Editor’s note: This piece was originally published on 12 January. On 13 January, Democratic Progressive Party candidate Lai Ching-te won the election, defeating opponents Hou Yu-ih of the Kuomintang and Ko Wen-je of the Taiwan People’s Party, to become the next president. The result marks the first time a political party in Taiwan has won a third straight presidential election and, as Katie Stallard writes below, is likely to anger Beijing.
Taiwan is about to get a new president. After eight years in power, the territory’s first female leader, Tsai Ing-wen, has hit her term limit and is preparing to step down. She hopes to hand over to her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) colleague and current vice-president Lai Ching-te (also known as William Lai), a doctor before he entered politics in the late 1990s and the son of a coal miner. But the race has been closely contested. Lai, whose campaign has been characterised by a distinct lack of charisma, is up against two relative outsiders: Hou Yu-ih, a police chief-turned-mayor from the Kuomintang (KMT) or Nationalist Party, and Ko Wen-je, an outspoken former trauma surgeon who founded the centre-left Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) in 2019 and has won support among younger voters for his straight-talking approach.
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