Back in her days as a Taiwanese student activist, Cheng Li-wun gave fiery speeches urging the island to sever its Chinese bonds and declare independence. She lashed out at the Nationalist Party, which had ruled over Taiwan for decades after fleeing defeat in China, casting it as the latest colonizer to oppress the island.

早年身为台湾学生运动领袖时，郑丽文曾发表激情演说，呼吁台湾彻底切断与中国的联系，宣布独立。她猛烈抨击在大陆战败后逃到台湾、统治该岛数十年的国民党，把它视为压迫台湾的最新殖民者。

Now Ms. Cheng is, to the astonishment of many, the leader of the very Nationalist Party that she once despised, after winning the party’s leadership election in October. She recently bowed in respect at the grave of Chiang Kai-shek, the draconian Nationalist Party leader whom she once reviled. These days, she says that Taiwan’s people should proudly declare that they are also Chinese.

如今，令许多人震惊的是，经过10月的党魁选举，郑丽文竟然成为她曾经深恶痛绝的国民党的主席。近日她还到蒋介石墓前鞠躬致敬，也就是曾经被她痛骂的那位手段凶狠的国民党领袖。如今她说，台湾人应该自豪地宣称自己也是中国人。

Ms. Cheng’s abrupt rise to power in the Nationalist Party and her urgent calls for rapprochement with Beijing have made her the most polarizing and potentially disruptive opposition leader that Taiwan has seen in years.

郑丽文在国民党内的突然崛起，以及她急切呼吁与北京和解的立场，使她成为近年来台湾最具争议，同时可能也是最具颠覆性的反对党领袖。

Her views could also prompt disquiet in Washington, a key supporter of Taiwan’s defenses, especially as Taiwanese lawmakers prepare to debate President Lai Ching-te’s proposal to increase military spending by $40 billion over the next eight years.

她的观点也可能让华盛顿感到不安——美国是台湾防务的关键支持者，尤其在台湾立法院即将辩论赖清德总统提出的未来八年额外增加400亿美元军费预算之际。

The plan, intended largely to buy weapons from the United States, will be one of Ms. Cheng’s first major political tests. Ms. Cheng has not said outright whether she opposes the increase, but she has questioned whether Taiwan can afford it, and whether the arms orders would help secure peace or make tensions worse. She said that Mr. Lai was recklessly turning the Taiwan Strait into a “powder keg.”

这笔主要用来向美国采购武器的预算将成为郑丽文上任后的首个重大政治考验。她没有明确表示反对增支，但质疑台湾是否负担得起，以及这些军购是否真的有助于和平，还是会让局势更危险。她指责赖清德正在不负责任地把台海变成“火药桶”。

Ms. Cheng, 56, turned her back on hopes of Taiwanese independence more than 20 years ago, driven, she says, by a deepening belief that the cause was unrealistic and perilous. She now says that Taiwan must accept that it is historically part of China or risk a devastating war with Beijing, which claims the island as its lost territory.

现年56岁的郑丽文在20多年前就放弃了“台湾独立”的理想。她说，这是因为她越来越深刻地认识到，这个目标既不切实际又充满危险。她现在认为，台湾必须接受自己历史上是中国的一部分，否则就会冒与北京爆发毁灭性战争的风险——北京始终声称台湾是其失地。

“I don’t believe that time is on Taiwan’s side,” Ms. Cheng said at the Nationalist Party’s headquarters in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, in an interview with The New York Times. “The rapid rise of mainland China means that its national strength is incomparable to what it was just four years ago, let alone 10 years ago.”

“我认为时间不再站在台湾这一边，”郑丽文在台北国民党总部接受《纽约时报》专访时说，“中国大陆的崛起速度极快，它现在的国力跟四年前相比都不可同日而语，更不用说十年前。”

For the Nationalist Party, Ms. Cheng is a bold bet. The party, officially, the Chinese Nationalist Party, has lost Taiwan’s past three presidential elections to the Democratic Progressive Party, the party of President Lai, who has argued that Taiwan is a separate country that should keep China at arm’s length.

对国民党来说，郑丽文是一次大胆的押注。正式名称为中国国民党的这个政党在过去三次台湾领导人选举中都输给了民进党——赖清德所属的政党主张台湾已是主权独立国家，应与中国大陆保持距离。

She won the Nationalist Party’s leadership after members, eager for a fighter, rallied behind her message that the party had become too timid. At events, she often delivers impassioned speeches without a script, a skill that she said she sharpened as a student politician. But some in the party worry that her embrace of China could unsettle middle-of-the-road voters. In surveys, only about a third of Taiwanese people also identity partly as Chinese.

郑丽文之所以能当选党主席，是因为党员渴望能有一位能战斗的领袖，她批评党内变得过于软弱，这得到了他们的认同。在活动中，她常常脱稿发表激情演说——这是她在学生时代练就的本领。但党内也有人担心，她的亲中立场会吓跑中间选民。民调显示，只有大约三分之一的台湾人仍部分认同自己也是中国人。

“She’s an outlier leader who’s trying to disrupt the stagnation of the party,” said Jason Hsu, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute who was formerly a Nationalist Party lawmaker in Taiwan’s legislature. “She’s ideologically coherent, rhetorically sharp, but she could be politically risky for Taiwan that faces an increasingly coercive Beijing.”

“她是一个试图打破党内僵局的异类领袖，”曾任国民党籍立法委员、现为哈德逊研究所高级研究员的许毓仁(Jason Hsu)说，“她在意识形态上自洽、口才犀利，但对于面临北京日益强势压力的台湾来说，可能在政治上具有风险。”

Taiwanese security officials have said that evidence indicates that the Chinese Communist Party gave her campaign a lift, including by promoting her on social media in apparently coordinated messages from accounts that appeared linked to China. Ms. Cheng dismissed the allegations as sour grapes. After her victory, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, sent her a congratulatory message, an indication of Beijing’s approval.

台湾安全官员表示，有证据显示中共在选举期间为她的竞选造势，包括通过疑似与中国相关的账号在社媒上协调推波助澜。郑丽文斥之为“酸葡萄心理”。她胜选后，习近平立即发来贺电，显示北京的肯定。

郑丽文在桃园蒋经国陵寝拜谒后与支持者见面。

She is now trying to prepare the Nationalists to take on the Democratic Progressives in local elections next year and a presidential contest in 2028. She may not be the party’s next presidential candidate — other politicians are favored — but she could have a powerful say in the party’s policy platform for the next election.

她现在正准备带领国民党迎战明年的地方选举和2028年的总统大选。她本人未必会是下届参选人——党内其他人更被看好——但她对该党在下一届选举的政策纲领拥有巨大的话语权。

Ms. Cheng says that if Mr. Lai were to win another term, Mr. Xi could decide that peaceful dialogue is a lost cause. China “would have no choice but to deal with the Taiwan issue through their own means,” she said, implying war.

郑丽文说，如果赖清德连任，习近平可能会认为和平对话已无可能，中国“必须透过自己的方式来处理台湾的问题”——暗指战争。

She believes that her arguments will gain ground among Taiwanese voters. She said that Taiwan needed strong ties with the United States, but she argued that President Trump’s 20 percent tariffs on Taiwan and his pressure to move semiconductor production, the crown jewel of the island’s economy, to the United States, had fueled doubts about Washington’s intentions.

她相信自己的主张会在台湾选民中逐渐获得支持。她说台湾当然需要与美国保持紧密关系，但特朗普对台湾课征20%关税、要求把半导体产能——台湾经济命脉——迁往美国，已让许多台湾人对华盛顿的意图产生怀疑。

“Could it be that the United States is treating Taiwan as a chess piece, a pawn, to strategically provoke the Chinese Communist Party at opportune times?” she said of those public views, which echo Beijing’s rhetoric portraying Washington as manipulating Taiwan to constrain China.

“是不是美方把台湾当作一个马前卒，或把台湾当作一个棋子，适时地去刺激老共？”她转述这些民间疑虑时说，这与北京指责华盛顿操弄台湾以遏制中国的论调如出一辙。

Earlier Nationalist Party leaders often spent years studying in the United States and adopted a deep reverence for it, said Lee De-wei, a Nationalist Party politician who helped in Ms. Cheng’s campaign to lead the party. Ms. Cheng, who studied there for a year, does not share that attitude, Mr. Lee said.

国民党人、曾协助郑丽文竞选党主席的李德维指出，历任国民党领袖多在美国长期深造，对美国怀有深厚崇敬之情；郑丽文虽也在美国读过一年书，却完全没有那种心态。

“In her view, America is no longer the center of the world,” Mr. Lee said.

“她不会再以美国为世界中心，”李德维说。

Even before taking up the leadership post, she was stirring controversy. She said in an October interview with DW, a German news outlet, that Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had won his latest term as president through a democratic election, despite evidence that there was no real competition.

早在当选党主席前，她就已争议不断。10月接受德国之声专访时，她声称普京最近一次当选俄罗斯总统是通过民主选举，尽管国际普遍认为那场选举并无真正意义的竞争。

Her critics said Ms. Cheng’s comments showed that she had been swayed by Beijing’s views of Russia as a victim of Western bullying. They say that she is similarly naïve about China’s intentions toward Taiwan. Wu Cheng, a spokesman for the Democratic Progressives, said she was “turning a blind eye to China’s clear aggression against Taiwan and instead blaming the victim, Taiwan.”

批评者认为，这显示她已被北京的俄罗斯“被西方霸凌”叙事影响；他们说，她对中国对台意图同样天真。民进党发言人吴峥表示，她“对于中国对台的明显威胁视而不见，反而将责任怪罪于受害者的台湾”。

Such comments show how far Ms. Cheng has traveled politically. That journey began in a very different place. She was born to a Nationalist soldier from China and a Taiwanese mother and grew up in southern Taiwan. As a law student at Taiwan National University in the 1980s, she rebelled against her background as the daughter of a soldier, throwing herself into the island’s growing movement for Taiwanese identity and self rule.

这些言论显示郑丽文的政治立场转变幅度之大。她的政治旅程起点完全不同：父亲是来自大陆的国民党军人，母亲是台湾本地人，她在台湾南部长大。1980年代就读台湾大学法律系时，她反叛了自己的军人子女背景，投身当时方兴未艾的台湾本土认同与自治运动。

“For generation after generation, these rulers have come and gone, only to squeeze and oppress the Taiwanese people more and more,” she said in a speech in 1988. “Today, the Nationalists are the most despicable rulers.”

“一代又一代换了又换了这些统治者，只有对台湾人更加的压榨，更加的压迫，”她在1988年的一场演说中说。“今天国民党就是最可恶的统治者。”

In the years that followed, Ms. Cheng joined the Democratic Progressive Party. She left in 2002 because of anger over what she saw as its problems with corruption and an intolerance of internal dissent under Chen Shui-bian, Taiwan’s first president from the party, said Yin Nai-chin, a journalist who has known Ms. Cheng for many years.

随后几年她加入民进党。据认识她多年的记者尹乃菁表示，2002年她因不满陈水扁时期党内腐败与不容异见而退党。陈水扁是第一位民进党籍的台湾总统。

Her detractors say she left the Democratic Progressive Party after she was disciplined for making unfounded criticisms of a party official.

她的批评者则说，她是因为对党内某位高层提出没有根据的指控而被处分后离开的。

连战是1949年国民党在内战中败给共产党撤退台湾后首位访问大陆的国民党领导人，摄于2005年。

In 2005, she joined the Nationalist Party, deciding that it offered the only realistic path for defusing tensions with Beijing. She accompanied the then-party chairman, Lien Chan, on an ice-breaking trip to China in 2005, the first visit there by a party leader since 1949.

2005年，她加入国民党，认为该党的政治理念是缓和与北京紧张关系的唯一现实路径。同年她随当时的党主席连战破冰访问大陆，那是1949年以来国民党领导人首次踏足大陆。

Now, as head of her party, Ms. Cheng has said she is willing to meet China’s leaders. She says that because they will not talk to Taiwan’s government, the Nationalist Party must step in as Taiwan’s channel for dialogue. It’s an argument she thinks Mr. Trump would agree with, she said.

如今身为党主席，郑丽文表示她愿意与中国领导人会面。她说，既然北京拒绝与民进党当局对话，国民党就必须站出来充当台湾与大陆的沟通管道。她认为特朗普也会同意这种做法。

He “believes everything can be best solved through negotiation,” she said.

他“认为所有的事情都应该可以透过谈判取得最好的解決之道”，她说。