Annette Lu Hsiu-lien is a Taiwanese politician. A feminist active in the tangwai movement, she joined the Democratic Progressive Party in 1990, and was elected to the Legislative Yuan in 1992. Subsequently, she served as Taoyuan County Magistrate between 1997 and 2000, and was the Vice President of the Republic of China from 2000 to 2008, under President Chen Shui-bian. Lu announced her intentions to run for the presidency on 6 March 2007, but withdrew to support eventual DPP nominee Frank Hsieh. Lu ran again in 2012, but withdrew for a second time, ceding the nomination to DPP chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen. She lost the party's Taipei mayoral nomination to Pasuya Yao in 2018, and stated that she would leave the party. However, by the time Lu announced in September 2019 that she would contest the 2020 presidential election on behalf of the Formosa Alliance, she was still a member of the Democratic Progressive Party.

The Tangwai movement, or simply Tangwai, was a loosely knit political movement in Taiwan in the mid-1970s and early 1980s. Although the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) had allowed contested elections for a small number of seats in the Legislative Yuan, opposition parties were still forbidden. As a result, many opponents of the KMT, officially classified as independents, ran and were elected as members "outside the party." The movement was at times tolerated and other times suppressed, the latter being the case particularly after the Kaohsiung Incident of 1979. Members of the movement eventually formed the Democratic Progressive Party, which after opposition political parties were legalized, contested elections and won the Presidency with candidate Chen Shui-bian, ending decades of single party rule in Taiwan.