Kuan Bi-ling (; born 9 December 1956) is a Taiwanese politician. She is a member of the

Democratic Progressive Party The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is a Taiwanese nationalist and centre-left political party in the Republic of China (Taiwan). Controlling both the Republic of China presidency and the unicameral Legislative Yuan, it is the majori ...

, currently serving as a member of the

Legislative Yuan The Legislative Yuan is the unicameral legislature of the Republic of China (Taiwan) located in Taipei. The Legislative Yuan is composed of 113 members, who are directly elected for 4-year terms by people of the Taiwan Area through a parallel v ...

. Kuan has been a national legislator since 2005, having won three consecutive elections, including the highly competitive 2008 legislative election after the introduction of the single-member district system which halved the total seats from 225 to 113.

Early life and education

Kuan Bi-ling was born to a

Hakka The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka Han, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas are a Han Chinese subgroup whose ancestral homes are chiefly in the Hakka-speaking provincial areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Zhej ...

Taiwanese father and a

Hoklo The Hoklo people or Hokkien people () are a Han Chinese (also Han Taiwanese) subgroup who speak Hokkien, a Southern Min language, or trace their ancestry to Southeastern Fujian, China and known by various endonyms or other related terms such a ...

Taiwanese mother. She received her

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

with honors in

political science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...

from National Taiwan University.

Early careers

* Director General,

Kaohsiung City Kaohsiung City (Mandarin Chinese: ; Wade–Giles: ''Kao¹-hsiung²;'' Pinyin: ''Gāoxióng'') is a special municipality located in southern Taiwan. It ranges from the coastal urban center to the rural Yushan Range with an area of . Kaohsiu ...

Bureau of Cultural Affairs * Director General, Kaohsiung City Department of Information * 8th and 10th

DPP DPP may stand for: Business *Digital Production Partnership, of UK public service broadcasters * Direct Participation Program, a financial security * Discounted payback period Photography * Digital Photo Professional, Canon software Law en ...

Central Party Headquarters Central Executive Committee * Deputy Director, President Chen Shui-Bian Knowledge Taiwan Election Campaign Group * Spokesperson, Women's Headquarters, Mayor Chen Shui-bian Re-Election Campaign * Spokesperson, Alliance for Supervision of Constitutional Reform * Secretary General, Taiwan Association of University Professor * Associate Professor, Department of Public Administration and Policy,

National Taipei University National Taipei University (NTPU; ), founded in 1949, is a national university in Taiwan which specializes in law, business, humanities, and social sciences. Before 2000, the university was named the College of Law and Business, National Chung ...

Political career

Kuan won the

2008 Republic of China legislative election The 2008 Taiwanese legislative election was held on 12 January 2008 for members of the Legislative Yuan. It was the first Legislative Yuan election after the constitutional amendments of 2005, which extended term length from three to four years ...

held on 12 January 2008 representing Constituency 2 of

Personal life

Kuan is married to Hsu Yang-ming.

Controversy

Physical confrontation in the Education and Culture Committee

On 22 October 2008, Legislator

Hung Hsiu-chu Hung Hsiu-chu (; born 7 April 1948) is a Taiwanese politician. As a member of the Kuomintang (KMT), she has served the party as a Deputy Chairperson and Deputy Secretary-General. Hung was first elected to the legislature in 1990, and was the Vi ...

of the Chinese Nationalist Party injured an eye of Kuan’s parliament assistant (PA) while pushing a poster away during a budget review session of the National Science Council in the Education and Culture Committee, so Kuan stood up in argument with Hung till finally slapped Hung's face and Hung pinched Kuan's cheeks, and both legislators refused to apologize. Kuan states: "When one is faced with repression, one should stand straight, refuse to give in and fight against oppression and hegemony." Hung launched a lawsuit against Kuan for two years until a judge persuaded both sides to reconcile with each other, and shared chocolate together in peace on 29 July 2010.

Supporting the languages development act

The 2018 Development of National Languages Act stipulates the government offices to provide the interpretation services for the citizens participating in administrative, legislative, and judicial procedures to freely choose to use their national languages, so the

activated the interpreter service for the parliament session in real time accordingly. On 27 September 2021, after following the steps to apply in advance with 3 Taiwanese interpreters been present ready, Legislator

Chen Po-wei Chen Po-wei (; born 10 July 1985) is a Taiwanese politician. He was the first ever Taiwan Statebuilding Party candidate to be elected to the Legislative Yuan, defeating Kuomintang incumbent Yen Kuan-heng in the 2020 Taiwanese legislative electi ...

of the Taiwan Statebuilding Party proceeded his scheduled questioning session in

Taiwanese Taiwanese may refer to: * Taiwanese language, another name for Taiwanese Hokkien * Something from or related to Taiwan ( Formosa) * Taiwanese aborigines, the indigenous people of Taiwan * Han Taiwanese, the Han people of Taiwan * Taiwanese people, ...

in the Foreign and National Defense Committee. Ministrer of National Defense, Chiu Kuo-cheng rejected to speak Taiwanese, nor accepted the interpreter's real-time service at site, but brought the deputy minister Zong-hsiao Li as his own interpreter, and insisted in the 3-way translation pattern sentence by sentence. Chiu repeatedly interrupted the question process by asking Chen to speak

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of ...

for easier communication, or the session time cannot be lengthened to accommodate the interpretation, but Li is not a linguistic professional, hence his translation contains contextual errors, so Chairman

Chen I-hsin Chen I-hsin (; born 30 October 1972) or Charles Chen is a Taiwanese politician. Early life Chen I-hsin was born in Yunlin County on 30 October 1972. Chen completed a degree in politics at National Taiwan University and earned a master's degre ...

intervened when the argument occurred, and introduced the existing synchronized interpretation in progress as the solution same as the common conference practice in the other states; but Chiu never picked up the earphone, yet insisted his way till the session run out of time. Chen later apologized to the public for the good intention of practicing the national language law being turned into a linguistic communication tragedy, and condemned Chiu for "bullying" (), but Chiu denied the allegation and claimed that a language is a tool of communication. The parliamentary interpretation service were temporarily suspended afterwards pending on better communication in the future - consequently Kuan, the other MPs and media editorials such as the

Taipei Times The ''Taipei Times'' is the only printed daily English-language newspaper in Taiwan, and the third established there. Online competitors include the state-owned ''Focus Taiwan'' and ''Taiwan News''; ''The China Post'' was formerly a competit ...

commented that Language is not just a tool of communication as Chiu said, but also an identity of feelings and culture. Taipei City Councilor Miao Poya also explained that the multi-lingual working environment is essential for a healthy mind without the " Chinese Language Supremacy" () attitude to achieve the international level in diversity, equality and mutual respect for a modern state.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kuan, Bi-ling Taiwanese politicians of Hakka descent Democratic Progressive Party Members of the Legislative Yuan Kaohsiung Members of the Legislative Yuan National Taiwan University alumni Living people Politicians of the Republic of China on Taiwan from Taichung 21st-century Taiwanese women politicians National Taipei University faculty Members of the 6th Legislative Yuan Members of the 7th Legislative Yuan Members of the 8th Legislative Yuan Members of the 9th Legislative Yuan 1956 births