Pragmatic and smart, Tsai won't try to provoke Beijing

DURING the campaign leading up to Taiwan's Jan 16 elections, Tsai Ing-wen, leader of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), took part in singing the national anthem at public events, but her lips visibly stopped moving when it came to the words "our party", since they referred to the Kuomintang (KMT), which had been in power in Taiwan since the 1940s save for eight years.

It is striking, therefore, that in her victory address, Ms Tsai - who will be the first woman to be president when she assumes office on May 20 - repeatedly used the name Republic of China as that of the country that she will be governing, spurning the DPP's historical stance of creating an independent Republic of Taiwan, separate from China.

Even more striking was her calling herself "the 14th president-elect of the Republic of China", making her a direct political descendant of Chiang Kai-shek, who fled to Taiwan with his government after losing the Chinese civil war in 1949, and who had ruled Taiwan under martial law until his death, imprisoning or executing those suspected of being advocates of Taiwan independence.