Tsai Ing-wen, 59, has been sworn in as the new president of Taiwan. She is Taiwan’s first woman to be elected to the office of the President. She is also the first president to be of Hō-ló, Hakka, and Aboriginal descent. She the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to a landslide win in elections in January.
The DPP is one of two major parties in Taiwan, and in 2007 they approved a resolution asserting a separate identity from China. In her inaugural speech, she said Taiwanese people had shown they were “committed to the defence of our freedom and democracy as a way of life”.
China will likely to continue to distrust Ms Tsai for her pro-independence stance and mainstream papers in mainland China appear to be giving the event scant attention. Online censors appear to be deleting messages related to Ms Tsai’s inauguration from China’s Twitter-like service Sina Weibo.
