Taiwan’s Shy Tsai Thrust Into Spotlight as First Female President The 59-year-old former law professor is known to shun confrontation but is a tough negotiator By Jeremy Page and Jenny W. Hsu
http://www.wsj.com/articles/taiwans-shy-tsai-thrust-into-spotlight-as-first-female-president-1453026260
TAIPEI — Taiwan’s first female president, Tsai Ing-wen, takes a novel approach to politics on an island renowned for its legislative brawls and fiery standoffs with Beijing.
The 59-year-old former law professor, who won a landslide election victory on Saturday, shuns confrontation, listens rather than lectures, and is happiest poring over policy details, say people who know her.
Even so, in over two decades in politics and government, they say she has proven to be a tough negotiator, having shepherded Taiwan’s entry to the World Trade Organization, and she’s a passionate believer in Taiwan’s democracy as its defining feature — rather than its divisive relations with China, which sees the island as its territory.
Her quiet pragmatism struck a chord with voters, winning the presidency and helping secure a legislative majority for her Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, which espouses independence from the mainland.
She now faces the task of balancing the expectations of independence-minded supporters while trying to maintain stable relations with Beijing and reassure Washington, Taiwan’s most important security partner.
She must also deliver on a campaign pledge to revitalize a flagging economy that is inextricably linked to China’s—a link her supporters say has benefited the mainland while drawing jobs and investment from Taiwan.
Most important, she is already under pressure from Beijing to devise a mutually acceptable formula for defining relations between Taiwan, where Nationalist forces fled in 1949 after defeat by the Communists in a civil war, and China, which seeks Taiwan’s reunification as a legacy of that conflict.
“She has a much more pragmatic style of governance” than previous Taiwan leaders, said William Stanton, who headed the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto U.S. embassy, for four years until 2012.
“She’s got clear values, clear views on things that should be done in a democracy and in Taiwan,” he said. “But she’s going to be on the firing line and it’s going to be a very busy, very challenging period for her.”
Asked which foreign leaders she admired during a U.S. visit in June, Ms. Tsai cited German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Associates say Ms. Tsai has a similar nonconfrontational leadership style and no-frills demeanor.
Still, even some of her strongest supporters admit that Ms. Tsai, who is unmarried and lives with two cats, isn’t a natural politician.
“She’s shy. She’s not particularly good with people,” said Charles Huang, one of her economic advisers. “Most politicians get into politics because of a quest for power. She got into politics because she feels obligated to change the culture of politics in Taiwan.”
‘She’s going to be on the firing line and it’s going to be a very busy, very challenging period for her’
In a 2011 autobiography, Ms. Tsai said she was the kind of person who stuck to the sidewall when walking, to avoid others. “I am a scholar, and I don’t like to draw attention,” she wrote.
Her reserved manner and political instincts have been a problem in the past, supporters concede. Political opponents called her “morning glory” — a hollowed-stem vegetable — suggesting she lacked substance when she dodged questions.
In debates, she can be too professorial. She is more comfortable speaking Mandarin Chinese than the Taiwanese dialect that’s favored by many DPP supporters. In her first presidential bid in 2012, she didn’t connect with young voters or women.
Her studious patience, however, helped her bounce back to forge Saturday’s win, in which she took 56% of the vote. Her closest rival, the ruling Kuomintang candidate, Eric Chu, received 31%.
Ms. Tsai declined to be interviewed for this article. At her victory rally she acknowledged that some supporters criticized her for being unemotional. Then she gave in to the moment.
“If everyone is really happy, then give one loud cheer for Taiwan,” she said. “Together we’ve done a great thing for Taiwan. This is what I feel in my heart right now.”
Born to relatively wealthy parents in southern Taiwan, she left the island to study law at Cornell University and the London School of Economics. She entered government service as an official in the early 1990s taking various posts: negotiating Taiwan’s WTO entry, serving on the National Security Council and overseeing relations with Beijing.
She only formally entered politics in 2004 when she joined the DPP, after having served for four years in the administration of Chen Shui-bian, Taiwan’s first DPP president.
“Tsai is an atypical DPP politician because she isn’t from the grass roots,” said one person who has worked with her closely but declined to be identified. “She is reversing the trend by being a government official first, then going on the streets to ask for votes.”
In her first major election campaign — the 2012 race for president against Ma Ying-jeou, the KMT incumbent — she failed to win over business leaders, who were interested in smooth ties with China. A mission to Washington meant to reassure U.S. officials she wouldn’t add to tensions in the region also failed because she declined to answer specific questions about her plans.
After her defeat, Ms. Tsai set about building a network of young activists, working on her campaign skills, and reaching out to business leaders. When she returned to the U.S. last June, she was better prepared, say people who met her then.
“She took a totally different tack this time round,” said Bonnie Glaser of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “She answered tough questions privately. There were even exchanges of written material. She’d done a lot of homework personally.”
A turning point in her political fortunes came in 2014, when student protesters occupied parliament to oppose a trade deal with China.
Ms. Tsai backed the so-called Sunflower Movement, tapping into a wellspring of concern among the young about Beijing’s political influence, and about closer economic ties taking jobs to the mainland.
One of her biggest challenges, analysts say, will be to negotiate with Beijing while maintaining the support of independence activists in her party and the young voters who rallied behind her.
She has to win the trust of Chinese leaders and officials who recall that she drafted the “two states theory” — suggesting Taiwan was already independent — for President Lee Teng-hui in the 1990s. That was part of a period of tensions that saw China accelerate a military buildup and threaten that Taiwan independence would mean war.
“It’s up to her to find a formulation on cross-Strait ties that’s acceptable to the mainland,” said Li Zhenguang, a professor at Beijing Union University’s Institute of Taiwan Studies. “As long as she doesn’t make clear her position, then the mainland can’t trust her.”
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