Do we like Tsai Ing-wen?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A decent record on harm and on how she treats people, held back by a slow start on marriage equality and a contested energy legacy.
Tsai Ing-wen left Taiwan's presidency in May 2024, and this month she was back on the road, landing in San Francisco to hundreds of cheering overseas Taiwanese. The sources we could open were thin on her early years, so we won't pretend to a full origin story. What the record does show is a politician whose career has been about Taiwan's standing in the world.
Her biggest personal stoush wasn't about policy at all. Commentators alleged her London doctorate was fake, and the University of London said she was awarded a PhD in February 1984 after two examiners reviewed her thesis. Prosecutors indicted Dennis Peng, who raised the claim, though they did not indict two academics she had also sued. In May 2025 the Taiwan High Court upheld a ruling in her favour on the degree's legitimacy.
On the harm test, marriage equality is the big one. She cheered the 2019 law as “a big step towards true equality”. But after the 2017 court ruling she hesitated amid conservative opposition, including inside her own party, and the LGBTQ community has not fully forgiven her for that. Critics also say the law falls short of full equality, as it limits adoption and marriages with foreign spouses.
On the planet, she made good on a promise to phase out nuclear power by 2025, which one Taipei Times writer calls a lamentable development. Renewables were meant to hit 20 per cent of generation, but sat at about 12 per cent through November 2025. Where you land depends on whether you read that as a bold green pivot that fell short or as a bet that cost Taiwan a zero-emission power source.
In June 2023 the DPP was hit by alleged sexual misconduct cases from 2018 to 2022, along with accusations that mid-level party officials mishandled the complaints. Tsai said that as a former party chair she should “bear full responsibility” and apologised to the victims and the public. It's an owned-it response, not a deflection, and the party promised a complaints office and counselling for victims.
The kinder moments are real too. After the February 2023 Turkey earthquakes she and top officials pledged a month's salary to relief. On the recent US trip she told young tech founders that a country's strength lies in its people, not just its government and businesses. That's honestly the whole list we could verify; no scandals about how she treats staff or fans turned up.