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

Lai Ching-te a former doctor from a poor mining family, was propelled into politics by a military crisis in the Taiwan Strait 27 years ago.

Now the soft-spoken veteran politician is tasked with preventing another from happening as the newly elected leader of the self-ruled island that China's Communist Party has promised to one day absorb.

On Saturday (13), 64-year-old Lai, the current vice-president of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), won a widely watched election to become Taiwan's next president.

His victory gave the DPP a historic third consecutive term, snubbing years of growing threats from its much larger authoritarian neighbor, China.

“The elections showed the world the Taiwanese people’s commitment to democracy, which I hope China can understand,” Lai told thousands of supporters at a rally after his victory.

Lai, who has long faced Beijing's wrath for defending Taiwan's sovereignty, said that as president he has “an important responsibility to maintain peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait”, pledging to continue dialogue with China under the principles of dignity and parity.

“At the same time, we are also determined to safeguard Taiwan from China's continued threats and intimidation,” he told reporters before his victory speech.

Under leader Xi Jinping, China's most assertive leader in a generation, Beijing has intensified diplomatic, economic and military pressure on Taiwan, which it considers its own territory, to be taken by force if necessary.

Tensions in the Taiwan Strait are at their highest point since 1996, when China fired missiles into the waters off the coast of Taiwan to intimidate voters ahead of the island's first free presidential elections – after the nascent democracy emerged from decades of its own authoritarian regime.

For Lai, then a newly qualified doctor at a university hospital in the southern city of Tainan, that missile crisis became his “defining moment.”

“I decided I had a duty to participate in Taiwan’s democracy and help protect this fledgling experiment from those who would wish it harm,” he wrote in The Wall Street Journal last year.

Lai hung up his white coat to run for office – first becoming a lawmaker, then a popular two-term mayor of Tainan, before serving as prime minister and, since 2020, vice president under current president Tsai Ing-wen.

The doctor-turned-politician has now broken the “eight-year curse” of Taiwanese politics – a popular term that nods to the fact that, until Lai's victory, no political party had remained in power for more than two terms since that Taiwan has become a democracy.

“Unexpected journey”

Lai called his foray into politics an “unexpected journey.” Growing up in poverty in a mining village near the northern coast of Taiwan, Lai dreamed of being a doctor since childhood.

He had five brothers and his mother raised them alone, doing odd jobs. His father, a coal miner, died in a work accident when Lai was a child.

Lai was too young to remember his father. “But one day I suddenly realized that the greatest asset my father left me was that my family was poor,” he said at an event in March last year.

“Growing up in a family like this we will be more mature, we will have more willpower and more courage to overcome difficulties.”

After completing his bachelor's degree in physical medicine and rehabilitation in Taipei, Lai went to Tainan to study medicine.

He was a few years into a promising career as a doctor in Tainan when a local DPP official approached him.

He asked the popular doctor to help a DPP politician campaign for local elections. It was 1994, less than a decade after the DPP first emerged from Taiwan's democratic movement against the authoritarian rule of the Kuomintang (KMT).

Before lifting martial law in 1987 and slowly transitioning to free elections, the KMT ruled Taiwan with an iron fist for nearly four decades after fleeing to the island from mainland China after losing the civil war to communist forces. locations.

Tens of thousands of political opponents were killed or imprisoned during what came to be known as the “White Terror” and the DPP was formed by many veterans of those who campaigned for democracy.

While Lai was in college in Taipei, he and his roommates closely followed news of the KMT's brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

“I was full of doubts and concerns about the future of this country,” he said in a video released by his presidential election campaign.

Lai agreed to help the DPP in the local elections, but the candidate ended up losing. A year later, some democracy activists invited Lai to join the DPP to run for the legislature.

He initially rejected the idea. “I was born and raised in a rural and poor area and I always wanted to be a doctor. Now, I have finally come this far to become chief physician,” he said in the campaign video.

But his political friends refused to give up. Months later, the crisis erupted in the Taiwan Strait as China carried out live-fire exercises and fired missiles at Taiwan, giving Lai one last push over the line.

“Instead of criticizing the government in power at the time in my clinic, wouldn’t it be better to go out and follow the vanguards of the democratic movement and actually do something for Taiwan?” he said in the video.

“I also thought that in this life, if I could find a project that I was passionate about, it would be a life worth living.”

“To relax”

In the run-up to the elections, China did not hide its desire to prevent Lai from winning. Chinese officials repeatedly framed the vote as a choice between “peace and war” — echoing a talking point from the KMT’s Hou Yu-ih, Beijing’s preferred candidate — while criticizing Lai for triggering “cross-Strait confrontation and conflict.”

Coming from a more radical wing of the DPP, Lai was once an open supporter of Taiwanese independence – a red line for Beijing.

His views moderated as he rose through the ranks. But China has never forgiven him for comments six years ago in which he described himself as a “practical worker for Taiwan independence.”

Lai now says he is in favor of the current status quo, proclaiming that “Taiwan is already an independent sovereign country”, so “there is no plan or need” to declare independence.

This deliberately nuanced stance mimics that of her outgoing predecessor, Tsai, Taiwan's first female president, who was unable to run again due to term limits.

Beijing cut off official communications with Taipei after Tsai took power in 2016 and stepped up its campaign to isolate Taiwan internationally, something that looks set to continue when Lai takes office and fully assumes power in May.

In many ways, Beijing's rhetoric toward Lai is even more hostile than how it viewed Tsai.

China's government and state media regularly berate Lai, calling him a dangerous separatist, a “troublemaker” and a “warmaker” while rejecting his repeated offers of talks.

One such offer was made to China's top leader, Xi. In May last year, in a quick question-and-answer session with students from his alma mater, National Taiwan University, Lai named Xi as the head of state he would most like to have dinner with.

If he had the opportunity to have dinner with Xi, Lai said, he would advise the Chinese leader to “relax a little.” “There’s no need to be so stressed,” he said.

Asked about Lai's invitation, Beijing said his comments were “strange” and accused Lai of “trying to wear the cloak of goodwill” given that its “nature of Taiwan independence” had not changed.

Lai's running mate, Hsiao Bi-khim, elected vice president on Saturday, was also openly hated by Beijing. Hsiao, who recently served as Taiwan's top envoy to the United States, has been sanctioned twice by China for being a “diehard separatist.”

“Dominant public opinion”

Lai won more than 40% of the popular vote, while the KMT won 33% and a newer opposition party, the Taiwan People's Party (TPP), garnered 26%.

The DPP lost its majority in the legislature, winning 51 of 113 seats, meaning Lai may find himself more constrained than Tsai and need to rely on political alliances to pass legislation.

Hours after Lai declared victory, China rejected the election results in Taiwan, saying the DPP “does not represent mainstream public opinion” on the island. “Taiwan is China’s Taiwan,” China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said in a statement on Saturday night.

“These elections cannot change the hope shared by compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to get closer and closer; furthermore, they cannot prevent the inevitable destiny that our homeland will be united.”

But this statement could not be further from mainstream Taiwanese public opinion. Under Xi's strong-arm tactics, the Taiwanese public has decisively turned away from China. Less than 10% currently support immediate or eventual unification and less than 3% identify primarily as Chinese.

Most Taiwanese want to maintain the current status quo and show no desire to be ruled by Beijing.

“We have been bullied for years on end. I simply cannot bring myself to kneel in the face of their demands and meddling in our elections. We want to maintain our free lifestyle and our democracy,” said Yang Wei-ting, a 27-year-old civil servant, amid applause and celebrations at the Lai rally.

“I think the most important part for us is working with like-minded partners around the world and telling China that we are not alone and that we are not afraid. We face an authoritarian regime, but we are supported by many like-minded countries.”

*With information from CNN's Wayne Chang and Eric Cheung.