While policymakers in Beijing were fretting this week about what her landslide election victory on January 16 means for cross-strait relations, Taiwan’s next president had more immediate concerns: her two cats.
“The happiest thing is, I finally have some time to play with Think Think and Ah Tsai,” Tsai Ing-wen, the leader of Taiwan’s opposition party, wrote on her Facebook page, after she won a double majority in the presidential and legislative elections.
The cat-loving former law professor and self-styled wonk does not look like a formidable adversary for China’s domineering President Xi Jinping. But the rise of Ms Tsai, who has an intellect as robust as her powers of perseverance and a deep commitment to Taiwan’s separate identity, is a major worry for China, which claims that the self-governing island is still its territory.