Jason Hu

Jason Hu Chih-chiang (traditional Chinese: 胡志強; simplified Chinese: 胡志强; pinyin: Hú Zhìqiáng; Wade–Giles: Hú Chìh-chiáng; born 1948) is a former official in the national government of Republic of China. He is currently serving his term as mayor of the new Taichung Municipality. His current term ends in 2013. He is a member of the Kuomintang (KMT), the leading party in the Pan-Blue alliance. His daughter, Ting-Ting Hu, is a British born actress.

Early life and education

Hu was born in Beijing (then known as Peiping), China, and was brought to Taiwan as a young child when the Chinese Nationalists lost their civil war with the Communists.

After graduating from Taichung Municipal First High School, then known as Chu-jen (居仁, Hanyu Pinyin: Juren) High School, Jason Hu attended National Chengchi University where studied in the Diplomatic Studies Department. Following graduation in 1970, he went to study in the United Kingdom, first to the University of Southampton, where he studied International Relations, then to Balliol College, University of Oxford, where he received his PhD in International Relations in 1984.

When he returned to Taiwan, he became a professor at the Sun Yat-Sen Institute for International Studies at National Sun Yat-sen University. He would remain a professor there until he entered government service in 1990.^[1]

Central Government

Jason Hu began his work in the central government when Taiwan was still a single-party state ruled by the Chinese Nationalist Party. He was the Director General for the Government Information Office from 1991 to 1996. He then represented Taiwan's government in Washington in 1996 and 1997 as the Director of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Washington, before a two-year stint as the Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1997 to 1999.^[2]

Taichung City Mayor

Jason Hu returned to Taichung where he spent most of his childhood to run for mayor in 2001.^[3] He was able to win the three-way race with more than forty-nine percent of the vote. Mayor Hu took office in early 2002.

He has been trying to build up Taichung’s infrastructure since his election. He has seen the construction of a new baseball stadium, new amphitheater, and expansion of main roadways in the city. He has tried to bring a branch of the Guggenheim Museum to Taichung, but to this point, there has been no apparent success in these efforts.

Terror poster controversy

A reason for the failure to bring the Guggenheim to Taichung may have something to do with the Terror Poster that was used as a part of the pan-Blue presidential campaign of Lien Chan and James Soong in the 2004 presidential race.^[4]

Calming tensions

The presidential election itself was very close, and hot tempers broke out all over the country, especially in Taipei and Kaohsiung. There was also potential for serious trouble in Taichung as well as pan-Blue supporters had begun demonstrating overnight. Mayor Hu went out at about 3:30 in the morning and was successful in dispersing the one or two thousand people by 5:30. Mayor Hu remarked, "(b)ecause I knew that if I didn't do anything by 5:30 am, people getting out of bed would find out about it on the radio or television. There'd be 10,000, 20,000 people. By then you wouldn't be able to resolve it."^[5]

Re-election

Jason Hu won re-election with relative ease in the December three-in-one elections with a nearly twenty percent margin of victory over Democratic Progressive Party challenger Lin Chia-lung. His second term began in early 2006 and will end in early 2010.

On December 25, 2010, Taichung was merged with Taichung County and upgraded as a special municipality named "Taichung City". Hu defeated DPP candidate Su Jia-chyuan in December 2010 for the mayoralty of the newly-created municipal city.

Car accident

On 18 November 2006, returning from a campaign rally for KMT Kaohsiung mayoral candidate Huang Chun-ying (黃俊英), the vehicle Hu and his wife Shaw Hsiao-ling (邵曉鈴) were riding in was hit by another vehicle and overturned. Hu suffered minor injuries, while Shaw suffered severe injuries and had to be put into a drug-induced coma to preserve her life. She later came out of the coma and regained some ability to walk and talk, but her abilities to reason and her memory appeared to have been impaired.

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