Sun may be best known for his work as premier, but originally he was an electrical engineer who built power plants and strung power lines all around Taiwan.
Sun was born in 1913 in Shandong Province on the Chinese mainland. He graduated first in his class in 1934 from the electrical engineering department of Harbin Institute of Technology in central Manchuria, and participated in the building of power plants in several provinces on the mainland during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). He was one of the few engineers selected by the ROC government to receive training with the Tennessee Valley Authority in the United States from 1943 to 1945 to prepare for post-war reconstruction.
In December 1945, Sun came to Taiwan to work for Taiwan Power Company Ltd., in charge of restoring power on the island. During World War II, Japan extracted huge amounts of resources from the island to supply its vast battlefields elsewhere, while Allied nations devastated the island with massive bombing to cut Japanese supply lines. When Japanese electrical engineers and workers were repatriated in March 1946, they left with mocking words: “We are afraid Taiwan will be dark in three months.”
After the Japanese were gone, their parting shot turned out to be prophetic, as the power supply dropped by 90 percent. Sun lacked staff, funding and equipment to bring power back up to full capacity, but he first solved the manpower shortage by persuading the president of Taipei College of Technology to let third and fourth year students work for Taipower for the duration of the power emergency. Within five months, 80 percent of power was restored on the island, a fact that amazed Japanese engineers.
By 1949, the power supply was restored to pre-war capacity. However, another battle awaited Sun: the Chinese Communist Party took over the mainland, and the ROC government moved to Taiwan, causing the island’s population to suddenly increase by around 20 percent. Materials and resources were in short supply. Foreign reserves were exhausted in 1950.
As Taipower’s chief engineer, Sun went to the United States to borrow US$2 million from Westinghouse Electric Corp. Together with US$500,000 in special funding from the then Taiwan Provincial Government, he managed to finance the repair of Wulai Power Station, connect power lines between the east and west coasts, and build Liwu Power Station and Hsinchu Transformer Substation between 1949 and 1952.
Wulai Power Station provided electricity to the Taipei area and was the first hydroelectric power station designed and built by Taiwanese. This achievement in 1950 caught the attention of the U.S. and resulted in increased U.S. financial aid to support Taipower’s various subsequent projects.
At that time, Taiwan’s west coast was more industrialized than the east, while the east had extra electricity that the west lacked. No roads connected the two until 1960, but it was urgent to set up connecting power lines. Sun led his team over makeshift trails and completed the connecting lines over the 3,000-meter-high Central Mountain Range in 1951.
Chen Lan-kao, former Taipower Chairman, remembered Sun as a leader who would take on dangerous tasks that his staff wouldn’t. Once when an equalizing tower at the Sun Moon Lake Power Plant developed cracks, Sun led a group of geologists and co-workers to inspect the site. As someone would have to go down about 30 to 40 meters inside the tower, where there was danger of poison gas, nobody volunteered to go. “Nobody wants to go, so I will,” said Sun—and he did.
In 1952 over one million people, about one eighth of the total population of Taiwan at the time, did not have electricity at home. It cost a lot of money to set up power lines in remote mountainous areas, and extra expense and labor to maintain them. Sometimes there were only one or two households along several kilometers of power line, a bad example for cost-efficiency. However, in 1954, Sun convinced the Taipower sales and finance departments that even if the company lost money, every village needed to have power. His persistence eventually brought electricity to 99.7 percent of Taiwan’s population, a percentage higher than in Japan and Korea back then.
At that time, hydroelectric power plants were the main source of electricity. However, rainfall shortages made it necessary to provide power to different areas on an alternating basis. Sun’s decision to develop thermal power plants made alternating power supplies a thing of the past.
From head of the mechanical department, to chief engineer, and eventually to president, Sun’s career at Taipower spanned two decades. He pioneered long-term planning in Taiwan, initiating six five-year plans to project electricity demand over thirty years so that power supply could keep up with industrial development. His vision set a model for future leaders.
In a 1989 interview, Sun reflected on the changes in Taiwan since 1945. “I have spent more than forty years here, and my best memories come from Taipower,” commented Sun. “I’m proud to have contributed my share of strength to the people of Taiwan,” said Sun. (To be continued)
Write to Jean Yueh at yueh@mail.gio.gov.tw