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The very hard work of governing Taiwan by the leader of the ultra-independence wing of the DPP begins William Lai Ching-te64 years old, nephrologist with a master’s degree from Harvard, member of parliament since 1999, prime minister from 2017 to 2019 and, until today, deputy of the outgoing president Tsai ing-wen.
Flanked by number two Hsiao Bi-kim, the winning ticket with a large majority of votes, for the Beijing nomenklatura they are just a couple of dangerous extremists.
Taiwan, Lai Ching-te: “Our hard-earned democracy”
Lai’s stronghold of power, Tainan, in the south of the country where he has been mayor since 2010, has not betrayed him. Lai has been able to play his cards by tickling the traditional inclination of the southern constituencies towards independence from mainland China and from there he will find the ministers who are most trusted by him.
On May 20, the date of his inauguration, there is no way that the new president will cite the 1992 Consensus, the cornerstone of relations between Beijing and Taipei until 2016, the year of the defeat of the nationalist Kuomintang party.
Those who fight for autonomy cannot cite the One China principle reiterated at the end of the year by Chinese President Xi Jinping for whom reunification is a historical necessity with a date, 2049, the centenary of the birth of the People’s Republic of China.