Ma Ying-jeou is a Taiwanese politician who served as the 6th president of the Republic of China from 2008 to 2016. Previously, he served as the 14th justice minister from 1993 to 1996 and mayor of Taipei from 1998 to 2006. He served as chairman of the Kuomintang (KMT) from 2005 to 2007 and from 2009 to 2014.

Ma is a Taiwanese waishengren born in Kwong Wah Hospital in Yau Ma Tei in Kowloon, part of then-British Hong Kong, on 13 July 1950.

His parents were in Hong Kong on the way from Hunan Province of Communist China to Nationalist-held Taiwan after the Chinese Civil War. In a family of five children, Ma was the fourth child and the only son. His family left Hong Kong for Taiwan in 1952. They originate from Xiangtan, Hunan in the Republic of China (now Hunan, People's Republic of China), and their ancestral home was in Fufeng, Shaanxi Province. His ancestors had migrated from Shaanxi to Jiangxi and then finally to Hunan. Researchers had purportedly visited the old residence of Ma's father, Ma Ho-ling (1920–2005), in Kaiyun Town, Hengshan County, Hunan, where they discovered a genealogy book stating that Ma descended from Three Kingdoms era general Ma Chao. His mother was Chin Hou-hsiu (1922–2013). Ma was raised Catholic.