Tsai took the presidential oath of office on Friday at the Presidential Office Building in the capital Taipei, this after winning a landslide victory in January.
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Tsai is the leader of Taiwan’s independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
“We will resolutely forestall any separatist moves and plots to pursue “Taiwan independence” in any form”, it said.
Since Chinese nationalist leaders fled to Taiwan in 1949 after a brutal civil war with Mao Zedong’s Communists, the island’s legislature has been dominated by the nationalist Kuomintang party, whose outgoing government had overseen an improvement in ties with Beijing.
Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan’s new president, has a reputation as a patient, canny negotiator and she will need all those skills and more as she takes responsibility for what is potentially one of Asia’s most risky flash points.
A University of Michigan’s professor, John Ciorciari, who follows Taiwan politics, said: “Since she won’t say exactly what Beijing wants to hear about the 1992 consensus, a testy admonition from the Chinese leadership is sure to follow”.
Tsai said in her speech that she respected the “joint acknowledgements and understandings” reached between the sides at a landmark 1992 meeting seen by China as underpinning all subsequent contacts and agreements.
“China’s got a wide range of retaliatory measures waiting for Taiwan”.
Tsai’s election served as a resounding rejection by voters of the China-friendly party that has led Taiwan for eight years.
Voted in by a Taiwanese public distrustful of growing economic dependence on China, the DPP also champions Taiwan’s own history.
Beijing-sceptic Tsai swept in with a campaign to restore Taiwanese pride.
Diversifying Taiwan’s economy away from its reliance on trade and investment with the mainland has been a key part of Ms. Tsai’s program.
Read Tsai’s full inauguration speech in English over at SCMP.
Tsai and the DPP have never recognised the concept and she showed no sign of changing that stance in her speech, clearly irking Beijing.
Political analysts had earlier said that Tsai could receive a backslash from Beijing.
Tsai called for “positive dialogue” with China in her much-anticipated inauguration speech, striking a conciliatory tone in the face of an increasingly hostile Beijing. Ms. Tsai said that her administration would “work to maintain existing mechanisms for dialogue and communications across the Taiwan Strait”.
On Taiwan’s diplomacy, Huang said that Tsai will underscore the fact that Taiwan is a member of the world community and wishes to shoulder its responsibility as such.
She also expressed the island’s commitment to its democratic freedoms.
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She returned to Taiwan in the mid-1980s to spend the next decade and a half negotiating for the island’s entry into the World Trade Organization – a role that pitted her brains against global experts as Taiwan, recognized as a country by only a handful of others, fought for its diplomatic life.
