FACTBOX: Key facts on Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou

Mon Oct 19, 2009 3:30am EDT

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou urged China on Monday to scrap the growing number of missiles aimed at the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own.

Following are key facts about 59-year-old Ma, who took office in May 2008:

* Ma was born in Hong Kong on July 13, 1950, to parents from Hunan province in central China. He grew up in Taipei and studied there before getting degrees at New York University and Harvard University Law School.

* After a brief stint on Wall Street, Ma rose quickly through the ranks of the Nationalist Party (KMT), which once ruled all of China before losing to Mao Zedong's Communists in the Chinese civil war and fleeing to Taiwan in 1949.

* In 1998, Ma was elected Taipei mayor, unseating the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)'s Chen Shui-bian, who later served two terms as president from 2000-2008. Re-elected mayor in 2002, Ma became KMT vice-chairman in 2003 and chairman in 2005.

* In August 2007, Ma was cleared of corruption charges filed against him, a case which prompted his resignation as party chairman. Prosecutors accused Ma of misusing T$11 million (US$342,000) in government funds while Taipei mayor.

* Following Chen, an anti-China firebrand who repeatedly angered Beijing with pro-independence rhetoric, Ma has forged closer trade ties with the island's giant neighbor, which has claimed Taiwan as its territory since 1949.

* Ma faced his biggest crisis as president after a typhoon in August triggered the worst storm in 50 years and killed more than 700 people, unleashing a wave of public protest and forcing Ma to reshuffle his cabinet in September.

* Ma took back the KMT party chairman's job on October 17, fuelling speculation he may meet Chinese leaders in his less formal KMT capacity rather than as president.

Source: Reuters, Ma Ying-jeou's Web Site

(www.ma19.net/english/bio), Taipei City Government


(Reporting by Lee Chyen Yee and Ralph Jennings, Editing by Dean Yates)