With
her landslide election win on Saturday, Tsai Ing-wen became the first
woman to be elected president of Taiwan, and is poised to be the most powerful
woman in the Chinese-speaking world.
But
the 59-year-old opposition party leader, who can often be seen on the campaign
trail with her two beloved cats, first came to Taiwanese politics as an
outsider.
Called
"Little Ying" by local media, Tsai grew up in Fenggang, a village in
southern Taiwan, before moving to Taipei as a teenager.
A
lawyer by training, she first studied at National Taiwan University, where she
once reportedly failed a criminal law class.
Nonetheless,
she kept furthering her law studies with a masters from Cornell University and
a Ph.D from the London School of Economics, teaching the subject for some time.
She's speaks English fluently and is regarded as the most
internationally-minded leader the island has seen so far.
It
wasn't until 2004 that Tsai joined the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). By
2008 she was made the party's chairwoman but it wasn't always smooth sailing.
She
lost her first bid for the presidency to the incumbent Ma Ying-jeou in 2012 and
resigned as DPP chairwoman after the defeat. It wasn't until 2014 that she
resumed the position and made her second, this time successful, attempt at the
presidency.
Self-made
woman
Tsai
isn't the first woman in Asia to be elected head of state -- Myanmar's
Aung San Suu Kyi and South Korea's Park Guen Hye, among others, come
to mind -- but she is the first to do so without being some kind of political
legacy.
Suu
Kyi's father helped negotiate independence for Myanmar from the British for
example, while Park's father served as South Korea's president from 1962 until
his assassination in 1979.
In
a speech to the Council on Strategic and International Studies in Washington,
D.C. last year, she touched on whether Taiwan was ready to embrace a woman
president.
"Of
course, there are some people in Taiwan that are still rather traditional and
they have some hesitation in considering a woman president. But among the
younger generation, I think they are generally excited about the idea of having
a woman leader. They think it is rather trendy," she said.
A
tough negotiator, cat-lover, and LGBT supporter
Jean-Pierre
Cabestan, a Hong Kong Baptist University professor who studies cross-strait
relations said although she is from the DPP -- which has traditionally
supported Taiwanese independence -- Tsai is "a pretty moderate leader who
is interested in maintaining the status quo."
"She's
tough, she's patient and ready to negotiate," Cabestan says.
"Comparisons
have been made to Margaret Thatcher, you know as an Iron Lady, but a more
accurate comparison is Angela Merkel of Germany because she's trying to build a
consensus."
Those
negotiation skills were honed in a previous stint serving as the chairwoman of
the Mainland Affairs Office, the government arm that handles Taiwan's
interactions with Beijing.
When
she is inaugurated in May, Tsai has said her priority will be addressing the
weak economy while helping to establish Taiwan's distinct identity from
mainland China, a debate that has become heightened in recent days after a
young Taiwanese pop star was forced to apologize online after she allegedly
offended mainland fans by waving the Republic of China flag on TV.
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