Winning a presidential election with a margin of 16 percentage points would be considered a triumph for most politicians or their parties.

But Ma Ying-jeou, who defeated his rival by a landslide in Taiwan’s presidential poll last weekend, speaks of “feeling fear” as he considers his term, while Wu Po-hsiung, who chairs Mr Ma’s Kuomintang (KMT) party, has declared: “This is not a victory of the KMT.”