Do we like them?

Do we like Lai Ching-te?

Our score: 7 out of 10. Nothing harmful found and a visible stand for LGBTQ+ people, but the record we could open is thin on his personal conduct and on climate.

Lai Ching-te is president of Taiwan, and in May 2026 he marked the halfway point of his term. Fair warning: we couldn't open a full biography of him in this run, so this column leans on this year's reporting rather than the whole life story. That's a gap, and we'd rather say so than pad it.

The big domestic stoush this year was an impeachment attempt. The opposition KMT and TPP launched it after a standoff over a revenue-sharing law and after his premier declined to sign off on legislation the opposition passed, and Lai skipped the review sessions. Opposition lawmakers accused him of not accepting checks and balances, while his DPP called it political theatre. On 19 May the motion failed, 56 votes to 50, well short of the two-thirds needed.

The other grind has been defence. Lai pushed a special budget of about NT$1.25 trillion over eight years for missile defences and unmanned systems, and the opposition-controlled legislature blocked it repeatedly. KMT caucus leader Fu Kun-chi called it a request for blanket authorisation, while Lai's line on his anniversary was that peace comes through strength. Where you land depends on whether you read it as sensible caution about a blank cheque or as stalling while a bigger neighbour leans on the island.

On the harm check, nothing nasty from him turned up, and no dodgy company either. After the Taipei police raid on a gay bar, he wrote that nobody should feel fear because of who they are, and that respect has to show up in every exercise of public authority. The raid was by city police under an opposition mayor, not his government. On the planet, the last reactor of Taiwan's nuclear plants shut in May 2025, a longtime DPP goal; whether that's good for emissions is contested, and we couldn't find his own recent words on climate.

The good stuff is thinner than we'd like to report, honestly: no charity record or honours were opened in this run. What we can source is a leader who, under heavy pressure from Beijing, says only Taiwan's 23 million people should decide its future, and who shows up for LGBTQ+ people in public. Taiwan's own politics around him is a slugfest, but we found nothing about how he treats people day to day.