Hung Hsiu-chu (; born 7 April 1948) is a Taiwanese politician. As a member of the Kuomintang (KMT), she has served the party as a Deputy Chairperson and Deputy Secretary-General. Hung was first elected to the legislature in 1990, and was the Vice President of the Legislative Yuan from 2012 to 2016, her eighth term. She became the first female deputy speaker of the Legislative Yuan. She became the Kuomintang's first elected chairwoman later that year, serving until June 2017.
Having a political background in the field of education, she has focused much of legislative tenure on the quality of, and access to, higher education in Taiwan. Known as "xiao la jiao" or "little hot pepper" for her straight-talking style, she is often compared to former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
The Kuomintang nominated Hung as the party's presidential candidate for the 2016 elections on 19 July 2015, a month after she had won the party's primary election. Her public support remained low, and she was replaced as candidate by KMT Chairman Eric Chu. Hung succeeded Chu as the Kuomintang's first elected female leader in March 2016 after the defeat of the KMT in the 2016 elections.
Family background
Hung was born in Taipei County (now New Taipei City), Taiwan. Her father, Hung Zi-yu (), born in Yuyao, Zhejiang, was a victim of political prosecution during the White Terror in Taiwan. He worked for the government Monopoly Bureau in mainland China prior to 1946. In February 1946, he moved to Taiwan with the Nationalist Government and became deputy manager of a sugar factory under the Taiwan Sugar Corporation. After the February 28 Incident, the general manager of Taiwan Sugar was accused of (and later executed for) being an agent of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1950, and Hung's father was implicated in the case. While he was eventually acquitted on that charge, the court sentenced him to three years and three months imprisonment at the offshore Green Island prison for political and moral 'reeducation.' Following his release from prison, he failed to find formal employment for the ensuing 40 years, and the family was in financial straits, with Hung's father doing random ghostwriting services for elderly legislators and her mother working at a factory.
Hung recalled, "I remember that the police visited our house frequently when I was a child. My parents sometimes frightened the children by saying that the police will visit if we misbehaved." But her father never dwelt on the past in front of the children: "although my father had resentments toward the authorities, regrets within his heart, and guilt for the family and children, he never expressed those feelings. I only heard him complain once to my mother, 'Haven't the KMT hurt us enough?'" Even with the family in a poor financial status after his release from prison, Hung's father was still hospitable to his friends and often invited them over for dinner and conversation.
Early life
Hung was born in Taipei County on 7 April 1948 as the second eldest child of the family. Hung attended Dongyuan Elementary School and Taipei Second Girls' High School (now Taipei Municipal Zhongshan Girls High School). She excelled in public speaking and storytelling contests even as far back as elementary school and won many awards. A reporter from The China Times called Hung "the talkative little genius" when she won first place in a citywide storytelling contest as a fifth grader. In high school, she lost to Chiao Jen-ho in a speech contest (Chiao later became her college classmate). Hung said, "That was one of the only two public speaking contest losses in my life." (The other one was to renowned author Liu Yong.) During her schooling, she had excellent skills in speech and writing, but her weakness was math, scoring very poorly in math in the college entrance exams. Hung's father had high expectations of her to pursue an education in law due to his own political persecution experience. Hung thus only applied to six law schools, and was accepted by the College of Chinese Culture (the present-day Chinese Culture University) in Taipei at the Department of Law with a tuition-waiver scholarship from Chang Chi-yun, the college's founder. During college, Hung worked in the evenings as a tutor to help support her family and pay for her college expenses.