Tsai-Ing wen Has Been Elected Taiwan’s First Female President

Meanwhile, Eric Chu, who announced his resignation as KMT chairman, said he should be the only one to blame for the defeat. Reviving Taiwan’s economy, which has been hit by the slowdown in China’s growth, will also be among her key tasks.

Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) has congratulated Dr Tsai and her party on the victory.

For now, analysts say, China will give Tsai some breathing room and wait at least until she delivers her inaugural address.

Should Tsai continue to refuse to endorse the 1992 consensus, China is likely to apply pressure by restricting cross-strait economic exchanges, thus rocking the new administration.

“I also want to emphasise that both sides of the strait have a responsibility to find mutually acceptable means of interaction that are based on dignity and reciprocity”.

“I really looked forward the election”, said a 20-year-old student at National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu City, southwest of Taipei. She’s the second graduate to be elected at president of Taiwan.

The KMT forged closer ties with China under President Ma Ying-jeou. Keeping her promise, Tsai won a landslide victory in Saturday’s election and became the first female leader of the country.

Her win will introduce new uncertainty in the complicated relationship between Taiwan and mainland China, which claims the island as its own territory and threatens to use force if it declares formal independence.

Major principles and policies concerning southeast China’s Taiwan Province are consistent and clear, and will not change after the results of the island’s elections held on Saturday, according to the mainland’s Taiwan affairs authority. The two sides have been governed separately since, though a shared cultural and linguistic heritage mostly endures – with Mandarin spoken as the official language in both places.

Tsai Ing-wen rode a tide of discontent over everything from China ties to economic growth to secure a historic legislative majority for her Democratic Progressive Party.

Taiwan, or the Republic of China, is represented global by mainland China, or the People’s Republic of China. Beijing expressed concerns about Tsai’s victory by issuing a statement opposing a “divisive act of seeking Taiwan’s independence”. Taiwan needs a leader with the historical insight to comprehend the big picture. Chen’s known for advocating for independence from China and was imprisoned shortly after his last term.

Taiwanese citizens will watch Tsai closely in the coming years, seeing how she can manage to build realistic relations with the mainland. Basically, they’ve voted to keep Beijing at a distance.

Taiwan, which had been a Japanese colony from 1895 to 1945, split from China in 1949. In 2014, hundreds of students occupied the parliament in the largest show of anti-Chinese sentiment on the island for years. It’s also an issue for the rest of the world, most of which – including Australia – officially pretends that Taiwan does not exist while managing to somehow conduct trade and other relations with it. It’s an unsatisfactory situation, but as long as Taiwan itself is uncertain about how far to assert its independence, other countries will also have to perform a balancing act.

“Peace across the Taiwan Strait is the most important external factor for Taiwan’s stable development”, it said in an editorial.