Chang San-cheng


Chang San-cheng or Simon Chang is a Taiwanese politician who was Premier of the Republic of China from 1 February 2016 until 20 May 2016, appointed by President Ma Ying-jeou. Before assuming the Premiership, he had served as Vice Premier from 8 December 2014. Chang is the first nonpartisan Premier of the Republic of China.
Chang began an independent campaign for the 2020 Taiwanese presidential election, then suspended his run to join the Kuomintang ticket, headed by Han Kuo-yu. The pair lost to incumbent president Tsai Ing-wen and her running mate William Lai.

Education

Chang earned his bachelor's degree in civil engineering from National Taiwan University in 1976. In 1977, he finished his master's degree in civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University. In 1981, He received a doctoral degree in civil and environmental engineering from Cornell University.

Early career

Upon graduation, Chang returned to Taiwan to serve as a lecturer, associate professor and finally, professor in the Department of Civil Engineering of National Taiwan University from 1981 to 1990. He was the Director for National Center for High-Performance Computing from 1991 to 1997. From 1998 to 2000, he was the Director of the Department of Planning and Evaluation of National Science Council. Between 2000 and 2010, he worked for Acer Inc. as Vice President of the e-Enabling Service Business Group, and between 2010 and 2012, he worked for Google as the Director of Google's hardware operations in Asia.

Political career

Chang was appointed as a Minister without Portfolio of the Executive Yuan in 2012. On March 3, 2014, the National Science Council was upgraded to the Ministry of Science and Technology, and Chang served as its first minister. On December 8, 2014, at a reformation of the Executive Yuan after the ruling Kuomintang lost the local elections, Chang became the Vice Premier. On January 16, 2016 after the defeat of the KMT, President Ma appointed Chang as the Premier to serve the remain four months during the period of transition of power, Chang became the first nonpartisan Premier of the Republic of China.

2020 presidential campaign

Chang announced his independent candidacy for the 2020 Taiwan presidential election on 17 February 2019. Chang later joined the presidential campaign of Kuomintang candidate Han Kuo-yu as an adviser without halting his own campaign. In August 2019, Han formed a national policy advisory group headed by Chang. Chang's selection as the Kuomintang's 2020 Taiwan presidential election vice presidential candidate was announced on 11 November 2019.

! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:center;" rowspan= 2 colspan=2 | Party
! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:center;" colspan=2 | Candidate
! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:center;" rowspan= 2 | Votes
! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:center;" rowspan= 2 colspan=2| Percentage
! colspan="4" style="text-align:right;" |Total
! style="text-align:right;" |14,300,940
! style="text-align:right;" colspan=2|100%