From a poor mining background to becoming the boss of a vibrant democracy threatened by a powerful neighbor. The political career of Lai Ching-Te It started in 1996, when Taiwan held its first completely free elections. A decade earlier, he began to take the pulse of the street by participating in the protests against the dictatorship anti-communist who had been ruling the island for 40 years.
He studied Medicine and, thanks to a scholarship, earned a master’s degree in Public Health at Harvard. He returned to his homeland as a medical consultant expert in spinal cord injuries, but before entering his thirties he hung up his robe to make his way as a legislator in the Taiwanese Parliament.
Lai (64 years old), son of a miner, can boast of having gone through almost all levels of Taiwanese politics. Of rank and file deputy to mayor for two terms from the southern city of Tainan; from prime minister to vice president. He now faces the greatest possible challenge: leading a nation that functions in de facto as a totally independent countrybut whose sovereignty is recognized by only 13 countries around the world.
Hundreds of thousands of people gathered in the heart of Taipei on Saturday to celebrate the Lai’s victory in the presidential election. His party, the Progressive Democratic Party (PDP), won with more than 40% of the votes.
A result that China doesn’t like it at all, where a few days ago they defined Lai as a “danger” to peace in the Taiwan Strait. In Beijing they do not forget a 2018 speech by the new president-elect in which he described himself as a “hard worker pragmatist for independence de Taiwan”.