Wu Shu-chen (; born 11 July 1953 in Tainan County, Taiwan) is a Taiwanese politician. She served one term in the Legislative Yuan from 1987 to 1990. As the wife of President Chen Shui-bian, Wu was the First Lady of the Republic of China from 2000 to 2008. She is the only First Lady of Taiwan to have been charged and convicted of a crime; she was sentenced to a one-year prison term for perjury regarding political corruption during her husband's tenure as president. Her sentence has however been increased to years, same as her husband.
Marriage
Wu studied at Matou Middle School (), Zhongshan Girls High School () and later attended College of Law and Business, National Chung Hsing University. During this time, she became better acquainted with her middle school classmate Chen Shui-bian, whom she would later marry.
On 20 February 1975, she married Chen in Taipei. Weng Yueh-sheng (), Chen's academic advisor at the time, served as the marriage witness.
Paralysis
On 18 November 1985, while with her husband on a trip to thank supporters after he lost the Tainan County mayoral election, the driver of a scratch-built farm vehicle ran over her three times. The driver, Chang Jung-tsai (張榮財), was a labourer. At the time of the incident, Chang was beaten by one of Chen's campaign staff. Due to the seriousness of the accident, Chang was also imprisoned for a month. Chen later dropped the charge against him and accepted Chang's apology. This incident left Wu paralysed and using a wheelchair.
Since Wu's ordeal, Chen and his supporters have often directly or indirectly referred to Chang as a hitman possibly hired by the Kuomintang (KMT) to commit a political assassination, as occurred during the martial law era against the KMT's opponents. Even today, there is some controversy as to who was responsible for the episode, if it was an accident or an intentional attack.
Member of the legislature
In 1986, Chen Shui-bian was imprisoned for publishing an article, in which he criticized Elmer Fung, who charged him with libel. Wu represented her husband in the election into the Legislative Yuan. She was elected as the seventh of eight available seats. When Chen left prison, he became a special assistant to her.
On June 5, 1987, Wu became the first parliament member in Taiwan advocating the human right issues for the Vietnamese refugee victims on the Lieyu Massacre case with the formal questioning to the Ministry of National Defense (Republic of China) in the Legislative Yuan .
Upon leaving the Legislative Yuan, she decided to not run for public office again, and instead, focus on the role of being a politician's wife.
Money laundering
On 14 August 2008, Chen Shui-bian called an evening press conference to admit to misstating campaign expenses in previous elections (two bids each for mayor and president), and had campaign monies wired to overseas accounts. Chen alleges that the wiring of the money was done by his wife and unknown to him.
There is also an investigation launched by Swiss authorities over a Swiss bank account bearing Chen's daughter-in-law's name: roughly US$31 million was wired to the account from Taiwan and was then forwarded again to an account in the Cayman Islands. Swiss and Taiwan authorities are cooperating in investigating whether or not there are instances of money laundering committed by members of the former first family. It is unknown whether or not the wiring of the Swiss accounts and the wiring of campaign money overseas by Mrs. Chen are related.
Chen announced the following day, on 15 August, that both he and his wife will leave the Democratic Progressive Party for good.