Taiwanese politician and president (19882000), born in Tamsui, N Taiwan. He studied at universities in the USA and Japan, taught economics at the National Taiwan University, and became Mayor of Taipei in 1979. A member of the ruling Kuomintang party, and a protégé of Jiang Jingguo, he became vice-president of Taiwan in 1984, and state president and Kuomintang leader on Jiang's death in 1988. He was re-elected in 1996.
Lee Teng-hui|
|
|
| President of the Republic of China | |
|---|---|
|
In office 13 January 1988 – 20 May 2000 |
|
| Preceded by | Chiang Ching-kuo |
| Succeeded by | Chen Shui-bian |
| Born |
15 January 1923 Sanchih, Taipei County |
| Political party |
Communist Party of China (1946-1948) Kuomintang (1971-2000) |
| Spouse | Tseng Wen-hui |
Early life and education
Lee was born to a Hakka family in the rural farming community of Sanchih, near Taipei, Taiwan.
After World War II, with Taiwan now under ROC control, Lee enrolled in the National Taiwan University, where in 1948 he earned a bachelor's degree in agricultural science. A devout Marxist in his teens, Lee joined the Communist Party of China (CPC) in September 1946 but was forced to quit two years later. Li Ao, a controversial scholar, historian, and writer, has argued that since the Communists who associated with Lee were all executed by the government while Lee survived, Lee must have sold out his comrades to avoid their fate. According to Wu Ketai, who inducted Lee into the Communist Party, the KMT was aware that Lee had been a Communist, but deliberately destroyed the records when Lee was promoted to the vice-presidency to protect his image. Ironically, Lee stated that he joined out of hatred of the KMT.
In 1953, Lee received a master's degree in agricultural economics from the Iowa State University in the United States. Lee returned to Taiwan in 1957 as an economist with the Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction (JCRR), an institution sponsored by the U.S. and aimed at modernizing Taiwan's agricultural system and at land reform.
In the mid-1960s Lee returned to the United States, and earned a PhD in agricultural economics from Cornell University in 1968. Lee's doctoral dissertation, Intersectoral Capital Flows in the Economic Development of Taiwan, 1895-1960 (published as a book under the same name) was honored as the year's best doctoral thesis by the American Association of Agricultural Economics and remains an influential work on Taiwan's economy during the Japanese and early KMT periods.
Rise to power
Shortly after returning to Taiwan, Lee joined the KMT in 1971 and was made a cabinet minister without portfolio with special responsibility for agriculture.
In 1978 Lee was appointed mayor of Taipei, where he solved water shortages and improved the city's irrigation problems.
As a skilled technocrat, Lee soon caught the eye of President Chiang Ching-kuo as a strong candidate to serve as Vice President. As part of his efforts to hand more authority to the bensheng ren (or native Taiwanese, excluding indigenous tribal people), as opposed to the waisheng ren (Chinese mainlanders, who came during or after the Chinese Civil War) who dominated the party and government at the time, President Chiang nominated Lee to become his Vice President.
Presidency
In January 1988, Chiang Ching-kuo died, and Lee immediately succeeded him as President. The "Palace Faction" of the KMT, a group of conservative mainlanders headed by General Hau Pei-tsun, Premier Yu Guo-hwa, and Education Minister Lee Huan, was deeply distrustful of Lee Teng-hui and sought to block his accession to the KMT chairmanship and sideline him as a figurehead. At the KMT party congress of July 1988, Lee named 31 members of the Central Committee, 16 of whom were native Taiwanese: for the first time, the native Taiwanese held a majority in what was then a powerful policy-making body.
As he consolidated power during the early years of his presidency, Lee allowed his rivals within the KMT to occupy positions of influence: when Yu Guo-hwa retired as premier in 1989, he was replaced by Lee Huan, who was succeeded by Hau Pei-tsun in 1990. At the same time, Lee made a major reshuffle of the Executive Yuan, as he had did with the KMT Central Committee, replacing several elderly mainlanders with younger native Taiwanese, mostly of technical backgrounds.
Lee solidified his power by skillfully speaking of defending the party line, while emphasizing the global trends of reform. Lee and his allies used the pressure from the hardliners as a tool to work for developing the underlying Taiwanese localization movement.
In May 1991 Lee spearheaded a drive to eliminate the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion, laws put in place following the KMT arrival in 1949 that suspended the democratic functions of the government. He was replaced by Lien Chan, then an ally of Lee and the first native Taiwanese to hold the premiership.
Lee's June 1995 visit to Cornell University sparked the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis. The PRC conducted a series of missile tests in the waters surrounding Taiwan and other military maneuvers off the coast of Fujian as a response to what it saw as provocative moves by Lee in attempting to "split the motherland." Another set of tests days before the 1996 presidential election were intended to intimidate the Taiwanese electorate to not vote for Lee.
In March 23, 1996, Lee became the first popularly elected president of the ROC with 54% of the popular vote. Lee was accused by supporters within his party and by supporters of James Soong for purposely splitting the vote by running the uncharismatic Lien instead of the popular Soong, who was subsequently expelled from the KMT for launching an independent campaign. Protests in front of the KMT headquarters in Taipei led Lee to resign as KMT Chairman on March 24, 2000. Since Lee Teng-hui's expulsion from the KMT he has confirmed some of the earlier accusations by aligning himself strongly with KMT's ideological opposite, becoming a radical Taiwan independence activist.
Taiwan localization movement
Lee Teng-hui, during his term as president, supported the Taiwanese localization movement. Lee, conversely, sought to turn Taiwan into a center rather than an appendage, a shift that was widely supported in Taiwan.
Lee presided over the democratization of Taiwanese society and government in the late-1980s and early-1990s. During his presidency, Lee was followed by persistent suspicions that he secretly supported Taiwan independence and that he was intentionally sabotaging the Kuomintang. The former suspicion was proven true by Lee's behavior after his Presidency, which led to his expulsion from the Kuomintang and subsequently becoming the spiritual leader of the strongly pro-independence Taiwan Solidarity Union.
Lee's positions
Since resigning the chairman of KMT, Lee has actively campaigned on behalf of pan-green coalition candidates and has actively opposed candidates of his former party, who took pro-unification positions, during the presidential elections.
Lee has publicly stated that he supports changing the name of the country from the Republic of China to the Republic of Taiwan and opposes increased economic ties with mainland China.
Lee has also stated that he believes that Taiwan cannot avoid being assimilated into the People's Republic of China unless it completely rejects a Chinese identity, and that he believes that it is essential that Taiwanese unite and develop a unified identity other than the Chinese one.
During the 2004 Presidential campaign, President Chen Shui-bian publicly campaigned with Lee Teng-hui and developed a campaign platform, including a call for a new constitution adopted by referendum, which could be interpreted as an opportunity to make the symbolic changes which Lee supports. There was a widespread worry, especially in the United States and in the People's Republic of China that Chen would be supportive of Lee's positions, a belief which was reinforced by Lee's own actions while President and by Lee's public statements that Chen Shui-bian agreed with him. It is believed that this rebuke in part intended to challenge the notion, which Lee had advanced, that American support of Taiwan was unconditional. After his close election in March 2004, Chen has quietly distanced himself from Lee, by explicitly stating that Chen's constitutional reforms will not include a rename of the ROC and by stating a desire to establish greater economic links with Mainland China.
Many people from the pan blue coalition have called Lee a traitor for switching sides. Many believe that Lee purposely masterminded the transfer of power to Chen Shui-bian and the Democratic Progressive Party from behind the scenes.
Japanese connection
Lee has strong ties with Japan, and was criticized as such. Lee's older brother died serving in the Japanese Imperial Navy in WWII and is listed in Yasukuni shrine. Despite Taiwan's history of Japanese colonization from 1895 to 1945, Lee has never tried to hide his pro-Japan sentiment.
Lee also tried repeatedly to assure the public that Japan will support Taiwan were Taiwan to announce her sovereignty, a stance not held by most political observers.
User Comments Add a comment…