His characteristic image, aside from a colorful personal style, is of a stocky human dynamo. His is an unassailable, long-term record of daring, resolution, and reform.
Su has always gone about reform in a big way, taking on long dug-in special interests and age-old malpractices in full public view, with obvious disdain for the risks.
Inefficiency, undue privilege, and social injustices have consistently tumbled in his wake, despite a highly "individualistic" approach and—perhaps too frequently—"makeshift devices" which have made inviting targets for the criticism and censure of outraged opponents.
His early-on, media-celebrated refusal to negotiate various basic reforms with pressured Kaohsiung City councilmen is a case in point; it set off violent conflict between the city administration and city council (of which more later). Yet his clearly dauntless determination to carry out his policies, his demonstrated concern for the powerless and his city, and his attractive historical record and image have made him the darling of the public, protecting him from various efforts at retaliation that might already have sunk less able men.
So great is the public attention Su has attracted, that it is no exaggeration at all to identify him as the most outstanding local political figure in the contemporary political history of Taiwan Province; and he is not only well-known here, but abroad.
As a common rule, the quickest way to media attention in provincial politics is to don a "Superman cloak" and take on the ruling Kuomintang (KMT, Nationalist Party); actually, most such political posing turns out to be just "thread-deep"—a demanding public requires something more.
But Su, though fully aware of such provincial political devices, cleverly sidesteps ultra-partisan positions. Still, when the chips are down, he lets them fly.
He once quit the KMT to protest the staffing of a local election campaign, then went on to whip the party's official candidate as an independent. Later, he returned to KMT ranks to make quite clear that his defection had no connection with the so-called "Taiwan independence" advocates. He did not want to be claimed by them and, in characteristic fashion, met the problem in full-charge.
Being fully out-front is Su's way. And he is sure that is the best road for both the public and his political career, because "no-one has to question where I stand."
Su describes himself as an ascetic and, indeed, has recently been engaged in an effort to appreciate the Buddhist philosophical state of "bitterness"—thus accepting all the frustrations in the way of his political efforts as "necessary experiences" (favorable training to temper his mind). Such strenuous mental backup approaches to his political career undoubtedly have much of their origins in a rough-and-tumble youth.
As might be expected, the local electorate is well acquainted with Su's past:
To help support a very poor family, as the eldest son, he was put to work from the age of eight, first as a street-performer, later as part-time street vendor of sponge-gourd, beancurd, soy milk, etc.
His long experience of poverty accustomed him to the no-frills living conditions which he is very well known for maintaining to this day.
As a boy of the streets, he encountered a full share of discrimination, bullying, and humiliation—from neighbors, classmates, even teachers. He learned to adjust himself to adversity without loss of dignity.
His youthful personal experiences no doubt nurtured a maturing disposition to confront evil deeds and persons: He especially notes and concerns himself with the sufferings of others, and that has continued to serve as a basic motivation in his ongoing political career.
His two five-year terms as a Tainan City councilman provided rich, bedrock political experience. He perfected his famous "silver tongue" and built enduring ties with an ever-widening public. Then in 1977, after one failure, he was elected the eighth Mayor of Tainan, the first mayor in the city's history from the wrong side of the tracks. And he won the post without the support of the local political factions, a privileged family background or connections, and the local financial satraps.
Su's ancestors lived in Tainan for four generations, and Su has a deep affection for the ancient community. He talked of a "big Tainan dream," telling his fellow citizens that the island's oldest city should be waked from its centuries of sound sleep and act now to restore its place in the firmament as Taiwan's cultural center—its boast 360 years ago.
A modern cultural center should be "specially civilized, administratively daring, and thoroughly energetic," he boomed.
The pulse of the old city's administrative structure was marvelously quickened almost from the day the "Big-Headed Mayor" took up his new post.
He instituted a "Prompt Service Center," staffed by senior city government officials and volunteer lawyers, architects, teachers, etc., to be immediately responsive to public problems. The handling of general official paperwork was now mandated for completion within limited-period deadlines. And the Mayor, himself, worked visibly from morning till well into the night behind a guardless, glass door in the city hall.
Tainan's citizens now had free, direct access to their top city official. "My office is always as crowded and noisy as a market," confessed Mayor Su. He added that, in this way, the people of Tainan, both city staffers and citizens, were rapidly increasing their degree of participation in community affairs.
Su instituted a new financial policy characterized as "Summoning Wind and Rain, Selling 'Castles in the Air.'" Raising loans from every possible source, Su's city now managed funds in an openly accountable but very flexible manner, and even engaged in its own strategic land speculation. He thus created enormous capital for city redevelopment.
All day long in once quietly-moldering Tainan, the giant machines now crashed everywhere—moving tombs, building roads, digging ditches, erecting public facilities, and exploiting tidal lands. During Su's seven-year tenure, the urban area of Tainan was not only renovated, but enlarged by two and a half times. According to one informal survey, the city infrastructure projects completed during Mayor Su's years exceed the sum-total of those completed during the tenures of all of Tainan's previous mayors.
Strictly implemented clean-environment and street peddler regulations and campaigns transformed once-grubby Tainan into a city as neat and urban-beautiful as Singapore.
The city's Min Tsu Road, once hopelessly congested by its age-old quota of 390 streetside vendors, ceased to be the rag-tag street-market once so familiar to people both in and out of Tainan. More controversially, a wing-room of the ancient Miao Shou Temple, which factions of the Tainanese public had protected from removal six different times—it stood directly in the way of the critical Anping urban drainage system—was finally pulled down in the full presence of the totally responsible, determined Mayor Su. He dared substantial censure for being a destroyer of an ancient artifact to make way for "phoenix-Tainan," just emerging from its own ashes. To an extent, the dust-laden, worthy pride of some Tainanese was only grudgingly relieved.
Major contemporary community activities, such as the "Thousand Artists' Joint Exhibition" and the "International Robot Show," have not only widened the Tainan citizenry's field of vision, but attracted waves of visitors and focused the country's attention on the newly striving city, only recently almost forgotten by the outside world.
Su began to attract wider notice, beyond the country's borders, for his manifold achievements. Pepperdine University and Bedford University in the U.S. awarded him honorary doctorates of law and political science, respectively. He was the recipient of a gold badge and certificate of honorable membership in the International Association of Chiefs of Police, and of a U.S. Air Force Distinguished Service Award. And in 1983, he was the winner of the prestigious international Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service.
So it was undoubtedly with some pleasure that, in May last year, the ROC Executive Yuan (Cabinet) approved the KMT's nomination of Su Nan-cheng for the mayorship of the Special Municipality of Kaohsiung—an appointive position equal to that of the Governor of Taiwan Province. So began a new, higher, yet more difficult stage of Su's political voyage.
Thus it was that May 30th—with the very warm and sentimental send-off by bounteous crowds of his openly affectionate Tainan neighbors (just two days previously) still lingering in his memory—Su was momentarily stunned on encountering a cold protest campaign by vehemently unfriendly Kaohsiung factions. The occasion was the transfer ceremony for the Kaohsiung mayorship. The dour incident was a signal omen of forthcoming problems.
Glancing at the protestors, who waved signs reading "Oppose Mayor-Designate Su Nan-cheng" and the like, he hesitated a moment, then charged into the group smiling...saying hello...shaking hands. Taken by surprise, the demonstraters, just moments before shrill and animated, failed to come up with a "proper" response. And it was all over. Su was already waving back to an enthusiastically applauding crowd, reacting to his spontaneously magnanimous gesture.
Later though, the new Mayor of Kaohsiung solemnly proclaimed: "From now on, no organized public demonstration will be staged without an advance permit in accordance with the law, or the people involved will be charged in accordance with the law." "Democracy is always damaged," he added, when law, itself, is ignored: "Democracy must be built on the basis of the 'rule of law'; where the sanctity of the law is defied, there will be no authentic democracy."
As in Tainan previously, Su immediately established a "Prompt Service Center," open from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. every workday. Its positive public effects have since been well attested both by public mail and face-to-face contact between the new Mayor and his public.
Mayor Su, also, pointedly underlined his democratic style and beliefs in numerous public talks, stressing that he was appointed to serve, not to rule.
He emphasized his dedication to a law-abiding community in an almost immediate, rocking campaign against criminals, corruption, and environmental-health violators.
He carried out a stunning revolution within the city's public works programs by instituting public bidding and quality supervision.
He acted to break city ties with professional interceders for illegality via continuing campaigns to put down criminal violence, burgeoning illegal sex joints, and environmental pollution and health hazards.
Kaohsiung has a tradition of very complicated politics. A special, self-developed "Southern Culture" marks the port city as another influence center, regionally competitive to the influence of Taipei. The rapid industrialization and growth of booming Kaohsiung has also created a "lopsided modernization"—the city's underlying political and cultural development lags far behind its modern-urban physical development, international contact, and monied-power. Indeed, it has gained notoriety as a center of organizational corruption. Strong local political factions tie into the city's underworld, creating formidable loci of illicit power which have been the seedbeds for Kaohsiung's notorious lawlessness.
The influence of Kaohsiung's corrupt interests have long penetrated the local government; they have used the city council itself as a platform to manipulate public opinion. Without doubt, it is manifestly more difficult for Su to carry out reform policies in the port city than it was in once-decaying Tainan.
Su's unyielding perseverance in the face of such powerful vested interests has been verbally characterized, by his opposition within the city council, as an "affront to the councilmen's dignity." And perhaps it is. In any case, they have retaliated with a collective council boycott against the "outsider."
Su's strict regulation of Kaohsiung's massively out-of-hand street peddlers, since it involves a larger public, is also being used by his opponents to claim he has violated the popular will. Last August, the council went so far as to publicly proclaim that Su's tenure was "unwelcome to all Kaohsiung people."
Su has tolerated all the abuse and continued to stand firm.
After he succeeded in street-peddler control, a survey by the major newspaper China Times showed over 50 percent of the Kaohsiung population in total support of the Mayor's position; and most others agreed in principle. Only some 10 percent were adamantly opposed, according to the Times.
From within the Mayor's large, trademark cranium, many initiatives have sprung for the betterment of Kaohsiung:
—Traffic patterns, for example, have been a stifling problem for the city; 638,000 motor vehicles of various descriptions cause horrific congestion during rush hours. According to official statistics, only 15 percent of Kaohsiung residents travel by mass transportation—buses and trains—as opposed to 64 percent for also-congested Taipei. Mayor Su's solution is the obvious one: reduce the number of private vehicles and develop mass transit. But he is acting on it.
The long-term Kaohsiung Rapid Transit System requires an expenditure of NT$125 billion (US$3.125 billion), for which Su is currently sourcing private investments from at home and abroad. Meanwhile, he is acting to improve bus services by extending the routes to every possible corner, and cutting fares. Simultaneously, motorcycles (43 percent of the traffic) are to be prohibited from entering central districts under specific circumstances.
—On another front, with some 1,200 factories now in the Chienchen and Nantzu Export Processing Zones, the seashore industrial park, and other industrial areas, Kaohsiung boasts about 40 percent of the country's heavy industry. The unwanted by-product is serious industrial pollution.
Su is strongly "requesting" that the factories upgrade their pollution-prevention facilities: If a factory, after being fined thrice, still fails to meet stipulated pollution criteria, says Su, he will order the factory closed down, even if the violator is the state-run Chinese Petroleum Corp. "The fines are too small in comparison with indicated expenditures to impel improvement in factory anti-pollution facilities," explains Su, "so we must assure more effective measures."
But no matter how complicated they are, Kaohsiung's physical problems are dwarfed in the presence of its spiritual problems. To help break the traditional hold of the city's "anything goes" power factions on the city's psyche, Su sees community cultural reconstruction as the radical, long-term solution:
"We will not, for example, simply move such operations as Taipei's Arts Festivals to Kaohsiung," expands Su, "since the two cities are so essentially different." Instead, he is raising the clarion call to promote Kaohsiung's "port culture."
What on earth is a "port culture"? "Well," says Su, "it is characterized by the vital, zealous, worldly, and forthright temperament of this port city's prevailing population of fishermen and workmen." To bring it out more clearly, he lays on a heavy, poetic prose:
"Sweat soaked dock workers busy discharging cargoes, the veins on the backs of their bronzed arms pulsating with the cadence of their rhythmic chants—a manly scene.
"Returning with the fruit of the sea, fishermen warmly embracing welcoming family members and drinking heartily with intimate friends—a heroic scene.
"But when a fishing boat is lost, family members waiting on the docks, shedding endless tears as the sparks of hope grow fainter day by day—a touching scene."
Su derides the appellation "cultural desert" so widely applied to Kaohsiung:
"The city is, in fact, glowing with the color of its cultures; they were simply ignored in the past. We will call for research for a systematic record of culture in Kaohsiung to enhance the morale of our people."
Six "Port Culture Forums" began the first in a series of new cultural activities. Shortly before Father's Day, a "Port Culture Cartoon Contest" pooled the talents of nationally known cartoonists and the children of the city to depict the characteristics of "port culture."
A "Port City Camp of Literature and Arts" is planned, to which novelists, columnists, and broadcast commentators will be invited to tap, via their keen observational and creative capabilities, the deeper meanings of "port culture."
At the end of last year, a ROC" 1985 Thousand Artists' Joint Exhibition" was sponsored by the Kaohsiung City government. It presented the beauty of Kaohsiung in modes of Western and traditional Chinese painting, sculpture, calligraphic works, etc. Future camps of music and dance are planned.
To invigorate both cultural and sports development in the city, Mayor Su is suggesting that the city treasury deposit NT$600 million (US$15 million) in the bank; the annual interest of over US$1 million is to be perennially applied to the city's cultural and sports activities.
All such efforts base on Mayor Su's grassroots dedication to responding to individual citizen grievances and problems. On a daily basis, together, he believes, these programs will create a city for quality living.
In the Republic, Plato depicts an ideal ruler, his famous "philosopher-king": He is without selfish purpose and devotes all his thoughts exclusively to the promotion of the welfare of his people and state. With a wisdom and insight superior to those of his contemporaries, he demonstrates sage, rapid, and accurate facility in the handling of national affairs. Sure of himself, his decisions are final and unwavering. And since he is without selfish motives, no personal consideration will affect his judgements. Under the wise and righteous conduct of such an ideal leader , the whole state will be steered to an advanced, rationally harmonious sphere.
Su Nan-cheng goes him one better. Always among the people and constantly seeking their understanding and support, he prepares for an advanced urban community that can withstand "non-philosophic" leaders in its future.