Annette Lu

She has both Hoklo and Hakka ancestry, with her paternal ancestor arriving in Taiwan from Nanjing County, Zhangzhou, Fujian in 1740.

She has one older brother and three older sisters.

After graduating from Taipei First Girls' High School, Lu studied law at the National Taiwan University.

Annette Lu Hsiu-lien (born 7 June 1944) is a Taiwanese politician.

Graduating in 1967, she went on to gain a Master of Laws from both the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (in comparative law, 1971) and Harvard University (1978).

During the 1970s, Lu established herself as a prominent feminist advocate in Taiwan, which included writing of New Feminism or Xin Nüxing Zhuyi (新女性主義).

She renounced her KMT membership, joined the tangwai movement, and worked in the staff of Formosa Magazine.

Lu then became increasingly active in the movement, calling for democracy and an end to authoritarian rule.

In 1979, Lu delivered a 20-minute speech criticizing the government at an International Human Rights Day rally that later became known as the Kaohsiung Incident.

Following this rally, virtually the entire leadership of Taiwan's democracy movement, including Lu, was imprisoned.

She was tried, found guilty of violent sedition, and sentenced by a military court to 12 years in prison.

She was named by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience, and, due to international pressure, coupled with the work of Ma Ying-jeou and Jerome A. Cohen, was released in 1985, after approximately five and a half years in jail.

A feminist active in the tangwai movement, she joined the Democratic Progressive Party in 1990, and was elected to the Legislative Yuan in 1992.

In the 1990s, Lu worked to have Taiwan reenter the United Nations, not under the name "Republic of China" but as "Taiwan".

Lu joined the Democratic Progressive Party in November 1990, and was elected to the Legislative Yuan in 1992.

Subsequently, she served as Taoyuan County Magistrate between 1997 and 2000, and was the Vice President of the Republic of China from 2000 to 2008, under President Chen Shui-bian.

In 1997, she won an election to be the Magistrate of her hometown of Taoyuan, a post she held until Chen Shui-bian selected her as his running mate in the 2000 presidential elections.

Lu completed her novel entitled These Three Women while in prison.

To evade the surveillance of the detention facility, she wrote part of the novel on toilet paper using a washbasin as a desk.

On 18 March 2000, Lu was elected vice president.

She was awarded the World Peace Corps Mission's World Peace Prize in 2001.

Controversy erupted over this in Taiwan, with Lu's political opponents accusing her of vastly overstating the significance and value of that award.

She was also the ROC's first elected vice president to adopt a Western first name.

In her interview with TIME Asia Magazine, she said the KMT never thought they would transfer their regime to her on behalf of the freedom fighters.

On 19 March 2004, Lu was shot in the right kneecap while campaigning in Tainan.

Chen was shot in the abdomen at the same event.

Both survived the shooting and left Chi-mei Hospital on the same day.

The Pan-Blue Coalition suggested that the shooting was not an assassination attempt but that it was staged to a self-inflicted wound in order to gain sympathy votes.

The Chen/Lu ticket won the election on the following day with a 0.228% margin, a figure significant to those who related it to the assassination incident.

Lu announced her intentions to run for the presidency on 6 March 2007, but withdrew to support eventual DPP nominee Frank Hsieh.

In 2008, the novel was adapted into a screenplay for TV drama of the same name.

The drama was broadcast on 24 November 2008 on the Chinese Television System.

Lu was a contender for the 2008 presidential election; she announced her candidacy on March 6 and faced Yu Shyi-kun, Frank Hsieh, and Su Tseng-chang for the nomination.

After receiving only 6.16% of the votes cast in the DPP primary, Lu withdrew from the race.

Lu ran again in 2012, but withdrew for a second time, ceding the nomination to DPP chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen.

She lost the party's Taipei mayoral nomination to Pasuya Yao in 2018, and stated that she would leave the party.

Lu announced in March 2018 that she would contest the Democratic Progressive Party mayoral primary for Taipei.

Soon after the DPP nominated Pasuya Yao as its candidate, Lu stated her intention to leave the party.

However, by the time Lu announced in September 2019 that she would contest the 2020 presidential election on behalf of the Formosa Alliance, she was still a member of the Democratic Progressive Party.

Lu was born in Tōen Town (now Taoyuan City), in northern Taiwan, during Japanese rule.