Chang Li-shan is a Taiwanese politician. She served on the Legislative Yuan from 2005 to 2008, and again from 2016 to 2018, when she was elected magistrate of Yunlin County.
Chang was elected to the Legislative Yuan in December 2004, as an independent. She won election from Yunlin County handily, with over 51,000 votes supporting her candidacy. In May 2005, fellow legislator sued Chang for slapping her while the two lawmakers were lobbying the World Health Assembly in Geneva to admit Taiwan as an observer to the body. During her first legislative term, Chang drew attention to the amount of environmental damage facing Yunlin County, compared with the little compensation paid by the industries which cause it. Chang stepped down from the legislature at the end of her term in January 2008, and considered running for the Yunlin County magistracy in the 2009 Taiwanese local elections. Chang secured the support of the Kuomintang's in June 2009, after he had dropped out of the race. In September, Chang suspended her campaign for office, due to disagreements between her brother Chang Jung-wei and Chang Hui-yuan. The Kuomintang struggled to find a replacement candidate, and eventually nominated. Subsequently, the Chang family political faction pulled away from the Kuomintang, and Chang Li-shan became chair of the Taiwan Agricultural Association.
The Kuomintang backed Chang Li-shan's 2014 bid for the Yunlin magistracy, necessitating the Chang family's factional and grassroots support. Chang faced Democratic Progressive Party candidate Lee Chin-yung, and took on the campaign platform "Blue Ocean Yunlin," emphasizing "big service," utilizing technology to form a strong welfare system and empathetic administration. Opinion polls in November 2014 placed Chang slightly ahead of Lee. As election day drew nearer, Jiang Yi-huah and Terry Gou attended Chang's campaign rallies. Chang lost to Lee, winning 175,862 votes, or 43.02%, to Lee's 232,900 votes, a 56.98% vote share.
Legislative Yuan (second term)
Chang was nominated by the Kuomintang for a party list seat, and returned to the Legislative Yuan via proportional representation in 2016. In March 2016, she invited premier Chang San-cheng, legislative speaker Su Jia-chyuan, and all lawmakers to bow to a photo of Sun Yat-sen located in the legislative chamber. Su refused to do so, and all other legislators remained seated, leaving both Changs the only participants in the ritual. In her second legislative term, Chang criticized the ruling Democratic Progressive Party's handling of bills regarding illicit party assets, as well as the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee, an agency formed to investigate such assets. She has criticized several DPP agricultural policies, and the Council of Agriculture. Chang opposed the import of pork from the United States containing ractopamine, and called for more public hearings regarding Japanese imports originating from the areas affected by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Chang took issue with the Democratic Progressive Party-led government's 2017 revision of electoral law pertaining to farmers' associations. As the price of bananas fell that year, Chang stated that the COA had not acted adequately to slow overproduction. She observed in November that the COA's announcement of island-wide no-kill animal shelters had led to overcrowding in shelters. Throughout 2017, Chang raised concerns about the environment in Yunlin County, noting specifically that Douliu was struggling to store its waste. She suggested that a renewable energy park slated for construction in Tainan as part of the Forward-Looking Infrastructure Development Program should be relocated to Yunlin County, because Yunlin was Taiwan's leading producer in solar energy. During a July 2017legislative session, in which the special budget for the project was reviewed, Chang targeted Ho Hsin-chun in a physical altercation involving multiple legislators.
By February 2018, Chang had been nominated the Kuomintang candidate to contest the Yunlin County magistracy. Chang resigned her legislative seat in early November 2018. On 24 November 2018, Chang won the Yunlin County magistrate election. She assumed the position on 25 December 2018.
In the aftermath of the African swine fever virus and one day after her inauguration, Chang imposed a ban on using food waste to feed pigs which took immediate effect to contain the spread of the epidemic in the region. As the price of peanuts produced in Yunlin fell in January 2020, Chang called on the Council of Agriculture to aid farmers.
