Pro-independence opposition candidate Tsai Ing-wen has been elected Taiwan’s first female president.
The first woman president is expected to usher in a new round of uncertainty with China, the massive neighbor that claims the self-ruled island as its sacred territory.
Tsai Ing-wen, leader of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), has been thrust into one of Asia’s toughest and most dangerous jobs, with China pointing hundreds of missiles at the island, decades after losing Nationalists (KMT) fled from Mao Zedong’s Communists to Taiwan in the Chinese civil war.
She will have to balance the superpower interests of China, which is also Taiwan’s largest trading partner, and the United States with those of her freewheeling, democratic home.
Tsai risks antagonizing China if she attempts to forcefully assert Taiwan’s sovereignty and reverses eight years of warming China ties under incumbent President Ma Ying-jeou of the Nationalists, whose forces retreated to Taiwan in 1949.
“I had a good sleep last night. We’ve done the best we could. We’re leaving today to the hands of the voters,” Tsai told reporters after she cast her vote early at a ballot station near her home on the outskirts of the capital Taipei.
In a statement carried by state media, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office repeated it would not get involved in the election, saying only that it was “paying attention to across the Taiwan Strait”.
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