FACTBOX: Key facts on Taiwan's Ma Ying-jeou

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Ma Ying-jeou is running for president of Taiwan as an advocate of strong trade and economic links with political rival China.

Here are key facts on Ma, whose Nationalist Party (KMT) won a large parliamentary majority in legislative elections in January:

* 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 taking 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 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.

* He was the party's youngest deputy secretary-general at age 33 and Taiwan's youngest justice minister at 43.

* Ma unseated Chen Shui-bian, the current president, as Taipei mayor in 1998. The KMT vice-chairman since 2003, he was promoted to chairman in 2005.

* In August 2007, Ma was cleared of corruption charges filed against him six months earlier, which had prompted his resignation as party chairman. Prosecutors had accused Ma of misusing T$11 million (US$365,000) in government funds while Taipei mayor. A high court upheld the verdict in December.

* The avid jogger and married father of two daughters has written books on international maritime law and several papers on Taiwan-China relations and East China Sea disputes.

Source: Reuters, Taipei City Government

(Writing by Gillian Murdoch, Singapore Editorial Reference Unit)