Who: Vice President, Republic of China (Taiwan)

Degrees: L.L.M. ’78

Born: Taoyuan County, Taiwan

Current residence: Taipei, Taiwan

Spotlight: Few Harvard alumnae have spent time behind bars, and fewer have taken bullets—that is, non-metaphorical ones. Of course, not many Harvard alumnae are vice president of a Pacific nation with a major economy and unflinching tension with the world’s next hegemon. Lu Hsiu-lien was first elected second in command of Taiwan’s executive branch in 2000 after a long career as a legislator and activist in the country’s Democratic Progressive Party. In March 2004, she survived a bullet wound in an apparent assassination attempt aimed at President Chen Shui-bian, the day before Taiwan’s presidential election. After subsequent sympathy carried her into a second term as VP, Lu is aiming at the country’s presidency in 2008. She has begun to gear up for a tough fight with the KMT opposition party; now, however, it looks as if she may find herself in office sooner than expected.

Enemies: Ma Ying-jeou, DJS ’81, Mayor of Taipei and Lu’s likely Chinese Nationalist opponent in the upcoming election. The two HLS alums share a rapport concomitantly acrimonious with that of their respective parties, which are divided over eventual reunification with the mainland.

Frenemies: Her boss, President Chen. In the past, local papers have intimated an icy professional relationship between the two, gleaned primarily from her rhetoric towards Mainland China—the bread and butter of Taiwanese politics—which has been notably less conciliatory than his. (Rumors that Lu blew the whistle on Chen’s philandering didn’t help.)

Prison time: More than five years on a sedition charge following the monumental pro-democracy demonstrations of 1979 in Taiwan. Lu, who spoke at the demonstrations, was sentenced to 12 years, but let out early for treatment of thyroid cancer.

Doubts: Some vestigial grumbling persists about the veracity of several of Lu’s achievements. Her critics claim, for instance, that she has dramatically overstated the import of the “World Peace Prize,” which an obscure American evangelical organization awarded her in 2001 (she still mentions it on her official website.) Some have even challenged, with varying degrees of openness, the official account of the 2004 shooting, which they regard as suspiciously timed and investigated. Last August a legislative committee concluded that a lone shooter, killed immediately after the attack, was responsible.

For God, Country, and Harvard: According to the Taipei Times, Lu admitted in a Harvard-sponsored debate with Ma that she “had never been happy” in her job as VP, but that she had served her country loyally, “as was the duty of a Harvard alumni. [sic]”