- 17 January 2016
Tsai Ing-wen has been elected Taiwan's first female president.
Ms Tsai, 59, leads the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) that wants independence from China.
In her victory speech, she vowed to preserve the status quo in relations with China, adding Beijing must respect Taiwan's democracy and both sides must ensure there are no provocations.
China sees the island as a breakaway province - which it has threatened to take back by force if necessary.
In her speech, Ms Tsai hailed a "new era" in Taiwan and pledged to co-operate with other political parties on major issues.
The will of the Taiwanese people would be the basis for relations with China, Ms Tsai said.
"I also want to emphasise that both sides of the Taiwanese Strait have a responsibility to find mutually acceptable means of interaction that are based on dignity and reciprocity.
"We must ensure that no provocations or accidents take place," Ms Tsai said, warning that "any forms of suppression will harm the stability of cross-strait relations".
She thanked the US and Japan for their support and vowed Taiwan would contribute to peace and stability in the region.
Ms Tsai had a commanding lead in the vote count when Eric Chu of the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) admitted defeat.
Mr Chu congratulated Tsai Ing-wen and announced he was quitting as KMT head. Taiwan's Premier Mao Chi-kuo also resigned.
The election came just months after a historic meeting between the leaders of Taiwan and China.
However, the flagging economy as well as Taiwan's relationship with China both played a role in the voters' choice, correspondents say.
The KMT has been in power for most of the past 70 years and has overseen improved relations with Beijing - Ms Tsai's is only the second-ever victory for the DPP.
The first was by pro-independence advocate Chen Shui-bian; during his time as president between 2000 and 2008 tensions with China escalated.
Analysis: Cindy Sui, BBC News, Taipei
The victory by Tsai Ing-wen marks a defeat for not only the pro-unification ruling party KMT but also China.
Despite the past eight years of reduced tensions and much improved relations built by the KMT and China, Taiwanese voters have voted for Ms Tsai from the pro-independence party instead. Basically, they've voted to keep Beijing at a distance.
This reflects not only widespread dissatisfaction with President Ma Ying-jeou of the KMT over insufficient measures to improve the lacklustre economy, low wages and widening wealth gap - it also reflects growing worries by Taiwanese people that the island may become too economically dependent on China and that this will make it hard for Taiwan to fend off pressures by Beijing to reunify with it one day.
The message voters have sent Beijing is that, while they want reduced tensions and good relations, they cherish Taiwan's sovereignty, democracy and self-rule even more.
The challenge now is for Ms Tsai to find a way to work with China, the island's biggest export market, trade partner and security threat.
Ms Tsai, a former scholar, has said she wants to "maintain [the] status quo" with China.
She became chairwoman of the DPP in 2008, after it saw a string of corruption scandals.
She lost a presidential bid in 2012 but has subsequently led the party to regional election victories. She has won increased support from the public partly because of widespread dissatisfaction over the KMT and President Ma Ying-jeou's handling of the economy and widening wealth gap.
Saturday's polls come after a historic meeting between President Ma and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Singapore in November for talks that were seen as largely symbolic - the first in more than 60 years.
Eric Chu, 54, is the mayor of New Taipei City and stepped up to become chairman of the party in October.
The KMT has lost its majority in the legislature for the first time in history.
The former accounting professor was seen as popular with young people in the party, but had been unable to change public opinion that is increasingly unhappy with the party's friendly stance towards China and the island's economic travails.
In 2014, hundreds of students occupied the parliament in the largest show of anti-Chinese sentiment on the island for years. Labelled the Sunflower Movement, protesters demanded more transparency in trade pacts negotiated with China.
Taiwan for all practical purposes been independent since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, when the defeated Nationalist government fled to the island as the Communists, under Mao Zedong, swept to power.
/ Copyright © 2016 BBC
With slightly hunched shoulders and an unassuming manner, 59-year-old Tsai Ing-wen doesn't look like a threat to Beijing.
But she has just won Taiwan's presidency and is steely in her belief that Taiwan's future should be determined by its people. This is a direct challenge to China, which still sees the island as a province to be reunified by force if needed.
What Beijing will have to decipher is where exactly Ms Tsai stands on the issue of Taiwan's sovereignty and what her next move will be. She has skilfully avoided clarifying this.
She is not just a mystery to China. Many Taiwanese see her as a quiet enigmatic force, difficult to predict.
She has described herself as someone who likes to walk next to walls to avoid the spotlight and characterised her rapid ascendency in politics as an "accidental life".
Why does this election matter?
What's behind the China-Taiwan divide?
Ms Tsai is Taiwan's first female leader but unlike other Asian women who rose to the top, she didn't come from a political family.
The youngest of 11 children born to the last of her father's four wives, she grew up in a well-to-do family.
Her father ran a successful car repair business and made money investing in land, but insisted she attend public schools to expose her to wider society.
She spent the first 30 years of her life deep in academic pursuits: getting a bachelor of law at National Taiwan University, a master's in law at Cornell University in the US and a PhD at the London School of Economics, eventually becoming a law professor.
Her area of expertise and English proficiency meant she was called upon in the 1990s to become a legal consultant for Taiwan's World Trade Organization (WTO) entry negotiations.
So began her entry into public life.
As national security advisor to former President Lee Teng-hui, she helped draft his special state-to-state relations doctrine, in which he defined relations between Beijing and Taipei as that of two countries - a move that angered China.
But under the next president Chen Shui-bian and at one of the worst times for cross-strait relations, Ms Tsai, as head of the Mainland Affairs Council, found a way to work with a hostile China and launched the landmark "Small Mini Links" programme in 2001, which allowed direct ferry transport and trade links between Taiwan's outlying islands and mainland China. She later pushed for the first-ever chartered flights between the two sides.
And in 2003, despite concerns about Taiwan opening up too much too soon to China, Ms Tsai convinced Mr Chen and legislators to revise Taiwan's law governing relations with China, making it legal for Taiwanese businesses to invest in the mainland.
"From her perspective, since this was something people needed and were already doing illegally, she thought the government should develop a law and let people do it legally," said Ho Mei-yueh, a former economics minister who worked closely with Ms Tsai.
Those who know her say she is practical and flexible with a knack for building consensus.
"She's not someone who will take the initiative to go on stage, but once she sits down at the meeting table, she's the leader, said Mr Ho.
But even those who know her are unclear about her stance on Taiwan's independence.
"She's not anti-China, not deep-green (the colour of the pro-independence DPP), and she's never said she favours Taiwan's independence," said Chang Jing-wen, who has written a book about Ms Tsai's career.
But Ms Tsai makes clear that she holds Taiwan's democracy dear; she agreed to take over the DPP in the throes of crisis in 2008, because she believed that a strong opposition was crucial for democracy.
In a clue to what turned her from a reluctant politician to embracing her destiny, she described in her recently published book how she felt when an elderly restaurant worker donated her entire month's salary of NT$20,000 (US$600) to her campaign: "I will always remember. She said she doesn't ask for anything in return, and only hopes that the DPP will help her protect Taiwan's sovereignty; she wants to keep being a Taiwanese person."
Few expect her to push for independence. Yet, despite intense pressure from China and the establishment KMT party, Ms Tsai has not accepted what Beijing insists is the only basis for future relations - a consensus reached with Taiwan in 1992 that there is only one China, with each side free to interpret what that means. Beijing takes that to mean Taiwan and the mainland are one China.
Yet she has also moved away from her party's and her previous position that no such consensus exists. She will know better than many that China remains paramount: Taiwan badly needs economic agreements from its biggest trade partner, particularly when export markets remain uncertain.
Kou Chien-wen, a political science professor at National Chengchi University, speaks of her flexibility: "I don't think she's someone who is strongly ideological. She is very clever."
In a sign of this, when Chinese netizens posted tens of thousands of messages on her Facebook page criticising her during her campaign, Ms Tsai simply posted: "I hope this rare opportunity can help our 'new friends' get a complete view of the democracy, freedom, and diversity of Taiwan. Welcome to the world of Facebook!"
Ironically, Ms Tsai could turn out to be a better partner for Beijing than current President Ma Ying-jeou, who is not trusted by some because his parents came from mainland China and his party is pro-unification. Agreements signed with Ms Tsai will not likely face opposition.
Being a mixture of Taiwan's different ethnic groups, and the descendant of a long-time Taiwanese family, has helped her win the trust of voters. Her father is Hakka, her mother Minnan, and her paternal grandmother is from the Paiwan indigenous tribe.
But if she is unable to win China's trust, her term could be marked by stalemate, or Beijing could shrink or sever official ties. Tensions could resurface, worrying regional neighbours and affecting ties between Beijing and Washington, which is bound by law to help Taiwan defend itself.
Her book offers a clue to her philosophy. Quoting German sociologist Max Weber, she compared politics to the strong and slow boring of hard boards: "We have to be more patient [and work] steadily, practically, and accurately to achieve the ideal. This is my style."
/ Copyright © 2016 BBC