China sends warning to Taiwan as it prepares to elect first woman president
As a British-educated admirer of Margaret Thatcher, Tsai Ing-wen, who studied in London, is the woman set to become leader of China’s fierce rival Taiwan was always likely to be regarded with suspicion by Beijing’s Communist Party apparatus.
Her sex may not officially be as important to Beijing as her politics – the DPP, unlike the ruling Kuomintang, believes Taiwan would be better off declaring the island to be an independent country rather than maintaining the international community’s polite fiction that it is an integral part of China.
But the fact that Taiwan will become the second of China’s close and democratic neighbours to be ruled by a woman – the other being President Park Geun-Hye of South Korea – will be a constant reminder of the political revolutions China prefers to resist. China’s ruling inner circle – the Politburo Standing Committee – has never had a woman member.