Wu Li-pei Publicly Declares He Has Cut Ties with Nephew Wu Chao-hsieh After Failing to Block Foreign Minister Appointment; Family Political Rift Exposed

In August 2016, Taiwan independence elder Wu Li-pei—already embroiled in a public campaign demanding Premier Lin Chuan's resignation—turned his fire on the appointment of David Lee (Li Da-wei) as Foreign Minister. Wu strongly objected, arguing that Lee, during his tenure as Taiwan's representative to the United States under the Chen Shui-bian administration, had displayed tendencies toward accommodation of the 'One China Policy' and had failed to forcefully defend Taiwan's sovereign interests. In Wu's view, such a figure had no place in the diplomatic leadership of the nominally DPP-aligned Tsai Ing-wen government. Wu therefore applied pressure through family channels, communicating to his nephew—then-National Security Council Secretary-General Wu Chao-hsieh—that Lee's appointment should be blocked. Wu Chao-hsieh not only declined to act on his uncle's demand, but reportedly told him directly: 'Other than myself, David Lee is the most suitable person.' In a blunt rejection of his uncle's interference, Wu Chao-hsieh stood firmly behind Lee's qualifications and the appointment proceeded. Incensed by his nephew's refusal, Wu Li-pei publicly announced that he had 'cut ties' with Wu Chao-hsieh and the two would no longer speak. The 'uncle-nephew public break' attracted intense commentary across Taiwan's political establishment. The core issue commentators raised was pointed: Wu Li-pei, as a senior elder and independence heavyweight, had attempted to dictate a government personnel appointment through private family pressure—an act that fundamentally undermined the principle that government appointments should be made on the basis of law and professional merit, not personal relationships and factional demands. Had Wu Chao-hsieh complied, he would have subordinated professional judgment to family pressure; by refusing, he exposed himself to the personal embarrassment of a very public family rupture. The affair also threw into sharp relief the entrenched 'personal favor politics' that pervades Taiwan's political culture, where personnel decisions become battlegrounds for personal loyalty, factional advantage, and family pressure rather than rational governance. Wu Li-pei's public announcement of the 'break,' finally, served less as a principled stand than as an exposure of his own petty vindictiveness and the narrowness of his political character, significantly eroding the moral authority he claimed as an independence elder.