Taiwan's 'Lounge chair king' drowns after falling into sea in Cambodia

Tseng Chen-nung(file photo)

Taiwan News
Central News Agency

Former Legislator Tseng Chen-nung, better known as "Taiwan lounge chair king" for his once leading role in the business, drowned in Cambodia Sunday, according to his family members residing in the southern county of Chiayi.

Tseng Mao-chin, Tseng's son, said he was informed of his father's death Sunday afternoon.

According to a phone call from a Taiwanese employee of Tseng's company in Cambodia, the senior Tseng died after falling into sea while on a voyage to a Cambodian outlying island to inspect one of his company's construction projects there.

It remained unclear whether the 58-year-old Tseng was swept into sea by strong winds or fell into sea because of a heart attack, Tseng Mao-chin said.

Although Tseng's aides immediately pulled him from the sea and performed CPR on him, they failed to resuscitate him, according to reports from Cambodia.

Tseng Chin-mao said his grief-stricken mother, Legislator Chang Hwa-Kuan of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), has to wait until Monday to fly to Phnom Penh because of difficulties arranging a flight.

Tseng used to have a "godfather" stature in Taiwan's business and political communities in the 1990s, thanks to his flamboyant working styles. With his successful lounge chair business, he managed to developed extensive political connections and served as a lawmaker of the then ruling Kuomintang (KMT) for three terms.

At the pinnacle of his career, Tseng once hosted an 800-table lunar new year banquet at his 80-hectare lounge chair factory premises that drew the attendance of many political bigwigs and influential corporate executives.

But his political star power later gradually dimmed because of intricate local politics and his lounge chair business also faltered amid changing domestic and global economic climates.

Tseng withdrew from the KMT in 2001, a year after the KMT lost power to the DPP in Taiwan's first-ever transition of power between different parties. He also withdrew from the legislative election that year and instead supported his wife Chang Hwa-kuan's bid to run for a legislative seat as an independent.

Chang joined the then-ruling DPP after winning the legislative election in 2001. She has since been re-elected twice, even though the DPP has lost power to the KMT in the second transition of power that took place in May this year.

Over the past seven years or so, Tseng had spent most of his time in China where he had reportedly rebuilt his business, mainly in aquaculture industry.

As he once maintained good friendship with former Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, he had also expanded his business into that country, operating hotels and sea gravel dredging as well as biofuel crop plantation, reports from Cambodia said.