ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we seek to situate Tsai's first term's discourse within the context of the entire period of democratic leadership in Taiwan. Comparative analysis of presidential speech across time allows us to identify differences and continuities between Tsai and former presidents. Our data come from a period of almost three decades in the record of public speeches, comments and pronouncements delivered by ROC Presidents from Lee Teng-hui onwards made available by the President's Office. In total, this database runs to more than 15,000 items and forms an unbroken record of public presidential speech from the early 1990s to the present. The analysis of these data allows us to identify differences and similarities in successive leaders and form a picture of Taiwanese politics trends at the highest level. We conclude that Tsai Ing-wen does not stand out from the other three democratically elected ROC presidents in four themes of Taiwanese politics: Chinese national identity, Taiwanese identity, democratic reform and economy. However, we admit that Tsai's relative emphasis on southbound nations and de-emphasis on China, and the all-encompassing scope of the New Southbound Policy (NSP), is distinct from her predecessors and worthy of continued attention.
