Hsu Hsin-liang tried to change history many times, but failed.
As chairman of Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in the 1990s, Mr Hsu, 63, tried to wean the party off of its pro-independence ideology and still regrets not being able to move the party towards the centre of Taiwan's political spectrum.
'The DPP must bravely embrace transformation. I said [this] many times,' Mr Hsu said. 'I failed - no one followed me. I was lonely at the top of the DPP. I was the leader because I helped lead the democratisation of Taiwan but I wasn't able to change the DPP.'
Mr Hsu was sidelined after a power struggle with the party leader and current president, Chen Shui-bian, who was then the ambitious mayor of Taipei. He left the party in 1999 and has since seen Mr Chen return the DPP to its anti-Beijing roots.
As early as 1990, Mr Hsu tried to get the party to embrace the 'one-China' principle because he saw that globalisation was bringing the world together and that Taiwan, a trading zone, could not escape integration with the mainland.
'No matter who is the leader of Taiwan, he can't possibly ignore the 'one-China' principle,' he said. 'The world recognised this. How can you ignore it?'
Mr Hsu, who earned a master's degree in political science in England in the 1960s, helped launch Taiwan's democracy movement by openly challenging the Kuomintang in 1977's Taoyuan county elections.
