Who is Lai Ching-te, the next president of Taiwan?

In 2014, when Lai Ching-te was a rising political star in Taiwan, he visited China and was publicly questioned about the most incendiary issue for Beijing's leaders: his party's position on the island's independence.

His polite but firm response, people who know him say, was typical of the man who was elected president on Saturday and will now lead Taiwan for the next four years.

Mr. Lai was address professors at the prestigious Fudan University in Shanghai, an audience whose members, like many mainland Chinese, almost certainly believed that the island of Taiwan belongs to China.

Mr Lai said that while his Democratic Progressive Party had historically advocated Taiwan's independence – a position China opposes – the party also believed that any change in the island's status should be decided by all residents. His party merely reflected opinion, not dictated it, he said. The party's position 'was arrived at through a consensus in Taiwanese society' Mr. Lai said.

For both his supporters and detractors, the episode revealed Mr. Lai's blunt, sometimes indignant sense of conviction, a key trait of the doctor-turned-politician who will take power in May as President Tsai Ing-wen's successor .

“He makes a clear distinction between good and evil,” said Pan Hsin-chuan, a Democratic Progressive Party official in Tainan, the southern city where Mr. Lai had been mayor at the time of his visit to Fudan University in 2014 .“He emphasizes that right is right, and wrong is wrong.”

The 64-year-old son of a miner, Mr. Lai has a reputation as a skilled, hardworking politician who sees his humble background as a way to attune him to the needs of ordinary people in Taiwan. When it comes to navigating the dangerous nuances of dealing with Beijing, he may be less adept.

Mr Lai may have to guard against his tendency to make off-the-cuff remarks, which Beijing could exploit and lead to crises.

“I don't think Lai will actually pursue de jure independence,” he said David Zaks, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who studies Taiwan. “But what I do worry about is that Lai doesn't have much experience in foreign policy and cross-strait relations – which is incredibly complex – and he is prone to making a slip of the tongue, which will attract Beijing.”

In interviews with those who know Mr. Lai, “stubborn” or “determined” are words often used to describe him. But as president of Taiwan, Mr. Lai may have to show some flexibility as he faces a legislature dominated by opposition parties that have vowed to scrutinize his policies.

As the leader bringing the Democratic Progressive Party to power for a third term, Mr. Lai should be very attentive to the public mood in Taiwan, Wang Ting-yu, an influential lawmaker from the Democratic Progressive Party, said in an interview for the election.

“How to maintain the people's trust, how to keep politics clean and fair: that is what a mature political party has to deal with,” Mr. Wang said. “You always have to keep in mind that the audience doesn't leave much room for error.”

During the election campaign, one of Mr. Lai most successful advertisements showed him and President Tsai together on a rural drive, chatting amicably about their time together. As Ms Tsai handed over the car keys to Mr Lai, who has been her vice president since 2020, the message was clear that there would be reassuring continuity if he won.

Whatever continuity the two unite in their policies, Ms. Tsai and Mr. Lai are very different leaders with very different backgrounds. President Tsai, who led Taiwan for eight years, remains loved and respected by many. But she also governed with a kind of technocratic restraint, rarely giving press conferences.

Ms. Tsai rose as an official who negotiated trade deals and set policies toward China. By contrast, his background as mayor has made him more sensitive to issues such as rising housing costs and a lack of employment, his supporters say.

“Lai Ching-te came from the grassroots – as a congress delegate, lawmaker, mayor, prime minister – and rose step by step,” said Tseng Chun-jen, a longtime activist for the DPP in Tainan. “He suffered from cold and poverty, so he understands very well the hardships that we people went through at the grassroots during that time.”

Ms. Tsai and Mr. Lai have not always been allies. Ms Tsai returned the DPP to power in 2016 after it previously suffered a devastating election loss. Mr Lai was her prime minister – until he resigned after poor election results boldly challenged her in a primary before the 2020 election.

“Tsai Ing-wen joined the DPP as an outsider when the DPP needed an outsider,” said Jou Yi-cheng, a former senior party official who met Mr. Lai when he started in politics. “But Lai Ching-te is different. He grew up within the DPP”

Mr. Lai spent his early years in Wanli, a municipality in northern Taiwan. His father, a miner, died of carbon monoxide poisoning while in a mine when Mr. Lai was a baby, leaving Mr. Lai's mother to raise six children of her own.

In his campaign, Mr Lai has cited the hardships of his past as part of his political makeup.

He said in a video that his family used to live in a miner's hut in the township, which would leak when it rained, prompting them to cover the roof with lead sheets – which were not always reliable. “Whenever a typhoon came, the things covering the roof would be blown away,” he said.

Mr. Lai continued to study and entered medical school. After his military service, he worked as a doctor in Tainan. It was a time when Taiwan was leaving behind decades of authoritarian rule under the Nationalist Party, whose leaders had fled to the island from China after the defeat by Mao Zedong and his communist forces.

Mr. Lai joined what was then a scrappy new opposition party, the Democratic Progressive Party, and he later recalled that his mother was disappointed when he decided to put aside medicine to enter politics full-time.

“He received the reluctant support of his mother,” wrote Yuhkow Chou, a Taiwanese journalist, in her recent biography of Mr. Lai. When he first decided to run for a seat in the National Assembly in 1996, Ms. Chou wrote, Mr. Lai's mother told her son: “If you fail to get elected, go back to Dr. become.”

However, Mr. Lai turned out to be a gifted politician. He rose quickly, helped by his thirst for hard work, but also by his youthful appearance and eloquence as a speaker, especially in Taiwanese, the first language of many islanders, especially in southern areas such as Tainan, Mr. Jou said. , the former party official.

Mr. Lai became a member of the Taiwanese legislature and then, in 2010, mayor of Tainan. He later served as prime minister and vice president to Ms. Tsai. Along the way, he revealed a combative streak that provided ammunition to his critics, but also won him fans in his party.

DPP supporters mention a video of him in 2005, lashing out at Nationalist Party members in the legislature for blocking a budget proposal to purchase U.S. submarines, fighter jets and missiles. “The country was destroyed because of you!” he said, cursing at one point. “You blocked everything.”

As Prime Minister in 2017, Mr Lai made the comment most often cited by his critics. Facing questions from Taiwanese lawmakers, Mr. Lai described himself as a “pragmatic worker for Taiwanese independence.”

At the time, the Chinese government office for Taiwan affairs condemned the comment; Since then, Beijing and Lai's Taiwanese critics have cited it as evidence of his reckless pursuit of independence. But Mr Lai's words were in line with his party's broader attempt to contain tensions over the issue of Taiwan's status by saying the island had already achieved practical independence because it was a self-governing democracy .

Still, Mr. Lai will be under intense pressure to avoid such comments as president. China has become militarily stronger and under Xi Jinping increasingly willing to use that strength to put pressure on Taiwan. In his victory speech on election night, Mr Lai emphasized his hope for dialogue with Beijing.

“He kept it vague and in my ear he did not say a single sentence that Beijing finds intolerable,” he said. Kharis Tempelmana researcher at the Hoover Institution who studies Taiwan and follows the elections. “He gave himself a chance to avoid or at least delay Beijing's harshest response.”