People feel anxious, especially when we have to wonder whether the president, Taiwan's democratically elected president, will be addressed as president. If he cannot even defend his own title, what can he defend for us?

For years, Taiwan has been dominated politically by a single party, the Kuomintang. People now want the place to be more democratic. They want to place more emphasis on human rights and transparency in terms of government decision-making. This is different from the way the government conducted business in the days when this was pretty much an authoritarian place.

I think that Chairman Xi Jinping's courage tackling corruption is an important matter in the development of Chinese society. I also look forward to him showing a bit more flexibility in dealing with cross-strait relations. I hope that he can appreciate that Taiwan is a democratic society in which the leader has to follow the will of the people.

I think that my emergence as a leader is closely related to the development of Taiwan's democracy. Taiwan's democracy was a gradual development. It was done from the bottom up. Therefore a lot of the more successful political leaders come from civil society, those that are closer to the grass-roots level of the public.

If China do take economic measures to apply pressure to Taiwan, they will have to think about the price that they are going to pay. Because the surrounding countries will be looking very carefully at what measures China will take against Taiwan.

We have always had diverse channels of communication across the strait. These include not just official communications but also people-to-people contacts... There are differences between the positions of the two sides of the strait. In Taiwan, we have done our best to minimize that gap. I believe that the Chinese realize the goodwill we have put forth at the inauguration.

People feel anxious, especially when we have to wonder whether the president, Taiwan's democratically elected president, will be addressed as president. If he cannot even defend his own title, what can he defend for us?