Hualien lawmaker Fu Kun-chi (傅崐萁) is the prime target of the recall campaigns. They want to bring him and everything he represents crashing down.
This is an existential test for Fu and a critical symbolic test for the campaigners. It is also a crucial test for both the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and a personal one for party Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫).
Why is Fu such a lightning rod?
Photo courtesy of Hualien Recall Group
LOCAL LORD
At the dawn of the 2020s, Fu, running as an independent candidate, beat incumbent Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmaker Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) and a KMT candidate to return to the legislature representing Hualien for the first time since the 2000s. This was a remarkable victory in a DPP landslide election year, including defeating Hsiao, a rising star and now vice president.
Within four months, he was convicted on yet more financial crimes and returned to jail, where he had spent several years in the 2010s.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
His election victory confirmed the “King of Hualien” retained his crown, with his wife Hsu Chen-wei (徐榛蔚) having won election to take over his former role as Hualien County commissioner after he was removed from office in 2018 to serve jail time just months before he was to be term-limited out of office. Hsu will herself be term-limited out in 2026, and if Fu is recalled on July 26, he may yet return to run again.
Though nationally well-known and a powerful figure among local patronage factions, he had risen as far as he could in politics. With his power base limited to Hualien, multiple criminal convictions, shady background and without the backing of a major political party, he was too tainted to be a presidential candidate, and there was nowhere else for an independent politician to go.
We examined his rise to rule in Hualien in this column (“Fu Kun-chi’s waterborne rise to the Hualien throne” July 17, page 12).
FORTUNE SMILES
Fortune was soon to smile on Fu. In October 2021, Eric Chu returned to office as KMT party chair.
Having participated in the disastrous electoral drubbing of the KMT in 2016 as presidential candidate and party chair, and witnessed their second landslide defeat in 2020, Chu knew the party needed big changes and deep reforms.
One of Chu’s first reforms was to open the door to former party members who had been kicked out for criminal activities or for disobeying party orders, but were still ideologically in the same camp, under a “same boat policy” (同舟計畫).
Despite having a criminal past and being kicked out for disobedience, Fu was welcomed back into the party. This was just over a month after Chu took office, and only five months after Fu was released from jail.
By 2023, Chu may have come to regret welcoming the brash, ambitious and seemingly fearless Fu back into the party.
In the presidential primary, Chu chose Hou You-yi (侯友宜) over Terry Gou (郭台銘). It was clear that many in the party, especially factional politicians like Fu, preferred Gou.
The day after Hou was anointed the party’s candidate at the July party congress, Fu effusively welcomed Gou, calling him the “light of Taiwan.” Gou would soon launch a campaign to get on the ballot as an independent candidate.
Seeing which way the tide was turning, Fu returned to the fold and backed Hou, but only after no doubt giving Chu many headaches.
While Fu could not sway the presidential race, he simultaneously embarked on a plan that would be more consequential and would set him on a collision course with the Bluebird Movement (青鳥行動) and the subsequent mass recall campaigns.
Taking a page out of former legislative speaker and Kaohsiung White Faction leader Wang Jin-pyng’s (王金平) playbook, he went on a charm offensive to win over KMT legislative candidates, with an eye on becoming legislative speaker himself.
He helped in many ways, including buying them campaign goodies to hand out at rallies. He sent congratulations, commiserations and, when appropriate, floral arrangements on important days.
Those campaign goodies got him in hot water. Starting in February a series of raids were conducted by investigators on allegations of illegally receiving funds from foreign sources and vote-buying during campaigning. He allegedly bought “personal grooming kits” from China and forged documents to claim they cost less than the legal limit of NT$30 allowed for campaign handouts.
Regardless, it appears to have made him popular with the KMT caucus, and when they won a plurality in the legislative elections last year and a majority with their pan-blue TPP allies, he made his move to be speaker.
FACE OF THE KMT
It was not to be. Former Kaohsiung mayor and presidential nominee Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) not only outranked him in the party, he is also affiliated with the powerful Yunlin Chang Clan. Han’s character was also more suited to the officially neutral role of speaker, which Fu would have chafed under and undoubtedly completely violated.
Fu got the second-best position, KMT caucus convener. Fu is bullheaded, outrageous and combative, so he fit right into the role — his DPP and TPP counterparts are cut from the same cloth.
He became the face of the KMT’s legislative agenda, aggressively pushing to expand the legislature’s powers at the expense of other branches of government, slashing and freezing budgets to hobble the DPP administration, and creating a constitutional crisis in the Constitutional Court.
Fu also made visits and led delegations to China, and met with the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) top officials in charge of executing plans to force the eventual annexation of Taiwan. He also has had extensive business contacts with China, tried to reopen direct tourism and among his many legal troubles, allegedly tried to arrange land sales for Chinese interests using overseas front companies.
A series of these moves led to the rise of the Bluebird Movement over fears that Fu and the KMT caucus were intentionally paralyzing the government and undermining Taiwan’s national security and defenses at the behest of the CCP.
Though there is no evidence of taking direct orders, it is not hard to see how they came to that conclusion, considering the timing of Fu’s trips and many of the actions by the KMT caucus that followed.
Until roughly April, Fu was the most visible figure in the KMT, though he has since faded more into the background as Chu re-emerged as the voice of the party.
It is possible Fu took a step back from the limelight to avoid continuing to be a motivating lightning rod for the recall campaigns. Possibly, he did so to concentrate on the increasing number of investigations against him and to shore up his base against the recall.
In Hualien, several government officials are under investigation for conducting a series of checks and inspections against recall campaign organizers that were allegedly intended to intimidate. They clearly failed, and appear to have added yet more fuel to the fires motivating campaigners to bring Fu down.
The local DPP has unsurprisingly backed the campaigners, but Fu has enemies and rivals within the Hualien pan-blue camp as well.
Former head of the local KMT but currently independent Hualien County Council Speaker Chang Chun (張峻) is openly leading forces in favor of recalling Fu. Former Hualien City mayor Wei Chia-hsien (魏嘉賢), who is preparing to run for county commissioner in the next election, has taken an ambiguous stance. He is also former KMT, comes from a powerful family and there are rumors of the DPP considering backing him in the commissioner race next year.
Analysis of his and other key races, as well as potential implications of various outcomes of the recalls, is coming next week.
Donovan’s Deep Dives is a regular column by Courtney Donovan Smith (石東文) who writes in-depth analysis on everything about Taiwan’s political scene and geopolitics. Donovan is also the central Taiwan correspondent at ICRT FM100 Radio News, co-publisher of Compass Magazine, co-founder Taiwan Report (report.tw) and former chair of the Taichung American Chamber of Commerce. Follow him on X: @donovan_smith.
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