Hsu Hsin-liang, Just Who Supports This Guy??

Wednesday April 17, by Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

A man who has always wanted to lead the parade but has never been chosen to do so--except for way back when he was Chairman of the DPP, is Hsu Hsin-liang. He is one of those political animals who has run in many elections since the 1990s but has never drawn more than 5 per cent of the vote--and that is if he is lucky. Yet, like the Ever-Ready Bunny, he is always there with ideas and always ready to give a press conference. I have seen him glad-handing at DPP protest marches etc. but the question is how does such a man support himself or who supports him both financially and politically?

He has been in the news lately, first calling for a grand coalition of government etc. to get the economy moving. He has always been a strong supporter of economic involvement with China etc. Then he put up a website in china as to how he feels Taiwan and China should talk on economic issues, but it seems that the China censors did not quite cotton to his ideas and it was down in two hours--that is pretty record time.

So what does this guy do? He supposedly is chairman of the website my-formosa.com--not sure what that would pay? And his office doubles as the Taipei liaison office of China's Xiamen University--again not sure why Xiamen University needs a liaison or what that liaison does but Hsu is there.

One has to think that there are some businessmen who feel he can be the spokesperson of their ideas--they don't seem to get anywhere, but they must be willing to shell out to him for that representation. And there must be businessmen that hope that someday he will get "hot" and therefore will bring them in on the deal, but other than that Hsu remains an enigma.

He had had to go into exile way back in the late 1970s to avoid being arrested; he raised funds in the States for a while when he was blacklisted and a number of his donors rue the day that they gave him money; he supported the KMT when Lien Chan was running and felt that Chen Shui-bian's shooting robbed them of victory, but what keeps the Ever-Ready Bunny ticking?? How does he see things beyond economic dealings with China?? Those all remain an enigma.