EP48: (The Rather Less Horrible) Tsai Ing-wen

Tsai Ing-wen has been President of Taiwan since 2016. A member of the Democratic Progressive Party, Tsai is in effect the leader of liberal Taiwan, with her party broadly promoting the idea of Taiwanese identity. In doing so, she faces two opponents. Domestically, she faces the Kuomintang, or KMT, which seeks to reunify Taiwan with mainland China. Tsai also of course faces mainland China, known as the People’s Republic, which also seeks to reintegrate Taiwan into its authoritarian state. 

This puts Tsai in a difficult position, as was recently seen when a visit to Taiwan by Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi led to China conducting military exercises in the Taiwan Strait. Anyone interested in world politics in 2022 needs to know about events in Taiwan. 

My guest for this conversation today is Brian Hioe, editor of New Bloom magazine, an online magazine covering activism and youth politics in Taiwan and the Asia Pacific that was founded after the pro-democracy Sunflower Movement. As well as Tsai’s career, we discuss the Taiwanese identity, the quality of democracy in Taiwan, and whether the KMT is acting as a trojan horse for Beijing.