Tenth-term Vice President,
Republic of China
Hsiu-lien Annette Lu was born in Taoyuan, Taiwan, on June 7, 1944. As the youngest child and the third girl in a
family of modest means, on two occasions, she was almost given away to
other families, a common practice in Taiwan at the time. As she grew older
her parents encouraged her to study and excel academically. She attended
the Taiwan Provincial Taipei First Girls' High School and then studied
law at National Taiwan University, graduating first in her class in 1967.
She earned a master's degree in comparative law from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
in 1971, and an LL.M. from Harvard in 1978.
In the 1970s, Lu introduced feminist ideas to Taiwan through a series of groundbreaking
newspaper articles and books and became the country's
leading women's rights activist. She established a
feminist publishing house, founded a women's coffee shop/resource center, and set up hotlines for
women. While working in the executive branch of the government and witnessing its operations, she
developed a deep distaste for the widespread corruption. Lu left Taiwan in 1977 to study at Harvard.
In 1978, perceiving that the United States would
soon sever diplomatic relations with the ROC, she gave up her studies at Harvard and returned to
Taiwan. She ran for a seat in the National Assembly that autumn, but, when the US announced
derecognition two weeks before the scheduled election, the government cancelled the elections.
Lu then became increasingly active in the tang-wai, the opposition
movement calling for democracy and an end to authoritarian rule. In 1979
she delivered a 20-minute speech criticizing the government at an International
Human Rights Day rally that later became known as the "Kaohsiung Incident."
Following this rally, virtually the entire leadership of Taiwan's democracy
movement, including Lu, was imprisoned. She was tried, found guilty of
violent sedition, and sentenced by a military court to 12 years in prison.
She was named by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience, and
partly due to international pressure was released in 1985, after approximately
five-and-a-half years in jail.
Lu then resumed her efforts for women's rights, democracy, and
international recognition for Taiwan. In 1993 she founded the Taiwan
International Alliance to press for Taiwan's entrance into the UN. In
that year also, as a member of the opposition Democratic Progressive
Party, Lu was elected to Taiwan's national legislature, where she served
on the Foreign Relations Committee. In 1994 Lu chaired the Global
Summit of Women, and in 1995 she chaired the Feminist Summit for Global
Peace, held in Taipei. In 1996 President Lee Teng-hui
asked her to serve as National Policy Advisor,
breaking with the usual practice of appointing only
members of the ruling party. Lu was elected Taoyuan
County magistrate in a March 1997 by-election on a
platform calling for reform and an end to
government corruption. Nine months later she was reelected
in the regular election by a large vote margin.
On March 18, 2000, Lu was elected the tenth-term Vice President of the ROC. After her
inauguration on May 20, she actively participated in
government affairs, greatly promoting the new government
as a symbol of "social equality and harmony" between men and women and of "political rule by both
sexes." In foreign affairs, she redefined cross-strait
relations as "distant relatives, close neighbors," hoping to end the half-a-century-old enmity between
the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party.
In September 2000, she officially embarked on her first overseas trip, titled "Soft Diplomacy," to the
ROC's Central American allies: El Salvador, Honduras, Belize, and Guatemala. Her visit emphasized
the ROC's experiences in democratization, human rights, and hi-tech development. The vice president's
aim was to "show the unlimited potential of 'Soft Power'" possessed by the people of Taiwan. "Soft
Power" consists of such essential elements as democracy, human rights, peace, love, and hi-tech.
Focusing on peace and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region, Vice President Lu called for a
Union of Asian States. Modeled after the European Union, the Union of Asian States would
embrace the era of "open regions" and make the Asia-Pacific an area of resource-sharing,
cooperation, and peaceful coexistence.
