Tsai Ing Wen

Tsai Ing-wen is the current President of Taiwan (officially the Republic of China), in office since May 2016. She is the first woman elected to the office and also the first president to be of aboriginal descent. The incumbent chairperson of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), she was the party's presidential candidate in 2012 as well. She was born in the mid-1950s; merely years after Mao Zedong’s communist troops took Beijing and forced Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalists to flee across the Taiwan Strait. A bright girl, she graduated in law from the National Taiwan University and moved abroad for her higher studies. She returned home after earning a Ph.D. in law from the London School of Economics and embarked on an academic career. After teaching law at School of Law at Soochow University and National Chengchi University for several years, she held a series of high-profile governmental positions under the then-ruling Kuomintang (KMT). Her involvement in politics intensified over time and in 2004 she joined the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Tsai was appointed to the post of vice president of the Executive Yuan in 2006 and was made the chairperson of the DPP a couple of years later.