Henry Liu

Henry Liu (7 December 1932 – 15 October 1984), often known by his pen name Chiang Nan (江南), was a writer and journalist from Taiwan, Republic of China. Born in Jingjiang, Jiangsu, China, he was a vocal critic of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party), then the single ruling party of the Republic of China in Taiwan, and was most famous for writing an unauthorized biography of Chiang Ching-kuo, former president of the Republic of China. He later became a naturalized citizen of the United States, and resided in Daly City, California, where he was assassinated by mob members who had been reportedly trained by Republic of China military intelligence.

Assassination

On 15 October 1984, Liu was shot to death in the garage of his home in Daly City, California. His killers fled the country, returning to Taiwan. They did not face trial until the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation discovered a tape made by chief hitman Chen Chi-li implicating Republic of China military intelligence in the killing, whereupon they began to pressure the government to bring Liu's killers to trial. According to Chen's testimony at his trial in Taipei, Wang Hsi-ling of Kuomintang intelligence ordered the assassination. A month after his conviction, Chen retracted this statement. However, Tung Kuei-sen, another one of the killers, corroborated this at his own trial in the United States in 1988, stating that the order for Liu's death had been given by the Taiwanese government. Tung (who had previously been cleared of racketeering charges related to the assassination) was convicted. The assassination became a major political scandal in Taiwan and American officials were critical of the Kuomintang for allegedly orchestrating an assassination on United States soil.

Henry Liu (civil engineer)

Henry Liu (1936 – December 1, 2009 ) was a retired American civil engineer and the president of Freight Pipeline Company (FPC), now known as EcologicTech.

Liu earned his PhD in civil engineering from Colorado State University with research on fluid mechanics, and then worked as a professor of civil engineering at University of Missouri (MU) in Columbia, Missouri for over 20 years. At MU, he was also director of the Capsule Pipeline Research Center, a joint state/industry initiative funded by the National Science Foundation to develop capsule pipeline technology to transport freight; an innovative application of pipelines to transfer solids instead of fluids.

In 2001, after his retirement, Liu founded FPC, the company which developed a new type of Fly ash brick, a building brick made from a waste by-product of coal power plants, using an environmentally sustainable manufacturing process.

Liu had spent most of his working career compressing industrial freight using hydraulic presses. In 1999, he was given some fly ash by a client, and decided to compress it "just to see what would come out." Liu mixed the fly ash with water and applied 4,000 psi (28 MPa) of pressure. After two weeks, he found that the mixture had set into blocks with the strength of concrete. Owing to the high concentration of calcium oxide in fly ash, the bricks can be described as "self-cementing".