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JULY 21, 2000 VOL. 26 NO. 28 | SEARCH ASIAWEEK Today is Her Time Construction tycoon Nita Ing epitomizes a bold new Taiwan By ALLEN T. CHENG Taipei In the summer of 1999, the future president of Taiwan asked Nita Ing Chi if she would be his running mate. "I just said, 'it's not possible,'" says Ing. Of course Chen Shui-bian was a long shot when he made the offer; it came well before his stunning electoral victory in March this year that broke the five-decade grip of the Kuomintang (KMT). But if she turned down a life on the political frontline, it was Ing's early public endorsement of Chen that summer which rallied much of the island's business elite to his camp. And it was Ing who emerged as the spokes-person for Chen's ty-coon braintrust that in the final days of campaigning bolstered his credibility with wavering voters, and that went on to help recruit his premier and pick his cabinet. No wonder she is now the woman to watch in Taiwan. The elegant 45-year-old with a taste for light make-up and dark suits is the boss of one of Taiwan's top construction companies, Continental Engineer-ing Corp., and a long-time supporter of Chen's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). More than that, she is something of a business legend after she led a group of private companies that went head to head against the asset investment arm of the KMT, when the party was still in power and used to doling out lucrative contracts to its own. The prize was the right to build a high-speed railway in Taiwan, the richest such contract in the world. After a long and public fight, Ing's consortium won. "Many of us saw her victory as a revolution," says Hsu Lu, founder of the popular radio station Voice of Taipei and an Ing friend. "She is seen as a heroine." In a sense, Nita Ing is symbolic of the new Taiwan, a Taiwan that, even if it is not an independent nation, boasts an independent spirit. She is young and U.S.-educated, rich but hard-working, politically idealistic yet pragmatic, and business-minded, confident, and definitely her own woman. Her family roots are in mainland China, but her eyes are on Taiwan, Greater China and the wider world. Like Ing, the emerging Taiwan is increasingly affluent, self-assured and cosmopolitan, brandishing a blend of modern Chinese and Amer-ican values, and determined to blaze its own trail. While Hong Kong and Macau flounder trying to fit in with the huge bulk of China, the island is busily building its own future — mindful, even respectful of the giant across the strait but focused more on improving its own society — a future that is more democratic and less corrupt. And more free in all aspects of life. Ing's iconic status comes not just from her political activities or boardroom battles. She became something of a feminist idol by taking control of her private life in a surprising manner. In the early 1990s she divorced her husband, a well-known photographer. She later had two daughters and is raising them as a single mother. The identity of the father is a secret which even the wagging tongues of Taipei's cocktail circuit have failed to lick. "She gave birth outside marriage and doesn't care what people think," says Hsu. "She is seen a someone who is extraordinarily strong in breaking conventional values." Ing closely guards the privacy of her daughters, now five and three, only saying that she enjoys mothering and tries hard to spend time with them every day, although her schedule is always tight. Ing comes from a conservative yet anti-establishment family. Her father, Ing Chi-hou, came to Taiwan from the mainland's Zhejiang province in 1949 following the defeat of Chiang Kai-shek's KMT in China's civil war. But the family was not really among the KMT faithful. Her father's uncle, Ing Nu-gen, had headed the puppet government of the Hebei region (including Beijing) under Japanese occupation, and was executed as a traitor by the KMT after Japan's defeat. Ing Chi-hou's side of the family had not collaborated and, while bad blood remained, he was able to build up Continental Engineering within the KMT-dominated construction industry. But Ing senior also spoke out against the KMT's unwritten policy of favoring its own companies, and in the 1980s led a drive to loosen the party's grip on business. As a child, Nita Ing did not seem destined to become a construction boss or a political heavyweight, or anything much at all. The youngest daughter — her brother and sister are more than eight years older — she was the family brat. Friends recall how, when she was 13, her parents decided to send her to the U.S. to study. Ing locked herself in her room and painted all the walls black. That delayed her departure for a while. At boarding schools in Mas-sachusetts and New Jersey, she picked up an upper-crust accent but little else. She dropped out when she was 16, returned to Taiwan and took up martial arts, studying the Praying Mantis style which suited her lanky build. "I spent most of my energies creating a reason why I didn't have to go to school," she says. "That was [a] major focus when I was a teenager." Somehow Ing got into the University of California, Los Angeles, where she studied economics. It was the 1970s, when rebellion and leftist ideology reigned on U.S. campuses. Ing idolized the Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara and the psy-chedelic rock musician Jim Morrison. From their lives and ideals, she began to get a sense of purpose, of wanting to make the world a better place. Imagine her shock when she returned to Taiwan after graduating in 1978. The island was under martial law, in place since 1949. The KMT under Chiang Ching-kuo, the son of Chiang Kai-shek, still vowed to retake the mainland. Hardly anybody who disagreed dared speak to their minds. Those who did ended up on Green Island, Taiwan's offshore gulag, or disappeared altogether. "When I came back, it was such a slap in the face that the place where I was born was the way it was," Ing recalls. At first she felt she could not live in Taiwan, and planned to leave after a year. But the budding democratic movement intrigued her. She joined opposition rallies against martial law and the KMT, much to her father's exasperation. "[He] said 'don't stay here'" — for both their sakes. Ing never was too active nor joined the DPP, but she always tried to help. And she credits the opposition movement for Taiwan's journey from repression in the 1970s to direct presidential elections, the first for any Chinese society, in the 1990s. "The freedoms that we have now, and how fast we've been able to enjoy them, I attribute to the opposition forces, to the DPP," says Ing. "They were the ones who stuck their heads out." While dabbling in politics, Ing also dabbled in business. Her father took her on as a personal assistant (somewhat reluctantly given that he did not think she really belonged in Taiwan at that time). From there she made the rounds through the various departments of Continental Engineer-ing. She did not regard her job too seriously at first, and took vacations for as long as two months at a time. But she learned not just the ins and outs of the business, but that she liked it. "I found I had a tremendous interest in the construction industry," she says. "It may even be in my blood." Good thing, since Ing's elder siblings chose to stay in the U.S. — her brother is a scientist and her sister a housewife — and her father began grooming her as his successor. In 1987, at age 32, she took over the presidency, and finally grew up. In construction, she found a reflection of her own dual nature, balancing the artistic (the design and financing of projects) with the pragmatic (the engineering and execution). She found she enjoys and excels at putting together the right professionals for a job. "They don't need me on a technical level, but what I can give them is the resources in areas they didn't get in the past," she says. "I'm a people consolidator." And every project is a fresh challenge. As the head of Continental Engi-neering, she managed the group's participation in major projects such as the Taipei metro system, and pushed its global ex-pansion with investments in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and the U.S. In 1994, six months after the death of her father, Ing oversaw the share listing of Continental Engineering. But what really made Ing a tycoon in her own right and a legend in the public eye was her battle for the right to build Taiwan's 345-km bullet-train line, with an estimated price tag of $15 billion. In the running was the China Development Corp. (CDC), the asset investment arm of the KMT. That made the outcome a forgone conclusion — almost. After all, the ruling party had for decades doled out lucrative contracts to companies linked to it, leaving the private sector to fight over sub-contracts and making the KMT the world's richest political party. That did not stop Ing. Five private Taiwan companies — Continental Engi-neering, shipping giant Evergreen, finance group Fubon, telecom operator Pacific Electric Wire & Cable and consumer electronics maker TECO — formed Taiwan High-Speed Rail Corp. Of the five member company chiefs, all second-generation industrialists in their 40s and 50s, Ing was the sole woman, but she became chairman. "From the beginning, we saw [CDC] as a very strong rival," she says. "Beating them wasn't easy. We didn't even think about it. We just did it." And beat CDC they did. In September 1997, the Transport Ministry gave the nod to Ing's consortium after it agreed to build the project for $13.9 billion, $1.8 billion less than CDC. Then the fun really began. "It wasn't so hard until we actually won," Ing says. "That's when China Development accused us of all sorts of misdeeds and really began challenging us." Ing and her partners found themselves going head to head with Liu Tai-ying, the chairman of CDC, a senior member of the KMT and a personal friend of then-Taiwan president Lee Teng-hui. Liu bullied High-Speed Rail's bankers, jeopardizing its $10 billion syndicated loan. He launched a media war, telling newspapers: "I doubt [Ing's consortium] can do the job well." Ing's male partners wanted to launch a full-scale counter-attack, but she opted for a softer approach. When Liu sneered on TV that Ing's consortium was just "five small children playing with a big car," Ing replied playfully: "Yes, I am a child. I'm young. But we'd rather be young than old." That kind of finesse deflected Liu's attacks, and eventually won the sympathy of the Taiwan public, the confidence of bankers and, in July 1999, the Transport Ministry's signature on the dotted line. "Without her leadership, the rail project would not [have gotten] this far," says Daniel Tsai, head of Fubon Insurance. "If any of us men were chairman, we probably would have quit a long time ago." In a subsequent twist, Ing had to switch tracks. Her group had originally planned to use technology from Eurotrain, formed by Germany's Siemens and France's Alstom. But having bid low, she asked her European partners to cut their price. When they balked, she turned to Japan's Mitsubishi-led Shinkansen consortium, which had originally backed CDC's bid. Taiwan media claimed she did so to please the KMT, since Japan-educated former-president Lee is believed to want to retire in that country. Angry Eurotrain officials also impute political motivations. Ing denies it. "It was purely for commercial reasons that we felt we had to go to Shinkansen," she insists. Whatever the real reason, the affair showed that Ing can wheel and deal with the best. "She's a woman and yet can cope with all the politics of putting this deal together — this wasn't easy," says Evelyn Hsu, deputy general editor of Business Weekly magazine. With her public sta-ture, and her youth and vitality, Ing's endorsement of Chen Shui-bian's presidential bid in the summer of 1999 gave the DPP candidate's campaign a major credibility boost. Ing had always made her sympathies known. She had often invited Chen to Continental Engineering groundbreakings when he was mayor of Taipei, and given lectures to DPP members on finance and economics. But when Chen offered her the vice-presidential slot, she knew the job was not for her. "It's not my profession," she says now. "A vice president can't take two months off a year the way I like to do. Politics is a journey, and once you get on it there's no way out, especially in this region." The spot went to veteran feminist and democracy activist Annette Lu. Nonetheless, when Chen named his "national policy advisers" of tycoons near the end of his campaign, Ing emerged as their spokesperson, despite being the youngest and the only woman. Among her peers: heavyweights like Chang Yung-fa, 70, of Evergreen Shipping; Shi Wen-lung, 73, of Chi Mei Plastics, one of the region's largest petrochemical concerns, and Stan Shih, 55, of computer maker Acer. She was also the only "mainlander," meaning her family came to Taiwan in the 1940s, while the rest were "Taiwanese," whose ancestors reached the island over the previous two centuries from Fujian province. The two populations long held each other at arms length. Ing's inclusion showed both her ability to bridge the gap as well as the growth of a new Taiwan identity that transcends old antagonisms. After Chen's victory, his advisory group worked to recruit a prime minister to head the new administration. At one point when the lead candidate, Nobel prize-winning chemist Lee Yuan-tseh, dropped out, some nominated Ing. She politely refused, and the policy group eventually achieved a coup by recruiting Tang Fei, a respected former general and defense minister of the outgoing KMT government. The advisory body then disbanded. Ing has since stayed away from politics, but she is still seen as the leader among business tycoons with close ties to Chen. It is not an image she likes. "I endorsed him and I wish him the best," she says. "If he ever does something crazy, I will probably go and knock on his door. But I never felt comfortable with the Taiwan connotation that once you support someone, you're in that particular camp forever." But if she does not plan to push policies on the new DPP-led administration, what does she expect from it? While Beijing and the international media have been obsessed with Chen's cross-straits plans, Ing, like most Taiwan people, saw his victory as a bid for cleaner governance. The main issues are getting government and KMT fingers out of the economy and ensuring clean elections, not independence from or reunification with China. "I don't believe there [would have been] any changes if the old government continued to exist," she says. "Whether the DPP will do what we hope they will isn't even an issue right now. There will be a change." As for relations with Beijing, all Ing really hopes for is a peaceful resolution, and she is optimistic that Chen can achieve that. "I'm confident that he will make a breakthrough because he's not so emotional about it," she says. While the previous leadership in Taiwan under president Lee came of age during World War II and the Civil War that followed, Chen represents a new generation. "He doesn't have a China hang-up in a sense that someone with China experience may have. It'll be a new perspective," she says. "Nobody wants war, so he'll be extremely practical." So, ensconced in Continental Engi-neering's 13-story glass and steel headquarters in Taipei, Nita Ing goes about making her part of the new Taiwan. Despite the subdued environment, hers is a high-pressure position in a rough-and-tumble industry. Friends attribute her ability to remain cool to daily meditation (she has been studying with a Tibetan rimpoche for the past six years). Colleagues say that she is always soft-spoken and polite, and never gets angry. "She doesn't need to," says a personal assistant. "She only needs to raise her eyebrows and you can feel the heat." Besides her business, Ing runs the Hua Ran Foundation, which fosters young Chinese from around the world for leadership roles in business, politics, arts and society. And while she has rejected a political position for herself, she cannot be counted out as a power-broker. "If she wants," says radio journalist Hsu, "she'll have a role." Expect to read more about Taiwan's Nita Ing in years to come. Write to Asiaweek at mail@web.asiaweek.com
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