An indicator of retired president Lee Teng-hui's (
"Liu has successfully seized control over the bank, the KMT's crown jewel. The bank has a market capitalization of NT$200 billion, is essential to all KMT-run enterprises and under Liu has now been privatized out of the party's control," former president of Wealth Magazine (財訊), Hsieh Chin-ho (謝金河) said, adding that the once wealthiest party in the world was likely to be burdened with as yet undiscovered debts due to the changes instituted by Liu.
Throughout the fracas during the bank's reshuffle, Liu demonstrated his capacity for political maneuvering, thoroughly uprooting his apparent rival Benny Hu (胡定吾) and the forces within the bank that had supported him, even after Hu had pledged his loyalty to President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and the ruling DPP.
PHOTO:CHI PEI-HSIUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
"Liu is not only an economic animal, but also a political animal," political commentator Hu Chung-hsin (
Hu Chung-hsin, however, described Liu as a fox borrowing the tiger's awe (狐假虎威) since most of Liu's authority came from Lee.
A sober-minded economist, the 65-year-old Liu has known Lee for almost 40 years since Lee taught Liu economics at National Taiwan University. Both later pursued PhDs at Cornell University and became very close friends who often exchanged views on Taiwan's political and economic affairs.
While he was president of the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台經院), Liu was recruited in 1993 by Lee, who had assumed the presidency five years before, to head the KMT's Investment and Business Management Committee (投管會) and helped further consolidate Lee's political regime.
"During his eight-year tenure [as head of the committee], he managed to triple the party's capital assets and quadruple its business investments," former committee board member Darby Liu (劉大貝) said, adding that the treasurer also made a great contribution to reforming party-owned enterprises.
Because of Liu's stern loyalty and capacity for making a profit for the party, Lee entrusted various important political positions to him.
"Liu made a lot of money for the party," Lee once told a close friend, who asked Lee why Liu, an opportunist in his eyes, was tapped to be his right hand man.
Expressing a different view, others complain that Liu put more effort into building his own business connections than into expanding the party's businesses while serving as as party treasurer.
"He took advantage of the KMT's resources to secure and expand his own political and economic connections," Hsieh said, citing party-backed loans to the then-nearly bankrupt Core Pacific Group (
"It has been much-rumored that some of the party's past overseas investments [decided by Liu] lost lots of money," said a media insider, who requested anonymity, adding that Liu tended to spend the party's capital extravagantly.
Hsieh, nevertheless, said that Liu did help expand the party's businesses to their maximum levels at the time, although some charge that illicit conduct was involved.
"The money he earned for the party was mostly from the stock market, which he had often been suspected of manipulating. He tended to make remarks to boost the public's confidence, but the remarks later appeared to be connected to insider trading with a certain consortium," a banking and finance professor at the National Taiwan University Huang Der-yeh (
Among KMT officials, the scholar-turned-politician Liu is probably the only one who knows exactly how much the party is worth, serving as Lee's right hand man to build up the party's black and gold empire.
During Lee's 12-year rule, Liu also served as one of Lee's economic advisors, attending Lee's weekly economic meetings and participating in government policy-making. At those meetings, Lee and his brain trust masterminded economic policies such as the "go south" policy (
Liu, in addition, served as Lee's secret US envoy, hiring Cassidy & Associates, a firm also used by Beijing, to lobby the White House for Lee's 1995 Cornell visit.
At an alleged cost of US$3.5 million, the trip triggered a controversy over Liu's influence, which not only frustrated the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which was effectively cut out of the loop on the arrangements. He was later branded the "underground foreign minister."
Lee, however, gave his approval to Liu's efforts to enhance Taiwan's international exposure and break Taiwan's diplomatic isolation.
In terms of Liu's leadership style, an insider, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Liu had a fondness for the grandiose (好大喜功) and has trouble maintaining his objectivity as a banker when party business is involved.
"He's also a pliable and credulous person given the right circumstances, who carries political burdens so heavily that he has trouble separating his duties as a banker from his political affiliations," the insider said.
As a person, Liu's a man of amazing contrasts and has a great sense of humor. He is a faithful Buddhist, who, however, frequents nightclubs, which he says are the best places for testing his skills in meditation and his moral fortitude.
His noted expertise on economic affairs once prompted him to veto the national pension policy, putting down his disapproval to concerns that the government would end up subsidizing business tycoon Wang Yung-ching (王永慶), who he said would be an eligible elder and "a rich begger (
He has been so angry at the media that he has openly labeled reporters "pigs," but the media have never been annoyed enough to lose interest.
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