth noting that the newly formed team, the Yongfeng Clouded Leopards, is not fully equipped with facilities, and Howard's arrival is surprising. If Howard's joining is linked to island politics, it seems to explain all this.
Howard is the biggest foreign aid in the history of Taiwanese basketball, and his participation has made a large number of focus on Taiwan, which is the so-called "let the world see Taiwan" advocated by ***.
And the backstage of the team is the public representatives and political families in ***, so Howard may get much more than the numbers on the contract.
The signing of American basketball star Howard undoubtedly brings publicity value to the team, and they can use the news to attract votes from young people, while also highlighting the achievements of their education department.
Basketball has a large following in Taiwan, and this year's election coincides with the election of county mayors and county councilors. The news of Howard's signing was announced ten days before the start of the election, which undoubtedly played a certain role in promoting the election.
Today's *** is in a tense period, and it is very valuable to save an extra vote. Sure enough, after Howard arrived at Taoyuan Airport, he was welcomed by a large number of fans, and it was also revealed that the boss behind the Yongfeng Cloud Leopards was Lai Jinlin.
Coupled with the performance of Lai Jinlin and Lai Pinyu in business, culture and politics in recent years, there may also be election considerations and strategies behind this incident of American basketball stars joining the Taiwan Basketball League.
But there are only 13 days left before the election, and if you want to play any tricks, I am afraid it will be difficult to avoid the fate of defeat.