Taiwan's economy has fared relatively well in recent years, avoiding the slow growth syndrome that has afflicted most of the West. But complaints over rising income inequality have been mounting, fueled by a residential building boom that seems largely reserved for high-wage earners and a shift in the labor market that appears to punish relatively unskilled or undereducated workers.
That has provided a big political opening for Tsai Ing-wen, the 54-year-old DPP presidential candidate, and the star of the suddenly trendy piggy bank campaign.
這些給了54歲民進黨總統候選人﹐突然變成潮流的三支小豬活動的明星蔡英文一個巨大的政治切入口。
Scion of a wealthy family, the soft-spoken Tsai has been transformed almost overnight from a wonkish intellectual whose privileged background allowed her to study abroad, into a Robin Hood-like heroine committed to lifting the poor from the hardships of life.