New Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te took the oath of office in Taipei on Monday. Lai is expected to pledge in a speech later in the day to protect stability and maintain the status quo in the island’s fraught relationship with China. his predecessor – much to Beijing’s chagrin.
By taking the oath of office, 64-year-old Lai succeeds former President Tsai Ing-wen, after serving as her vice president for four years. In terms of continuity, he has already followed in Tsai’s footsteps and earned the enmity of Beijing, which has called him a “dangerous separatist.”
But while Lai branded himself in 2017 as a “pragmatic worker for Taiwanese independence,” in recent years he has taken pains to put this description in the rearview mirror, embracing the position outlined by Tsai that Taiwan is already de facto independent – a position that helped propel him to victory in January’s hotly contested elections, which were largely framed as a choice between change and continuity.
