Koo Chen-fu (辜振甫; pinyin: Gū Zhènfǔ, 6 January 1917 - 3 January 2005), the late chairman of the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), was considered both a tycoon and a statesman. Born in northern Taiwan into a wealthy family, he attended Taihoku Imperial University as Taiwan's former President Lee Teng-hui did. He inherited a substantial fortune and a business from his father in his freshman year and graduated in 1940. He also pursued a graduate degree in Japan and later focused on building up his inheritance, profiting from deft management as well as close political relationships with Kuomintang leaders.
On 16 December 1991, a little over ten months after the establishment of the SEF, the authorities of PRC set up the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS), with Wang Daohan as its chairman. The following year Koo and Wang held preliminary talks in Hong Kong that resulted in the so-called "1992 Consensus" and facilitated negotiations of practical matters. However, the content and the existence of this "1992 consensus" is still widely disputed. In 2001, Koo publicly affirmed that the meeting did not result in a consensus on the issue of "one-China." In April 1993, Koo and Wang met in Singapore to hold the first formal discussions between Taipei and Beijing since 1949. On 18 October 1998, Koo met PRC President Jiang Zemin in Beijing, in what was then the highest-level talks yet held between the two sides. The talks were called off by Beijing in 1999 after ROC President Lee Teng-hui proposed his two-states theory .
Koo Chen-fu died of renal cancer on the morning of 3 January 2005. He was 87.
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Last updated: 10-18-2005 00:28:00
