Hsu Chen-wei
Hsu Chen-wei is a Taiwanese politician who currently serves as magistrate of Hualien County since 25 December 2018. She was re-elected in 2022, with 64.7% of the vote, defeating Kolas Yotaka.
Political career
On 20 December 2009, Hsu was appointed as the deputy county magistrate by her former husband Fu Kun-chi. They had just divorced 2 days earlier on 18 December. Two days later, Hsu's appointment was withdrawn by the Ministry of the Interior on 22 December 2009 as the ministry deemed the divorce as a political fake marriage and the appointment was a conflict of interest with appointing a close relation to a government office. In March 2010, Fu was fined NT$1 million by the Control Yuan for conflict of interest.In 2011, Hualien District Court found both of them guilty of having a false divorce to circumvent Public Officials Conflict of Interest Prevention Act which bans the appointment of family members to political posts. Fu and Hsu were both sentenced to six and four months of jail respectively. Both opted to pay fines to avoid jail as the law allowed conversion of jail time to fines in certain circumstances.
Although Hsu's appointment as was withdrawn, she served in other positions during Fu's tenure as magistrate. Hsu was appointed the chairperson of Hualien China Youth Corps during Fu's first term as magistrate. She was then later appointed the captain of Hualien's Community Patrol and subsequently the head of National Women's League.
On 29 November 2014, Hsu participated in the Hualien County magistrate election as an independent candidate. Accordingly to the Taipei Times, her participation was deemed as a backup in the event her former husband Fu, who was also running as an independent candidate, was indicted for stock manipulation before the election. Hsu lost the election, placing fourth, to former husband Fu.
In 2016, she was elected as the member of the Legislative Yuan for the Kuomintang party-list in the proportional representation constituency until her inauguration as Hualien magistrate in 2018.
In 2018, Hsu was chosen by Kuomintang to run for the 2018 Taiwanese local elections. She won the elections with 71.52% of the votes.