Tsai Ing-wen

Tsai Ing-wen (2016)

Tsai Ing-wen ( Chinese  蔡英文 , Pinyin Cài Yīngwén , Hakka Chhai Yîn-vùn , Pe̍h-ōe-jī Chhoà Eng-bûn ; born August 31, 1956 in the Zhongshan District of Taipei City , Taiwan ) has been President of the Republic since May 2016 China (Taiwan) . From 2008 to 2012 and from May 2016 to November 2018 she was the chair of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

life and career

Professional and political career

Tsai Ing-wen was born in Zhongshan (Taipei) in 1956. Her family comes from Fangshan Township in Pingtung County and is a Hakka ethnic group . One grandmother came from the indigenous Taiwanese ethnic group of the Paiwan . After graduating from the Law Faculty of National Taiwan University (1978), Tsai received her Masters degree in the USA from Cornell University (1980) and finally her PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science (1984). After returning to Taiwan, she taught law at Soochow University and Chengchi National University .

From 1993 she worked as an advisor to the then President Lee Teng-hui ( Kuomintang ) and, among other things, was involved in the formulation of Lee's “ Interstate Relations Doctrine ”. After the DPP took over government in 2000, Tsai was appointed by the new President Chen Shui-bian as a non-party minister for mainland affairs in the cabinet. She joined the DPP in 2004 and was a member of the Legislative Yuan for a short time . She was then Vice Prime Minister under Prime Minister Su Tseng-chang until the collective resignation of the Cabinet in 2007. After her party's defeat in the 2008 presidential election , she was elected as the new leader of the DPP. In November 2010, Tsai ran for Mayor of New Taipei City but was defeated by Kuomintang candidate Eric Chu .

In April 2011, Tsai Ing-wen was named by her party as the first female candidate for president in the history of the Republic of China . In the following presidential election in 2012 she was defeated by incumbent President Ma Ying-jeou (KMT), whereupon she resigned from her position as party leader of the DPP. Tsai's successor, the party veteran Su Tseng-chang , soon found himself exposed to internal criticism because, in the eyes of many members, he was not pushing ahead with the hoped-for reform of the party. After the sunflower movement in spring 2014, Tsai announced that he would run again for the party chairmanship. Su Tseng-chang and Hsieh Chang-ting then withdrew their proposed candidacy. On May 25, 2014, Tsai prevailed with over 93% of the vote against the only opposing candidate, Kuo Tai-lin, and thus became chairman of the DPP for the second time. On April 15, 2015, she was nominated as her party's candidate for the 2016 presidential election.

It was the second time that she applied for the office of president. The election took place on January 16, 2016, with a large majority prevailing over opposing candidates Eric Chu (Kuomintang) and James Soong ( Qinmindang ). She took office on May 20, 2016, and is the country's first female head of state. After the DPP suffered heavy defeats in the local and regional elections, it resigned as party chair in November 2018. On January 11, 2020, she was re-elected as President with 57.13% of the vote.

Private

Tsai Ing-wen was never married and has no children. Since she did not correspond to the traditional Chinese image of women, conservative circles and state-controlled media in the People's Republic of China tried to stir up a mood against her during the 2012 and 2016 election campaigns and assumed that because of this she was “emotionally unstable” or prone to extremes. In the run-up to her candidacy in April 2011, ex-DPP politician Shih Ming-teh publicly asked her to reveal her sexual orientation, which Tsai refused. Shih's request was criticized as inappropriate by the vast majority of the Taiwanese press. In the election in 2016, these topics hardly played a role in the consciousness of the electorate.

Political positions

Domestic politics

After the corruption scandals surrounding former President Chen Shui-bian and the clear defeat of the DPP in the 2008 presidential election, one of the first tasks of the new party leaders was to bring the DPP out of the deep. After it became known that Chen Shui-bian had embezzled funds during his tenure, Tsai Ing-wen publicly apologized and stated that her party would not try to cover up any offenses by Chen. In addition, it is their goal to remove corrupt members from the party. For this purpose, an internal party investigation committee was set up.

Other domestic political priorities of Tsai are social justice and the strengthening of the local Taiwanese identity ( Chinese  臺灣 本土化 運動 , Pinyin Táiwān běntǔhuà yùndòng  - " Taiwanese localization movement or Taiwanese homeland movement "). On questions of energy policy, she is critical of the use of nuclear energy in Taiwan and is actively campaigning for the controversial fourth Taiwanese nuclear power plant Lungmen , which is planned in the city of New Taipei , not to go into operation . On the occasion of her second nomination as a presidential candidate, she announced that if she won the election she would take action against the growing gap between rich and poor and against youth unemployment.

Foreign policy

In contrast to the previous government, Tsai Ing-wen as well as her party rejects the so-called consensus of 1992 , which caused the People's Republic of China to freeze talks with Taiwan. Nonetheless, Tsai intends, "in accordance with the will of the Taiwanese people," to continue negotiations with the People's Republic that the Kuomintang has started. Although the DPP, under Tsai's leadership, has on the one hand basically abandoned its program of enacting Taiwan's independence de jure in the constitution of the Republic of China and in the administrative structures of the Republic of China , on the other hand it is pursuing the goal of ensuring the autonomy of the island republic as far as possible irreversibly to preserve.

Tsai Ing-wen claims to be pro-American politics. Shortly after her election, she again agreed to the US arms shipments to Taiwan, which had been suspended since 2011. After the presidential election in the United States on November 8, 2016 , Tsai Ing-wen sent a congratulatory telegram to the winner, Donald Trump . In it she assured that Taiwan would remain a reliable partner of the USA and described the USA as the most important democratic country in the world. Even before his inauguration, Donald Trump retaliated with a phone call to Tsai on December 3, 2016 and a subsequent Twitter message in which Tsai was named "President of Taiwan". This represented a break with the previous US diplomacy, according to which there has been no direct contact between the heads of state of the Republic of China and the United States since 1979. According to UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 , the Republic of China has not been recognized by the United Nations as a sovereign state since 1971; the Chinese claim to sole representation of the People's Republic of China had the US a short time later connected on its own initiative.

Web links

Commons : Tsai Ing-wen  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Official website
• Brief portrait on the website of the Presidential Palace
• Brief portrait on the DPP website
• Facebook
• 蔡英文 Tsai Ing-wen Twitter page

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cindy Sui: Taiwan's first female leader, shy but steely Tsai Ing-wen. BBC News, January 16, 2018, accessed August 9, 2018 . 
2. ↑ Tsai Ing-wen elected as DPP chair, Taipei Times, May 26, 2014
3. ↑ DPP nominates Tsai as 2016 candidate , Taipei Times, April 16, 2015
4. ^ Klaus Bardenhagen: Taiwan's new president sworn in. Deutsche Welle, May 20, 2016, accessed on the same day
5. ↑ Change of power in Taiwan: A landslide victory and a hint ; FAZ; January 16, 2016, by Petra Kolonko; last accessed on January 16, 2016.
6. ↑ Tom Phillips: Taiwan elects first female president. The Guardian, January 16, 2016, accessed January 16, 2016 . 
7. ↑ Lawrence Chung, Kristin Huang: Democratic Progressive Party suffers big defeat in Taiwan elections; Tsai Ing-wen resigns as chairwoman. In: South China Morning Post . November 24, 2018. Retrieved November 24, 2018 . 
8. ↑ Patrick Zoll: Taiwan's ruling party suffers a severe election failure. In: www.nzz.ch. November 24, 2018. Retrieved November 24, 2018 . 
9. ↑ Yang Chun-hui, Shih Hsiao-kuang, Lin Liang-sheng: 2020 Elections: Tsai wins by a landslide. In: Taipei Times. January 12, 2020, accessed January 12, 2020 . 
10. ↑ Javier C. Hernández, Vanessa Piao: Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan's First Female Leader, Is Assailed in China for Being 'Emotional'. The New York Times, May 25, 2016, accessed August 9, 2018 . 
11. ↑ Tom Phillips: Chinese news agency: Taiwan's leader is radical because she is single. The Guardian, May 25, 2016, accessed August 9, 2018 . 
12. ↑ EDITORIAL: It comes with the territory, Tsai. Taipei Times, May 28, 2016, accessed August 9, 2018 . 
13. ↑ Sophie Theneaud: Gender and Stereotypes in the News Coverage of Female Political Candidates: An Analysis of Taiwanese Newspapers' coverage of Tsai Ing-wen's presidential campaigns in 2012 and 2016. (PDF) Sun Yat-Sen National University of Kaohsiung, accessed on 9 August 2018 (English, contribution to the ECPR Graduate Students Conference in Tartu (Estonia) 2016). 
14. ↑ Interview with the New York Times on January 5, 2012
15. ↑ Taiwan 'will not bow' to Beijing on sovereignty isseue, says President , Deutsche Welle of October 10, 2016
16. ↑ Taiwan Update November 15, 2016 , accessed February 3, 2018
17. ↑ Change of power in Taiwan ; Friedrich Ebert Foundation, 2016, p. 3 f. , accessed February 3, 2018
18. ↑ DPP nominates Tsai as 2016 candidate , Taipei Times, April 16, 2015
19. ↑ Taiwan Update November 15, 2016 , accessed February 3, 2018
20. ^ Nadia Tsao: Tsai-Trump telephone call scheduled. Taipei Times, December 3, 2016, accessed December 8, 2016 . 
21. ↑ Tom Phillips: China asks US to block Taiwan president trip after talk of Donald Trump. The Guardian, December 2, 2016, accessed December 8, 2016 . 

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Tsai is the family name here, Ing-wen is the first name.