Opposition leader Tsai Ing-wen won a historic landslide victory in Saturday’s elections but Taiwan’s president-elect must now turn her attention to the daunting tasks of rejuvenating the island’s struggling economy and managing relations with a Chinese government that is hostile to her party.

Ms Tsai crushed rival Eric Chu from the ruling Kuomintang, or Nationalist party, in the presidential race, winning 56 per cent of the vote to his 31 per cent, as the Taiwanese people voiced their dissatisfaction with the KMT’s lacklustre government and its pro-China policies.

When inaugurated in May, she will become the first female president in this island of 23m people and one of the first female leaders elected in Asia who is not from a family dynasty.