Presidency of Lai Ching-te

The presidency of Lai Ching-te began on 20 May 2024, when Lai Ching-te was sworn in as 16th president of the Republic of China and the eighth president of the republic since it became established on the island of Taiwan, succeeding Tsai Ing-wen.

Lai and running mate Hsiao Bi-khim won the 2024 presidential election with 5.58 million votes, breaking the practice of two-term political party rotation with the Kuomintang since the first direct presidential election in 1996, and retaining the presidency for the Democratic Progressive Party for a record consecutive third term.

However, unlike the previous two-term presidency of Tsai Ing-wen, the DPP failed to obtain a majority of seats in the Legislative Yuan alone, making Lai Ching-te's government the second minority government since Taiwan's democratisation.

[1] Lai is the third incumbent vice president of Taiwan to become president, and the first to assume the office through election instead of a predecessor's death.

Hsiao, the former Taiwanese Representative to the United States and a former member of the Legislative Yuan, was sworn in on the same day as vice-president, and become Taiwan's first biracial vice president, having been born in Kobe, Japan to a Taiwanese father and European-American mother.