Taiwan's Control Yuan issued a formal correction on July 20 against the Hsinchu City Government and the Sports Administration, confirming that the construction and opening of the Hsinchu City Baseball Stadium involved a chain of procurement violations, unlicensed contracting, and double-claimed public subsidies. After four years of investigation, the findings are thorough — and largely without consequence.
A Showcase Project That Hurt Players on Opening Day
The Hsinchu City Baseball Stadium was meant to be a flagship of the Tsai Ing-wen administration's NT$880 billion Forward-looking Infrastructure Program — an eight-year public works drive that attracted both political pride and fierce public scrutiny. The stadium attracted mostly the latter.
Within two days of opening in July 2022, three professional players were injured on the field, prompting the Chinese Professional Baseball League to suspend games and then-Mayor Lin Chih-chien (林智堅) to issue a public apology. The political fallout proved longer-lasting: a plagiarism controversy surrounding his doctoral dissertation escalated over the following weeks, and Lin withdrew from the Democratic Progressive Party's primary race for Taoyuan mayor within a month. He has since stepped back from frontline politics and now serves as chairman of Federal Leasing Co.
Renovation work on the stadium began last year and is expected to wrap up by mid-August 2026, with reopening subject to inspection results. The structure passed at least one informal test: a major downpour on June 26 left it unscathed.
Five Violations, From Unlicensed Supervision to Double-Claimed Subsidies
The Control Yuan's investigators documented five categories of institutional failure.
The first — and perhaps the most fundamental — was that the stadium was put into use before any formal acceptance inspection was completed. A series of partial handovers had taken place, but the commissioners determined these did not satisfy government procurement rules; deficiencies flagged during those transfers were never corrected before games were allowed to proceed.
The second finding concerned contractor Chü-chia(巨佳營造工程股份有限公司), which failed to meet the performance standards set out in its contract. Corrective work ran far beyond the timeline permitted under Government Procurement Act Article 24, while the Hsinchu City Government exercised insufficient oversight of the delay.
Third, the city assigned both project management and supervisory functions to a single firm, AECOM (艾奕康工程顧問股份有限公司)— a structural conflict of interest the commissioners described as having a player double as referee. Neither Lin's administration nor the Ministry of Education's Sports Administration provided adequate oversight of the arrangement.
More troubling still, AECOM was found to have lacked the "licensed architect" qualification required by law for the supervisory role, a direct violation of Building Act Article 13. Contract amendments and post-failure scope reductions were also cited as reflecting broader patterns of procurement mismanagement.
The fifth finding bordered on the absurd: the stadium's underground parking facility had already received Ministry of Education funding under the Forward-looking Program. The Hsinchu City Government then separately applied for and received additional Ministry of Transportation subsidies for the same project. Taiwan's taxpayers paid for it twice.
Rebuked Contractors Kept Winning NT$3 Billion in New Bids
What makes the Control Yuan's findings simultaneously credible and frustrating is the nature of what they actually confirmed. By the commissioners' own account, most of what the investigation documented had already been publicly known within a week of the 2022 incident. The inquiry spent four years not uncovering new facts, but formally certifying old ones.
More damaging still: neither firm was sidelined while under scrutiny. According to Taiwan's Government Procurement database, Chü-chia secured approximately NT$1 billion in new government contracts over those four years; AECOM secured nearly NT$2 billion. The Control Yuan's investigation provided no mechanism to interrupt this.
On the double-funded parking lot, the correction directs the Ministry of Transportation to improve oversight of Forward-looking Program parking projects — and stops there. No repayment is required. The commissioners did not claim the power to demand one.
A Correction Without Impeachment Leaves Officials Unsanctioned
The commissioners chose to issue a correction rather than pursue a formal impeachment — a distinction that carries real weight under Taiwan's constitutional system. A correction censures government bodies and calls for administrative improvement; it does not compel individual accountability. An impeachment would have triggered referral to the civil servant disciplinary tribunal. Without that step, no individual official faces a formal sanction process.
The Control Yuan's own press release acknowledged the gap directly. Administrative accountability for implicated civil servants, it stated, would need to await the conclusion of the Hsinchu District Prosecutors Office's criminal investigation before the Control Yuan could "proceed accordingly." The body whose mandate is to discipline public officials is, in effect, waiting in line behind the prosecutors.
Taiwan's record on impeaching elected municipal leaders offers little reassurance regardless. Historical cases are few and instructive: a Taoyuan mayor was dismissed for joining a political demonstration during the martial law era; a Taichung mayor was suspended for six months following a fatal restaurant fire; a Tainan mayor — now President Lai Ching-te — was reprimanded for refusing to enter the city council chamber for 232 days, a sanction so light it left no mark on his career. Impeachment of elected officials, when it has happened at all, has rarely produced lasting consequences.
Lin Is Now a Corporate Chair; Ko Is Suspended
The most telling detail in the Hsinchu stadium saga may have nothing to do with concrete or contractors.
Lin Chih-chien, who presided over the stadium's flawed construction, chaotic opening, and the three-player injury incident, faces no administrative sanction from this process. The Control Yuan's correction is formally directed at the Hsinchu City Government — an administration that no longer exists in its original form. Lin himself is now a corporate board chairman.
Ko Hung-an, who won the Hsinchu mayoral race in 2022 — inheriting both the stadium and its unresolved problems — was suspended from office for 18 months. Not over the stadium. Over allegations that she improperly claimed overtime pay for her assistants. The DPP's Hsinchu caucus has since filed five additional complaints against her, all currently sitting with the Hsinchu District Prosecutors Office.
The Control Yuan's correction is not belated justice. It is, at best, proof that the institution has not entirely lost its conscience in its final months. What it confirms — about the Forward-looking Program's failures, about the gap between finding wrongdoing and imposing consequences, about contractors who emerged from four years of scrutiny with stronger order books — will outlast the 6th-term commissioners' tenure.
Two cases now sit with the Hsinchu District Prosecutors Office: the criminal investigation into the stadium scandal, and the DPP caucus's complaints against the sitting mayor. The Control Yuan has confirmed there was wrongdoing. What it cannot confirm is whether any consequence will follow — or which case the prosecutors will reach first.
