Who is Taiwanese Leader Tsai Ing-wen: Biography, Personal Life And Political Career

Tsai Ing-wen was born on 31 August 1956, in Taipei, Taiwan, to Chang Jin-feng and Tsai Jie-sheng. She was the youngest of the nine children of her parents. Her father had a car repair business.

As the youngest child in her family, she spent much of her leisure time caring for her father. No one in her family expected the girl to grow up to have a professional career.

Her father encouraged her to study and on his advice she enrolled at the College of Law, National Taiwan University, and earned her bachelor’s degree in 1978. She then moved to the Cornell University in New York to earn a Master of Laws in 1980. In 1984, she earned a Ph.D. in law at the London School of Economics.

She returned home and began her career as an educator, teaching law at School of Law at Soochow University and National Chengchi University, both in Taipei.

A highly ambitious woman, she had ventured into governmental positions by the early 1990s. Working under the then-ruling Kuomintang (KMT), she served as a key trade negotiator involved in Taiwan’s entry into the World Trade Organization and was also one of the chief drafters of the special state-to-state relations doctrine of then President Lee Teng-hui.

In 2000, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) came into power and President Chen Shui-bian took office. Under his administration, she served as Minister of the Mainland Affairs Council.

She became a member of DPP in 2004. In 2006, she was appointed to the post of vice president of the Executive Yuan, a position commonly referred to as vice premier under the Premier Su Tseng-chang. During this time she also served as chairwoman of the Consumer Protection Commission.

In 2007, Tsai, along with the rest of the cabinet resigned when Premier Su Tseng-chang left his post. She was then replaced by Chiou I-jen, the incumbent secretary-general of the Presidential Office as vice premier.

Tsai was made the DPP chairperson in 2008 after she defeated Koo Kwang-ming in the election for DPP chairperson, following her party's defeat in the 2008 presidential election.

Soon after taking office she said that DPP would work to deepen the Taiwanese localization movement while defending social justice. She proved to be popular in this position and was re-elected as the chairperson of the DPP in 2010.

In 2010, she ran for New Taipei City mayorship in the municipal elections but was defeated by Eric Chu of KMT. By this time she had set her aims high and in 2011 she won the DPP’s primary to become her party’s presidential candidate. It was the first time a woman had become the presidential candidate of a major party in the history of the Republic of China. She lost the presidential election in 2012.

Tsai has strong beliefs about maintaining economic and trade links with mainland China, and generally supports the diversification of Taiwan's economic partners. However, she spoke out against the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), a preferential trade agreement that increased economic links between Taiwan and mainland China.

She supports the disadvantaged groups in society, including the poor, women and children, Taiwanese aborigines, and LGBT groups, and believes that the government should take initiates to reduce poverty, provide employment opportunities, and expand public housing. She supports LGBT rights and endorses same-sex marriage.

In 2015, she officially registered for the DPP’s presidential nomination primary and was nominated the party’s presidential candidate. As a part of her presidential campaign, she visited the US and addressed Taiwanese diaspora there. In 2016, she won the presidential election with 56% of the vote, beating her opponent Eric Chu by a margin of 25.04%. She assumed the office of the President of Taiwan on 20 May 2016.

Tsai Ing-wen Stance: Same-sex marriage

On 24 May 2017, the Constitutional Court ruled that the constitutional right to equality and freedom of marriage guarantees same-sex couples the right to marry under the Constitution of the Republic of China. The ruling (Judicial Yuan Interpretation No. 748) gave the Legislative Yuan two years to bring the marriage laws into compliance, after which registration of such marriages would come into force automatically. Following the ruling, progress on implementing a same-sex marriage law was slow due to government inaction and strong opposition from some conservative people and Christian groups. In November 2018, the Taiwanese electorate passed referendums to prevent recognition of same-sex marriages in the Civil Code and to restrict teaching about LGBT issues. The Government responded by confirming that the Court's ruling would be implemented and that the referendums could not support laws contrary to the Constitution.

Photo: Lowy Institute

On 20 February 2019, a draft bill entitled the Act for Implementation of J.Y. Interpretation No. 748 was released. The draft bill would grant same-sex married couples almost all the rights available to heterosexual married couples under the Civil Code, with the exception that it only allows adoption of a child genetically related to one of them. The Executive Yuan passed it the following day, sending it to the Legislative Yuan for fast-tracked review. The bill was passed on 17 May, signed by the President on 22 May and took effect on 24 May 2019 (the last day possible under the Court's ruling).

Tsai supports LGBT rights and endorsed same-sex marriage to be legalised in Taiwan. On 21 August 2015, which is the Qixi Festival, she released a campaign video in which three same-sex couples actors appeared. On 31 October 2015, when the biggest gay pride parade in Asia was held in Taipei, Tsai expressed her support for same-sex marriage. She posted a 15-second video on her Facebook page saying "I am Tsai Ing-wen, and I support marriage equality" and "Let everyone be able to freely love and pursue happiness".

Tsai Ing-wen Stance: Green energy

Bills under the umbrella of the Forward-Looking Infrastructure initiative have been used to fund green energy initiatives. The administration plans to install 1,000 wind turbines on land and offshore and has contracted Ørsted of Denmark to install 900 MW of capacity and wpd of Germany to install 1 GW of capacity. Taiwan's first offshore wind farm, Formosa I, consisting of 22 wind turbines expected to produce 128 MW of energy, is slated to begin operations at the end of 2019. The government also purchased 520 MW of solar capacity in 2017 and more than 1 GW in 2018; total capacity was 2.8 GW at the end of 2018, with the government planning to deploy an addition 1.5 GW of solar energy in 2019 and 2.2 GW in 2020.

Additionally, the government approved amendments to the Electricity Act on 20 October 2016 to break up the state-owned monopoly Taipower into subsidiaries and further liberalize the power sector by allowing companies to sell electricity to users directly rather than selling through Taipower. In particular, the generation and distribution divisions of Taipower are to be separated. Amongst the stated motivations for liberalisation was to allow for the direct purchase of green energy by consumers. The plan also included emissions controls, the creation of a regulatory agency, mandatory reserve margins (waived for start-up green energy companies), and measures for price stabilization. The plan was met with protests by Taipower employees.