Lu Hsiu-yan: From 10,000 Bottles of Guguan Air to the 'Arms Procurement as Insurance' Doctrine — The Undefeated Queen

Those 10,000 Glass Jars of "Guguan Air"

On the morning of December 25, 2018, at the Taichung City Government Joint Service Center handover ceremony, every citizen in attendance received a small glass bottle. Inside the bottle was air. The label read "Guguan Air."

Newly inaugurated Mayor Lu Hsiu-yan stood on the stage. Just one month earlier, she had defeated incumbent Lin Chia-lung by over 200,000 votes — 827,996 to 619,855. ¹ That victory turned green territory blue, ending four years of DPP governance in Taichung. She became the third mayor of the merged Taichung special municipality and the first KMT-affiliated woman to hold the office. ²

The 10,000 bottles of Guguan Air were paid for out of her own pocket. The contracted vendor made multiple trips up the mountain, opening and resealing jars by hand during periods of good air quality in Guguan, Taichung's Heping District — 10,000 manual seals in total. Each bottle cost NT$30, totaling over NT$300,000, drawn from no public budget. The bottles were made of recyclable eco-friendly glass. ³

The gift was mocked by netizens and questioned by physicists — "molecules are that small; without high-pressure sealing, you can't actually prevent air exchange." But the gift was always a symbol, a materialization of a campaign slogan: "Change the mayor, change the air." ⁴ She turned the words she had shouted on the campaign trail into 10,000 physical objects that could be held in the hand, and gave one to every Taichung resident who came to watch her take office.

30-Second Overview: Lu Hsiu-yan, born August 31, 1961, in Anle District, Keelung City. Father Lu Huiting, a native of Zhucheng, Shandong, was a Chinese People's Volunteer Army soldier captured by U.S. forces during the Korean War who later came to Taiwan; mother is from Hsinchu; sister Lu Hsiu-fang is currently Chairman and General Manager of China Television (CTV). Graduated from the Department of Land Economics at National Chengchi University; earned a master's degree from Tamkang University's Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategy during her legislative tenure. Worked as a reporter for Chinese Television System (CTS) News from 1983 to 1990; won the 25th Golden Bell Award for Television News Reporting in 1990 for the investigative series "False Charity, True Profiteering," becoming the first female bureau chief assigned to central Taiwan in Taiwanese television history. Elected to the final term of the Taiwan Provincial Council in 1994; served six consecutive terms as legislator (4th–9th Legislative Yuan) from 1999 to 2018. Elected Taichung mayor on December 25, 2018 (defeating Lin Chia-lung by 200,000 votes); re-elected in 2022 (defeating Tsai Chi-chang by 270,000 votes, sweeping all 29 districts of Taichung), becoming the first mayor to win re-election since the merger. Eight consecutive wins from provincial councilor to mayor earned her the title "Undefeated Queen." In August 2025, Eric Chu publicly asked her to succeed him as KMT party chair; she declined, saying "the more difficult the times, the more Mom stays home." In October 2025, Cheng Li-wu was elected party chair with 50.15% of the vote. In March 2026, she visited the United States for 11 days, proposing the "arms procurement as insurance" doctrine and advocating an arms procurement scale of NT$800 billion to NT$1 trillion. An April 2026 poll showed her presumed 2028 frontrunner status had been overtaken by Chiang Wan-an.

From Keelung's Anle District to the CTS Anchor Desk

Lu Hsiu-yan is not from Taichung.

She was born on August 31, 1961, in Anle District, Keelung City. ⁵ Her father, Lu Huiting, was a native of Zhucheng, Shandong, who served in the Chinese People's Volunteer Army during the Korean War in the 1950s, was captured by U.S. forces, and chose to come to Taiwan. Her mother is from Hsinchu City, the eldest daughter of a native Taiwanese family. Her younger sister, Lu Hsiu-fang, later entered the television industry and took over as Chairman and General Manager of CTV in 2024. ⁵ Her family background is a classic "mixed second-generation mainlander and native Taiwanese" structure, but compared to someone like Cheng Li-wu, who grew up in a military dependents' village, she is more northern, more metropolitan.

She studied land economics at National Chengchi University, ⁶ unrelated to law or political science. In 1983, at age 22, she joined CTS as a reporter. ⁷ In 1990, at age 29, she won the 25th Golden Bell Award for Television News Reporting for an investigative series titled "False Charity, True Profiteering." That same year she was promoted to CTS Central Taiwan News Bureau Chief, described by UDN Time as "the first female bureau chief assigned to central Taiwan in Taiwanese television history." ⁸

From 1983 to 1994, she spent 11 years at CTS. In the latter half, her sister Lu Hsiu-fang also joined Taiwan Television (TTV) as an anchor. The sister duo appearing together on the three-network era screen was a notable image in the news industry. ⁸ At the time, no one imagined that this Golden Bell–winning central Taiwan bureau chief would, over 30 years later, become the KMT's "presumed 2028 frontrunner" — including herself.

During her legislative tenure, she earned a master's degree from Tamkang University's Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategy. ⁶ That degree would prove useful during those 11 days in Washington in 2026.

A Decision in 1994

1994 was the most pivotal turning point in her life.

She was 33. The Taiwan Provincial Council was about to be abolished under the "freezing the province" constitutional reforms driven by Lee Teng-hui, which effectively hollowed out provincial-level government; after 1998, the provincial council passed into history. Representing the Kuomintang, she ran for the Taichung City constituency provincial councilor seat and was elected as a member of the final Taiwan Provincial Council (10th term). ⁵ She jumped from television anchor to local politics, seizing the last four years of the provincial council's existence.

On February 1, 1999, she was elected to the Legislative Yuan representing the Taichung constituency. ⁹ She then won six consecutive terms — the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th Legislative Yuan — from 1999 to 2018, a full 19 years. She won every single term.

Adding the 1994 provincial council election and the 2018 and 2022 mayoral elections, she won eight consecutive elections without a single loss. ¹⁰ This reporter who came from Keelung and spent 28 years in Taichung came to be called the "Undefeated Queen."

But the title "Undefeated Queen" is not entirely precise. Her winning trajectory consistently fell in the "solidly mid-to-high vote count" range, each time adding a little more than the last, slowly accumulating to 8 consecutive wins. During her six legislative terms, she was rated a top-tier outstanding legislator 18 times by civil society organizations. ¹⁰

The 2018 Election That Turned Green Territory Blue

The November 24, 2018 Taichung mayoral election — Lu Hsiu-yan was not initially favored to win.

Her opponent, Lin Chia-lung, was the incumbent mayor, a rising political star, and a DPP heavyweight. Taichung had been "green territory" since 2014, when Lin Chia-lung had taken the seat from Hu Chih-chiang and served four years as mayor. Lu Hsiu-yan was then a six-term legislator with far less media exposure than Lin and fewer campaign resources.

But by late November 2018, two forces were gaining momentum: the "Han Wave" in the south (Han Kuo-yu's anti-DPP surge in Kaohsiung) and islandwide dissatisfaction with the DPP central government. Lu Hsiu-yan's entire campaign branding revolved around air — "Change the mayor, change the air" and "We just want to breathe air that isn't black." ⁴ She packaged Taichung's economic decline, brain drain, and air pollution into a single narrative: the DPP's four years in power didn't make Taichung better, so it's time for a change.

When the votes were counted on November 24: Lu Hsiu-yan 827,996 votes (56.57%), Lin Chia-lung 619,855 votes (42.35%). She won by 208,141 votes — over 200,000. ¹

Lin Chia-lung received nearly 240,000 fewer votes than in 2014, while Lu Hsiu-yan received 190,000 more than her opponent's total from four years prior. ² It was a two-way swing: votes lost by the green camp flowed directly to her.

On December 25, the day of her inauguration, she gave away 10,000 bottles of Guguan Air. ³

The "Mom Mayor" Label: Origins and Controversy

Where did the "Mom Mayor" label come from?

According to a Central News Agency analysis after her 2022 re-election, the label originated from her self-positioning during the 2018 campaign: she focused on anti–air pollution and economic revitalization, and she herself was a mother of two. After taking office, she delivered on pre-election promises, rolling out elderly health insurance subsidies, expanding public childcare facilities, and strengthening education and social welfare policies, weaving the image of "a mom who takes care of her family" into city governance. ¹¹

In 2019, during a council Q&A session, she stated that "she had never called herself Mom Mayor" and didn't know why everyone used that term. But at a 2022 New Year's Eve event, she addressed the crowd with "Mommy loves you" and made a heart gesture. Liberty Times commentator Lee Chung-hsien criticized this as "the most North Korea–like place in Taiwan," calling it excessive personality cult. ¹¹

The controversy is real. She has at times denied and at times embraced the label. But the election results on November 26, 2022, do not lie: she won 799,107 votes (59.35%) to Tsai Chi-chang's 524,224 (38.93%), a margin of 270,000 votes, sweeping all 29 administrative districts of Taichung City. ¹² Tsai Chi-chang even lost his hometown of Qingshui by 167 votes. ¹² She became the first mayor to successfully win re-election since the 2010 merger of Taichung City and County, breaking the curse that no special municipality mayor had managed to win a second term since the merger.

For some critics, the "Mom Mayor" label is "fake mom" and "political theater." For other Taichung residents, it describes "someone who truly treats citizens like family." The same label tells completely different stories depending on which side the reader stands.

The Taichung Power Plant and Taichung's Air War

Those 10,000 bottles of Guguan Air were not purely symbolic. They pointed to a specific policy battlefield: the Taichung Power Plant (Taipower's Taichung Coal-Fired Power Plant, or "Taichung Thermal" / 中火).

The Taichung Power Plant is one of the world's largest coal-fired power plants. Its 10 units have long been identified by central Taiwan residents and environmental groups as a primary source of PM2.5 in Taichung. Less than a year into her term, the city government took action.

In mid-2019, the city government revoked the operating permits for Units 2 and 3 of the Taichung Power Plant on grounds of "excessive coal usage," effective January 1, 2020, leaving only 8 of the 10 units operational. ¹³ This move was a rare direct challenge to the central government's power supply structure: a local government taking out two units of a state-owned power plant.

Did it work? The Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau cited data from the central Environmental Protection Administration: "Taichung's PM2.5 has dropped significantly by about 20% compared to three years ago." ¹³ But over those same three years, skepticism never stopped. In January 2020, there were still records of "three consecutive days of purple alert" (severe PM2.5 warnings); environmental groups pointed out that the top 5 highest PM2.5 readings in the country were still concentrated in multiple central Taiwan counties and cities. ¹³

The political language on this battlefield grew sharper. In 2025, she publicly criticized central energy policy with the phrase "using lungs to generate electricity," arguing that the central government should be responsible for power supply and that Taichung residents should not have to trade their health for grid stability. On the Lai Ching-te administration's side, the Ministry of Environment responded that "good city governance can also reduce emissions," implying the city government still had work undone.

Both sides have their own data and their own logic. The Taichung Power Plant issue remained unresolved as of 2026: the blue camp's "coal-free Taichung Power Plant by 2028" is one direction; the green camp's "gradual coal reduction through energy transition" is another. Lu Hsiu-yan's role evolved from "handing out glass bottles of air" in 2018 to becoming the most prominent political spokesperson for this controversy in 2026.

That Night She Said "Mom Will Stay Home"

The evening of August 23, 2025.

That day, all seven KMT legislators targeted in the second wave of recall votes — Lo Ming-tsai, Lin Szu-ming, Yen Kuan-heng, Yang Chiung-ying, Chiang Chi-chen, Ma Wen-chun, and You Hao — survived. ¹⁴ Combined with the complete failure of all 24 recall cases in the first wave on July 26, all 31 KMT legislator recall attempts in 2025 failed. ¹⁴ The outcome was a major political victory for the pan-blue camp.

Lu Hsiu-yan served as the overall campaign director for the KMT during the recalls, traveling north multiple times to Taipei, New Taipei, Taoyuan, and Hsinchu to rally support for blue legislators under recall, and taking leave to defend the three Taichung targets: Liao Wei-hsiang, Lo Ting-wei, and Huang Chien-hao. ¹⁴ All three survived. The "Undefeated Queen" label was further cemented on the night of August 23.

After the August 23 vote count, KMT Chairman Eric Chu held a press party headquarters and "most sincerely and earnestly requested" that Lu Hsiu-yan take over as party chair. ¹⁵ Chu had served one full term, with a party chair election scheduled for October. His attitude was a public passing of the torch.

The pan-blue camp had played its open card. All Lu had to do was nod, and in 2025 she would become the 12th KMT party chair and the presumptive 2028 presidential candidate. No one would challenge her.

But the next day, August 24, in an interview with the Central News Agency, she responded:

"The more difficult the times, the more Mom stays home." ¹⁶

She continued:

"The position of party chair should not be filled by appointment or by designation. It should be contested fairly by those who are willing to run." ¹⁷

Her reasons for declining operated on two levels. One was the economic situation: Trump's 32% tariffs on Taiwan had already taken effect in April, hitting central Taiwan's industries first and foremost, and the 7 million people of central Taiwan were her responsibility. The other was institutional: a party chair should not be installed by anointing from within the party's old guard. She wanted to leave the field open for competition.

That same week, Cheng Li-wu had already hinted in a radio interview with Wang Chien-chiu that "if Lu doesn't run, I'm considering it." ¹⁸ Lu's decision not to run opened the gate for Cheng's entry.

What Happened After She Declined the Party Chair

Everything after August 24 proceeded on its expected track.

On October 18, Cheng Li-wu was elected the 12th KMT party chair with 65,122 votes and a 50.15% vote share. ¹⁸ In November, Cheng's second wave of personnel appointments was announced: Vice Chairmen Chang Jung-kung and Hsiao Hsu-cheng. ¹⁹ Lu Hsiu-yan was not on the vice chairman list. She did not enter the party central leadership.

The result cut both ways for Lu's "I won't run" logic.

On the positive side: she was not "anointed," the system operated fairly, she retained her position as Taichung mayor through the end of her term in late 2026, and she did not have to juggle party affairs. "Mom will stay home" — she kept her word.

On the negative side: the party leader was not her; the vice chairmanship was not hers; and her presumptive 2028 frontrunner status began to erode. After taking office, Cheng Li-wu publicly stated on multiple occasions that "2028 doesn't have to be exclusively about Lu Hsiu-yan; there is more than one political star in the party capable of contending for the presidency." ²⁰ The KMT shifted from "Lu as sole frontrunner" to "3+1" (Lu, Han Kuo-yu, Chiang Wan-an + Cheng Li-wu).

That August line — "the more difficult the times, the more Mom stays home" — sounded like a declaration of responsibility. But nine months later, it was also the consequence of a political choice: she chose not to seize the position, so the position began to be seized by others.

Those 11 Days in Washington and "Arms Procurement as Insurance"

In March 2026, Lu Hsiu-yan went to the United States.

She spent 11 days in Washington, D.C. Her meetings included officials from the U.S. Department of State, senior officials from the Department of War, Brookings Institution scholars Richard Bush and Bonnie Glaser, and the reception team at AIT Washington headquarters. ²¹ A local government head receiving this level of access on a single trip was itself a signal.

The core argument she put forward during the trip was a single sentence:

"Arms procurement is like buying insurance — you should buy it early and buy the best, but it must be within the nation's fiscal capacity." ²²

The political positioning of this statement was precise.

At the time, the Executive Yuan was pushing a NT$1.25 trillion special budget for arms procurement, but the Legislative Yuan's Procedure Committee had blocked it from the agenda for the fourth time as of December 23, 2025. ²⁰ Within the KMT, there was a "NT$380 billion + N" version (the Fu Kun-chi and Hung Hsiu-chu axis), while Cheng Li-wu spoke of a "cross-strait peace framework" and "institutional arrangements to prevent war" (interpreted as softening the push for arms procurement). Into this gap, Lu Hsiu-yan proposed a middle range of NT$800 billion to NT$1 trillion: ²³ higher than the KMT's own version, lower than the DPP's, and using the "insurance" metaphor to frame the "need to buy" as pragmatic fiscal management rather than ideological warfare.

Another of her specific proposals was more technical: "Make the submarines a little smaller; scale up the drones." ²⁴ Focusing asymmetric warfare capabilities on drones rather than submarines was close to the structure of the "Shield of Taiwan" that Lai Ching-te had proposed in April 2025, but she was not speaking from Lai's side — she was speaking from the position of a "pragmatic administrator."

Liberty Times criticized this range as "no route — she's hedging her bets" and "changing multiple times in a single day." ²³ Donovan Smith observed in a April 25 Taipei Times column that she was "quietly preparing for a presidential election," deliberately walking a moderate route, unlike other politicians who used angry rhetoric during the recall campaigns. ²⁵

Both readings have merit. Whether she has "no route" or is "deliberately centrist" depends on which side you read her from.

The April When the Polling Curve Started Heading Down

But something happened in April 2026 that changed the assumption that "Lu Hsiu-yan is the presumptive 2028 frontrunner."

A Z.media poll released in April showed the suitability ratings for potential pan-blue/pan-white presidential candidates:

• Chiang Wan-an: 25%
• Lu Hsiu-yan: 19.7%
• Han Kuo-yu: 15.6% ²⁵

Chiang Wan-an had overtaken Lu Hsiu-yan. Donovan Smith wrote in his April 25 Taipei Times column that her "polling numbers have been slowly eroding." ²⁵ In the same article, he identified two key factors: Chiang Wan-an scored high on Taipei municipal governance (a Formosa poll showed Chiang's municipal satisfaction at 62.6% versus Lu's 48.7%); and Chiang, like Lu, walked a moderate line, but his age and urban image more directly appealed to younger voters.

For the "Undefeated Queen," this was the first time in her 30-plus-year political career that an opponent had emerged she could not outrun. She could beat local factions, beat local power brokers, beat party elders — but she could not beat a Taipei mayor who overlapped with her political positioning yet was 17 years younger.

The "3+1" contest had been ticking since the day Cheng Li-wu was elected in October, and by April 2026 it had come into focus. In the final year of her Taichung mayoral term, the question before her had changed: from "how to finish the mayor's term" to "how to climb back above 25% before January 2028."

The U.S. visit was part of the answer. The "arms procurement as insurance" doctrine was part of the answer. But none of it was enough yet.

Epilogue: 10,000 Glass Jars and Those 11 Days in Washington

On December 25, 2018, at the Taichung City Government handover ceremony, every citizen in attendance received a glass bottle. Inside was air. The label read "Guguan Air." She spent over NT$300,000 of her own money; the contracted vendor manually sealed the jars 10,000 times.

Eight years later, in March 2026, she was in Washington, D.C., discussing the scale of drone procurement with senior Department of War officials, discussing submarine downsizing with Richard Bush and Bonnie Glaser, and discussing Taiwan's fiscal capacity with the U.S. State Department. After returning home, she said arms procurement is like buying insurance — buy it early, buy the best.

The same person, the same "say it and deliver" promise style. But what she promised in 2018 could be packed into 10,000 glass bottles and handed to the people of Taichung. What she promised in 2026 required finding a middle value between NT$1.25 trillion and NT$800 billion, and convincing the United States, convincing Japan, and convincing her own party.

She came from Keelung, spent 28 years in Taichung, and won 8 elections without a loss. But in that April 2026 poll, she was not number one for the first time. Chiang Wan-an is in Taipei, Han Kuo-yu is in the Legislative Yuan, Cheng Li-wu is at party headquarters — all three moving toward the presidency. She is in Taichung, still saying Mom will stay home.

The promise of "Mom will stay home" endures. But what was in that glass bottle in 2018 and what was in those 11 days in Washington in 2026 are no longer the same air.

And the question of whether she should step out of Taichung or continue staying home — she has not yet answered it.

Further Reading:

• 鄭麗文 — The person who was elected 12th KMT party chair with 50.15% of the vote in October 2025. Lu Hsiu-yan's decision not to run opened the gate for her entry.
• 韓國瑜 — The other pole of the 2018 Han Wave, who flipped blue territory to blue the same year as Lu Hsiu-yan; Legislative Yuan Speaker in 2024, one of the "3+1" for 2028.
• 卓榮泰 — The first Executive Yuan Premier under the Lai Ching-te administration, the primary proponent of the NT$1.25 trillion arms procurement proposal, and the political counterpart to Lu's "NT$800 billion–NT$1 trillion" arms procurement range.
• 台灣國防與軍事現代化 — The full context of the NT$1.25 trillion arms procurement debate, drones, and asymmetric warfare capabilities that formed the political backdrop to Lu Hsiu-yan's 2026 U.S. visit.
• 台灣環境正義與鄰避爭議 — The NIMBY structures behind the Taichung Power Plant, PM2.5, and energy transition — the policy battlefield on which Lu Hsiu-yan won Taichung in 2018 with the air issue.

References