Tsai Ing-wen

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Tsai Ing-wen (born 31 August 1956) is a Taiwanese politician and professor serving as the president of the Republic of China, commonly known as Taiwan, since 20 May 2016.

The first woman to be elected to the office, Tsai is the seventh president of the Republic of China under the 1947 Constitution and the second president from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP); part of Taiwan's Pan-Green Coalition.

She is also the first president to be of both Hakka and aboriginal descent (a quarter Paiwan from her grandmother), the first unmarried president, the first to have never held an elected executive post before presidency and the first to be popularly elected without having previously served as the Mayor of Taipei (Lee Teng-hui, Chen Shui-bian, and Ma Ying-jeou all served as the Mayor of Taipei).

She was the Democratic Progressive Party candidate in the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections.

Tsai previously served as party chair from 2008 to 2012, and from 2014 to 2018. Tsai studied law and international trade, and later became a law professor at Soochow University School of Law and National Chengchi University after earning an LLB from National Taiwan University, an LLM from Cornell Law School and a Ph.D.

in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

In 1993, as an independent (without party affiliation), she was appointed to a series of governmental positions, including trade negotiator for WTO affairs, by the then-ruling Kuomintang (KMT) and was one of the chief drafters of the special state-to-state relations doctrine of then President Lee Teng-hui. After DPP President Chen Shui-bian took office in 2000, Tsai served as Minister of the Mainland Affairs Council throughout Chen's first term as a non-partisan.

She joined the DPP in 2004 and served briefly as a DPP-nominated at-large member of the Legislative Yuan.

From there, she was appointed Vice Premier under Premier Su Tseng-chang until the cabinet's mass resignation in 2007.

She was elected and assumed DPP leadership in 2008, following her party's defeat in the 2008 presidential election.

She resigned as chair after losing her 2012 presidential election bid. Tsai ran for New Taipei City mayorship in the November 2010 municipal elections but was defeated by another former vice premier, Eric Chu (KMT).

In April 2011, Tsai became the first female presidential candidate of a major party in the history of the Republic of China after defeating her former superior, Su Tseng-chang, in the DPP's primary by a slight margin.

She was defeated by incumbent Kuomintang candidate Ma Ying-jeou in the 5th direct presidential election in 2012, but was elected by a landslide four years later in the sixth direct presidential election in 2016.

Personal life and family

Tsai's paternal grandfather came from a prominent Hakka family in Fangshan, Pingtung. Her grandmother, from Shizi, Pingtung, was of aboriginal Paiwan descent. Tsai's father, Tsai Chieh-sheng (蔡潔生; Cài Jiéshēng) owned a car repair business. Tsai's mother is Chang Chin-fong (張金鳳; Zhāng Jīnfèng), the last of her father's four mistresses. Tsai is the youngest of her parents' four children. She also has seven elder half-siblings on her father's side and a half-brother on her mother's side. She is the first Taiwanese president of aboriginal descent, and the second of Hakka descent after Lee Teng-hui.

Tsai is unmarried and has no children, making her Taiwan’s first unmarried president. Tsai is known to be a cat lover, and her two cats, "Think Think" and "Ah Tsai", featured prominently in her election campaign. In October 2016, she adopted three retired guide dogs, named Bella, Bunny, and Maru.

According to traditional Chinese genealogical naming practices, Tsai's name should have been 蔡瀛文, since her generation name is 瀛 (yíng), not 英 (yīng). However, her father believed the former to have too many strokes for the girl to learn, so she was instead named 英文, which can be literally translated by its individual parts as "heroic" and "literature". The word 英文 is coincidentally also the Chinese name for the English language, as yīng is also used as a phonetic approximation of the first syllable of "England". Tsai also has an Paiwan name, Tjuku.

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Early life and career

Tsai was born in Taipei City, Mackay Memorial Hospital, in Zhongshan District, the youngest of eleven children. Tsai Chieh-sheng (1918–2006) was a businessman who owned an auto repair store, and her mother Chang Chin-fong (1925–2018) was a housewife. Ing-wen (), her given name, was selected by genealogical naming techniques. Although these suggested the spelling, her mother was concerned that the character had too many strokes and decided to replace it with the character. She attended Taipei Municipal Zhongshan Girls High School during her middle school years. She studied law at the behest of her father's. Tsai earned a Master of Laws at Cornell University Law School in 1980 after graduating from the College of Law, National Taiwan University. She then studied law at the London School of Economics and was awarded a Ph.D. in law from the University of London in 1984. She taught law at Soochow University and National Chengchi University, both in Taipei, upon her return to Taiwan.

Tsai was also elected to the Fair Trade Commission and the Copyright Commission. She served as a consultant for both the Mainland Affairs Council and the National Security Council. (Chinese: ) She also headed the writing team on the Statute Governing Relations with Hong Kong and Macau.

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