Robert Tsao stated that he wants to assist his countrymen and women in their fight against China.

In three years, the goal is to train up to three million civilians, one-seventh of the population. He wanted 300,000 sharpshooters, including office workers, students, shopkeepers, and parents.

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Who is Robert Tsao?

Robert Tsao is a Taiwanese businessman who founded the United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC). 

Tsao was born in Beijing in 1947. He is 75 years old. He relocated to Taiwan with his family a year and a half later because his father had accepted a position as a Mandarin teacher there as part of a Kuomintang (KMT) push for sinicization in the formerly Japanese territory. Tsao is one of six siblings. He studied electrical engineering and management at National Taiwan University.

He went to work at the Industrial Technology Research Institute after school (ITRI). In 1980, he quit ITRI to form UMC.

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UMC entered China in 2001 by establishing Hejian Technology (Suzhou) Co. in Jiangsu. Tsao was accused in 2005 with breaking the Business Entity Accounting Act as a result of this. In 2010, he was found not responsible.

Tsao is a well-known art collector. In the 1990s, he began collecting art with jadeite before moving on to archaic bronzes.

Tsao conducted extensive research after purchasing his first jade pieces, discovering that all of the pieces he had purchased were forgeries.

Tsao paid a then-record HK$24 million for a Qianlong-period glass vase from Joseph Lau in 2000. He sold the vase for HK$180 million in 2019. Tsao was a supporter of Zhu Dequn. The Le Cong Tang collection is named after him.

Tsao pledged one hundred million US dollars to Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense in 2022 to “protect freedom, democracy, and human rights.” The pledge was made in response to Chinese military aggression following the visit to Taiwan of the US Congressional Delegation in 2022.

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Two of Tsao’s sons are citizens of Taiwan. He relocated to Singapore in 2011 and gave up his Taiwanese citizenship.

Tsao gave up his Singaporean citizenship in 2022 and vowed to regain his Taiwanese citizenship. On August 30, 2022, he was granted his national identification card and was once again considered a citizen of Taiwan.