Taipei Mayoral Candidate Puma Shen Endorsed by Convicted Former President Chen Shui-bian; NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang 'Mistranslation' Fuels Further Backlash

On May 28, 2026, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei mayoral candidate Puma Shen (Shen Bo-yang) appeared alongside former President Chen Shui-bian, who publicly endorsed Shen and expressed hope that he would become the second DPP mayor of Taipei City following Chen's own two terms. The joint appearance immediately drew sharp criticism from Kuomintang (KMT) and Taiwan People's Party (TPP) camps. KMT Taipei city councilor Chang Szu-kang (張斯綱) and others pointed out that Chen Shui-bian was convicted of corruption and embezzlement charges, and remains a convict released on medical parole — a legal status that many argued made his participation in campaign endorsements morally and legally questionable. Critics charged that the DPP's embrace of a corruption-convicted former president as a campaign surrogate exposed a fundamental double standard for a party that champions clean governance. Simultaneously, Shen faced a separate controversy over his interpretation of remarks by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, who had publicly emphasized Taiwan's need for more electricity and energy to sustain AI development during his Taiwan visit. Shen attempted to defend DPP energy policy by drawing a distinction between 'energy' (能源, broad supply) and 'electricity' (電力, grid transmission), arguing that the true problem was inadequate substation and transmission infrastructure rather than a failure of nuclear energy policy. However, when Jensen Huang subsequently made explicit statements that 'we need more electricity,' KMT legislator Wang Hung-wei (王鴻薇) and media commentator Cheap directly cited Huang's words to rebut Shen's interpretation, calling it a deliberate 'over-translation' designed to provide academic cover for the DPP's controversial anti-nuclear energy policy. The episode was widely mocked as a quintessential example of the so-called 'Shen Bo-yang style' (伯洋體) of rhetorical evasion — using complex academic framing to sidestep substantive policy accountability — and was identified by analysts as one of the most damaging liabilities in Shen's transition from civil society researcher to electoral politician.