Chen Shui-bian

Chen Shui-bian (born 12 October 1950) is a Taiwanese politician and lawyer who served as the fifth president of the Republic of China from 2000 to 2008. He was the first president from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), marking the end of the Kuomintang's (KMT) 55-year continuous rule in Taiwan. He is sometimes called A-Bian.

Chen was born into an impoverished farming family of Hoklo ethnicity in Guantian District, Tainan County. Because of doubts he would survive, his birth was not officially registered until 18 February 1951, though he was born on the second day of the ninth lunar month in 1950. He studied Mandarin Chinese, which replaced Japanese after the end of Japanese administration. He graduated with honors from National Tainan First Senior High School and entered National Taiwan University in June 1969, switching from business administration to law in his first year. He became editor of the law review, passed the bar exam before finishing his junior year with the highest score, becoming Taiwan's youngest lawyer, and earned an LL.B. in commercial law in 1974.

In 1975, he married Wu Shu-chen, a physician's daughter. They have a daughter, Chen Hsing-yu, a dentist, and a son, Chen Chih-chung, who earned a law degree in Taiwan and a Master of Laws from the University of California, Berkeley in 2005. From 1976 to 1989, Chen was a partner at Formosa International Marine and Commercial Law, specializing in maritime insurance and handling the account for Evergreen Marine Corporation.

Chen entered politics in 1980 by defending participants of the Kaohsiung Incident in a military court. His client Huang Hsin-chieh and seven co-defendants, including future Vice President Annette Lu, were found guilty, but Chen gained notice for his forceful arguments. He has said this period made him aware of political unfairness in Taiwan, leading him to join the Tangwai movement. He won a Taipei City Council seat as a Tangwai candidate in 1981 and served until 1985. In 1984, he founded the pro-opposition Civil Servant Public Policy Research Association, which published the magazine *Neo-Formosa*. On 12 January 1985, he was sentenced to a year in prison for libel after the magazine published an article claiming that the doctoral dissertation of college philosophy professor Elmer Fung was plagiarized. While appealing, he ran for Tainan county magistrate in November 1985. Three days after losing, his wife Wu Shu-chen was hit twice by a hand tractor driven by Chang Jong-tsai as they thanked supporters, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down. Supporters believed it was government intimidation, though another theory holds it was an accident. Chen lost his appeal in May 1986 and served eight months in Tucheng Penitentiary with Huang Tien-fu and Lee I-yang, joined for a time by gay rights activist Chi Chia-wei. While he was imprisoned, his wife campaigned and was elected to the Legislative Yuan. Upon release in 1987, Chen served as her chief counsel. In May 2022, the Transitional Justice Commission overturned the libel charges against Chen, Huang, and Lee.

In 1989, Chen was elected to the Legislative Yuan and became executive director of the DPP caucus. With support from some KMT colleagues, he was also elected convener of the National Defense Committee. He helped shape and moderate many DPP positions on Taiwan independence. He became the first directly elected DPP mayor of Taipei in 1994, leading reforms to improve the civil service, overseeing completion of the Taipei Metro, and launching a crackdown on crime and prostitution. Despite a positive approval rating, he lost the 1998 mayoral election to Ma Ying-jeou. In the 2000 presidential election, he defeated James Soong and incumbent vice president Lien Chan after a split in the ruling KMT, marking Taiwan's first peaceful transfer of power to an opposition party. He was re-elected in the highly contested 2004 election, narrowly defeating a joint ticket of Lien and Soong. Chen was succeeded by Ma Ying-jeou after the KMT's landslide victory in the 2008 election.

Chen was arrested in November 2008 on corruption charges and sentenced to life imprisonment, later commuted to 20 years. He was released on medical parole in 2015.