Lien Chan (Chinese: 連戰; born August 27, 1936) is a Taiwanese political scientist and politician. A member of the Kuomintang (KMT), he nominally governed Taiwan as the head of the Taiwan Provincial Government from 1990 to 1993 and served as Premier of the Republic of China from 1993 to 1997, Vice President of the Republic of China from 1996 to 2000, and Chairman of the Kuomintang from 2000 to 2005.

Lien was born in China to a prominent Taiwanese family of intellectuals. After graduating from National Taiwan University, he earned his doctorate in political science from the University of Chicago in 1965 and began an academic career in the United States as a professor at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Connecticut. Upon returning to Taiwan in 1968, he became a professor at National Taiwan University, entered politics, and held multiple ministerial and executive offices.

During the 1990s, Lien was a close aide of President Lee Teng-hui and introduced several of Lee's constitutional reforms. He ran for the presidency on behalf of the Kuomintang twice, but lost both times in 2000 and 2004 to Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party. As party chairman, he was highly credited for holding a groundbreaking visit to mainland China to meet Chinese leader Hu Jintao in 2005, the first meeting between party leaders of the KMT and the CCP since the end of the Chinese Civil War. The event was considered significant for encouraging cross-strait relations.

Lien Chan was born in Xi'an, Shaanxi, on August 27, 1936. He was the only child of Taiwanese politician Lien Chen-tung and his wife Chao Lan-kun (趙蘭坤), the latter a graduate of Yenching University who was born to a prominent Manchu family in Shenyang. Chen-tung served as the head of the Ministry of the Interior from 1960 to 1966 and was an advocate of promoting local autonomy and maintaining closer ties with the CC Clique. Lien's paternal grandfather, the prominent Taiwanese historian Lien Heng (1878–1936), was the author of the popular book The General History of Taiwan. On his father's side, Lien Chan was descended from a prominent and wealthy merchant family from Tainan, Taiwan, whose ancestral home was located in Longji. In the early 1960s, his father became the seventh-wealthiest man in Taiwan by leveraging his connections in the Kuomintang (KMT) and speculating on land purchases.

Lien attended the Tso-hsiu Primary School (作秀小學) in Xi'an before moving with his family to Taiwan—where his father held multiple government offices—following the Retrocession of Taiwan in 1945. He then was educated at the Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan Normal University (HSNU), where he was a classmate of future politician Koh Se-kai. The two were close friends, studied together, and considered each other as "the two Taiwanese" enrolled at the school. Koh later recalled, "I was not aware of the number of differences between the Mainlander and Taiwanese students at first. Only when I started to speak in Taiwanese did I realize that none of my classmates would be able to understand me—except Lien Chan. I became aware that Lien and I were the minority".

After graduating from high school, Lien studied political science at National Taiwan University and received a bachelor's degree in the subject in 1957. As an undergraduate, he was a student of Taiwanese independence activist Peng Ming-min, who was a professor of political science at the university. After graduation, Lien completed military service at Fu Hsing Kang College and joined the Kuomintang. He left Taiwan in 1959 to pursue advanced studies in the United States, earning a Master of Arts (M.A.) in international law and diplomacy in 1961 and his Ph.D. in political science in 1965, both from the University of Chicago. His master's thesis was titled, "Agrarian reform in nationalist China". His doctoral dissertation, completed under political science professor Tsou Tang, was titled, "The criticism of Hu Shih's thought in Communist China".

After receiving his doctorate, Lien became an assistant professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he taught from 1966 to 1967. He then became an assistant professor at the University of Connecticut and taught there from 1967 to 1968.

In 1968, Lien returned to Taiwan and joined the political science faculty at National Taiwan University, where he was a visiting professor from 1968 to 1969, then a full professor from 1969 to 1975, during which period he headed the department and was the dean of the university's graduate institute of political science.