Hsing Tai-chao (邢泰釗), who recently stepped down as Taiwan's Prosecutor-General, may be the most self-promotional occupant of that office in living memory. Five book launch events, a conscience-clearing farewell statement, and two post-retirement media interviews on "prosecutorial reform" and "judicial aesthetics" — one cannot help wondering whether this campaign is preparation for his next move, perhaps a seat on the Judicial Yuan or the Control Yuan.
A Record Built on Controversy, Not Reform
Hsing's appetite for publishing predates his tenure. At district prosecutors' offices he compiled legal-practice manuals; as Prosecutor-General, his office produced desk calendars and children's books. Charitably, these were attempts to make justice accessible. Less charitably, they fit a pattern of directing public procurement contracts toward institutional self-promotion — a practice comparatively rare in the prosecutorial system before he arrived.
Hsing was the top vote-getter in a prosecutors' association poll for his position, yet became the most controversial figure ever to hold it. When a court convicted former President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) on charges of instigating a classified leak, reports emerged of cheering from the Taipei District Prosecutors' chief's office — a position Hsing then held. A denial followed, but the episode established his reputation as a symbol of politically motivated prosecution.
The roots ran deeper. Shortly after former President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) abolished the Special Investigation Division, the Taipei office under Hsing reopened the "Three Media Outlets Case" (三中案), which the Division had previously closed without indictment. Hsing had become well-practiced in prosecuting cases that aligned with the political needs of those in power.
The case of Hsu Hsi-hsiang (徐錫祥) suggests this is structural, not personal. After the Legislative Yuan rejected his nomination as Prosecutor-General, President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) appointed him acting Prosecutor-General regardless. Hsu registered no discomfort, stating he was simply "carrying out his assignment." The prosecutorial establishment, it appears, experiences no friction when directed from above.
A Career Ladder That Led Nowhere Good
The bitter irony of the Three Media Outlets Case is that it served as Hsing's stepping stone upward, yet before he left office both the first and second-instance courts acquitted Ma Ying-jeou. Eight years of prosecutorial effort, for nothing.
His farewell statement compounds the irony. By acknowledging he "passed through the noise," Hsing admitted awareness of the controversy his tenure generated. His aspiration that "the rule of law shine on" rings hollow — not merely unfulfilled, but actively reversed on his watch. To retire and celebrate the rule of law without having corrected what went wrong is not reflection. It is performance.
Hsing has offered defenses: the Three Media Outlets Case recovered NT$2.4 billion for the public; the spy case involving Wang Jing-yu (向心) was not concluded during his time at the Taipei office. If he is cataloguing his record, he might also explain why the Presidential Office cigarette-smuggling scandal punished low-ranking staff while senior officials escaped. He was fortunate the DPP held a legislative majority during the Tsai years, allowing his appointment to pass easily when the Kuomintang boycotted the confirmation vote.
Meaningful reform? Beyond the calendars and fairy tales, there is no evidence of it. Pretrial detention as a tool to extract confessions became increasingly normalized. Pingtung County Council Speaker Chou Tien-lun (周典論) was held seven months for organizing petition signatures. Former Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was detained a full year over the Ching Hua City case. During the DPP's mass recall campaign, prosecutors pursued KMT-affiliated targets while leaving DPP figures untouched — search warrant followed immediately by detention becoming standard procedure. High-profile cases were routinely accompanied by selective leaks timed to serve the ruling party's political needs. Controversy always ended the same way: a press release asserting the prosecutors had done nothing wrong.
Chen Yin-ke's Legacy Deserves Better
In his Central News Agency interview, Hsing said judicial reform "needs to be redesigned from the ground up." The diagnosis is accurate. What he cannot see is his own role in producing the outcome he now laments.
Former President Tsai's National Affairs Conference on Judicial Reform became one of her presidency's most conspicuous failures because her judicial appointments followed a single criterion — loyalty to the DPP. Constitutional Court justices, the Prosecutor-General, individual prosecutors' career paths: all filtered through the same lens. Public trust in the judiciary has declined; satisfaction ratings have fallen. Politically directed prosecution is a central cause.
Hsing has also argued that "judicial independence requires transcending party politics" — implicitly conceding it currently does not. His concrete proposal, an independent personnel commission to govern prosecutor appointments and transfers, raises an obvious question: would it sit under the Ministry of Justice, the Executive Yuan, or the Presidential Office? Under any of those roofs, independence is a fiction. And after a decade of DPP governance that has hollowed out virtually every nominally independent institution in Taiwan, who would trust a new one?
He has further complained that without real authority over personnel and budgets, the Prosecutor-General's office serves no purpose. Yet under the existing Organic Act of the Ministry of Justice and the Judges Act, the office already holds substantial power — authority to direct all prosecutors nationwide, handle cases personally, and issue binding prosecution guidelines. The office is not weak. What Hsing's complaints reveal is something less comfortable: the party sat above the prosecutor.
There is an old observation that a person's words become honest as they prepare to leave. It is a pity Hsing waited until retirement to invoke the historian Chen Yin-ke's (陳寅恪) celebrated credo of "independent spirit and free thought." For those who watched his tenure, the invocation reads as theater, not principle. If that spirit mattered, where was it when it was needed?
Whether acting under instructions or carrying out assignments, Hsing Tai-chao and Hsu Hsi-hsiang together embody the prosecutorial system's "institutional banality" — the quiet, frictionless accommodation of political power that makes reform not merely difficult, but structurally impossible from within. （Related： Apple's India Nightmare Should Give Taiwan Pause ｜ Latest ）
