Cecilia Koo (辜嚴倬雲), the widow of former Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) chairman Koo Chen-fu (辜振甫) and former chairwoman of the National Women’s League (NWL) of the Republic of China, has died at the age of 104.
Her death was announced in a statement yesterday by LDC Hotels & Resorts Group, which is chaired by her youngest daughter.
Cecilia Koo and her late husband were best known for their efforts to push for cross-strait interactions.
Photo courtesy of the National Women’s League
She accompanied her husband during the 1993 and 1998 talks in Singapore and Shanghai between Koo Chen-fu as the SEF chair and Wang Daohan (汪道涵), then-president of China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS).
The SEF is a semi-official intermediary body founded by the government in 1991 to handle technical matters with China, while ARATS is its Chinese counterpart.
The Koo-Wang talks were the first direct meetings between leaders of the two non-governmental organizations representing Taipei and Beijing.
When then-ARATS chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) visited Taiwan in 2008, three years after Koo Chen-fu died in 2005, seeing Cecilia Koo was the first item on his itinerary.
Cecilia Koo was born to a prominent family in southeastern China’s Fujian Province in 1920. Her grandfather was Yen Fu (嚴復), the first president of Beijing University, while her father was a professor.
Her mother was a member of the Banciao Lin Family, one of the “five families” that came to dominate Taiwan’s political and economic scenes.
She came to Taiwan in 1946 with her family and taught at Taipei Municipal Chien Kuo Senior High School.
In 1949, she married Koo Chen-fu and became a familiar public figure as she accompanied him on numerous business and official engagements.
After her husband passed, she became well-known for her philanthropic work and efforts in education.
She was named secretary general of the NWL in 1992 and replaced Soong Mei-ling (宋美齡), also called Madame Chiang Kai-shek, as the organization’s chairwoman upon the latter’s death in 2003.
She also served as a senior adviser to former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
However, she was removed as NWL chairwoman in 2017 when she refused to sign an administrative contract presented by the then-Democratic Progressive Party administration to transition the organization and hand over a part of its assets to the government.
Upon hearing the news of her death, the SEF issued a news statement of mourning, saying that it had ordered its staff to assist with funeral matters.
SEF Chairman Frank Wu (吳豊山) and Secretary-General Luo Wen-jia (羅文嘉) would pay their respects in person tomorrow, the statement said.
The Mainland Affairs Council also released a statement commending Cecilia Koo’s contributions to cross-strait relations.
“Mrs Cecilia Koo played a long-term role in assisting former SEF chairman Koo [Chen-fu] in promoting cross-strait exchanges and dialogue, exerting significant influence,” the council said.
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