Taiwan's Taoyuan mayoral race is turning combative, with the DPP challenger painting the sitting mayor as absent and evasive — bad news for an incumbent who has so far refused to engage.

• DPP candidate Huang Shih-chieh says Mayor Chang San-cheng is hiding from policy debate and sending his press chief to attack him instead.
• Huang has pushed proposals on bringing a TSMC plant back to Taoyuan and on a stalled university-partnered hospital project, with no direct reply from the mayor.
• He says voters are angry on the ground and that the city has stalled because the mayor avoids hard questions.
• The attack came at a launch event for a lawyers' support group backing DPP figures Puma Shen and Su Chiao-hui.

Outlook: Expect Huang to keep hammering the TSMC and hospital issues to force Chang out of silence as the campaign builds.