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Template:Chinese name Lee Teng-hui (simplified Chinese: 李登辉; traditional Chinese: 李登輝; pinyin: Lǐ Dēnghuī) born January 15, 1923) is a politician in the Republic of China (ROC). He was the President of the Republic of China and Chairman of the Kuomintang (KMT) from 1988 to 2000. His tenure was marked with major extensions to the democratic reforms initiated by Chiang Ching-kuo. He also promoted the Taiwan localization movement and led an aggressive foreign policy to gain diplomatic allies. His critics accused him of black gold politics and being a secret supporter of Taiwan independence who was trying to undermine the party he headed. After leaving office, Lee has confirmed some of these accusations by emerging as a radical Taiwan independence activist, and currently serves as the "spiritual leader" of the pro-independence Taiwan Solidarity Union.

Early life and education

Lee was born to a Hakka family in the rural farming community of Sanchih, near Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China. As a child, he often dreamed of traveling abroad, and became an avid stamp collector. Growing up under Japanese colonial rule, he developed a very strong affinity for Japan. His father was a low-level Japanese police aide and his brother served and died in Japanese Imperial Navy. Lee—one of only four Taiwanese students in his high school class—graduated with honors and was given a scholarship to Japan's Kyoto Imperial University.

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. He participated in the 228 Incident during this time. 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. Lee himself admitted that he was a communist in a 2002 interview, but declined to comment whether he was a traitor. 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. During this period, he also worked as an adjuct professor in the Department of Economics at National Taiwan University and taught at the Graduate School of East Asian Studies at National Chengchi University.

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. In 1981, he became governor of Taiwan Province and made further irrigation improvements.

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. Lee was formally elected by the National Assembly in 1984.

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. With the help of James Soong—himself a member of the Palace Faction—who quieted the hardliners with the famous plea "Each day of delay is a day of disrespect to Ching-kuo," Lee was allowed to ascend to the chairmanship unobstructed. 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. Fourteen of these new appointees, like Lee, received Ph.D.s in the United States. Most notable among these appointments were Lien Chan, the new foreign minister, and Shirley Kuo, the finance minister.

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. Lee used methods under the veil of "pragmatism" to sideline Hau and his backers in the face of the opposition DPP.

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. In December 1991 the original members of the Legislative Yuan, elected to represent mainland constituencies in 1948, were forced to resign and new elections were held to apportion more seats to the bensheng ren. The elections forced Hau Pei-tsun from the premiership, a position he was given in exchange for his tacit support of Lee. 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. Though these tests disrupted trade and shipping lines and cause the stock market to fall, it aroused anger among the Taiwanese and boosted Lee's popularity.

In March 23, 1996, Lee became the first popularly elected president of the ROC with 54% of the popular vote. The previous eight ROC Presidents and Vice Presidents were elected by the deputies of the National Assembly. And these deputies, under the terms of the provisional martial law or "Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion", were usually appointed by the President of ROC. It was in that year, he had the interview of Special state-to-state relations which angered China.

In March 18, 2000 presidential election, Democratic Progressive Party candidate Chen Shui-bian won with 39% of the vote, making an end to KMT rule. 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. He was expelled from the party in December of the same year for his inability to lead the KMT to victory. 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. The Taiwanese localization movement has its roots in the home rule groups founded during the Japanese era and sought to put emphasis on Taiwan as the center of people's lives as opposed Mainland China or Japan. During the Chiang regime, China was promoted as the center of an ideology that would build a Chinese national outlook in a people who had once considered themselves Japanese subjects. Under this ideology, Taiwan was seen as a place for mainlanders to resent as they waited for the re-conquest of the Maoist mainland. Taiwan was often relegated to a backwater province of China in the KMT-supported history books. People were discouraged from studying Taiwan and old customs were to be replaced by "Chinese" customs. Lee, conversely, sought to turn Taiwan into a center rather than an appendage, a shift that was widely supported in Taiwan. However, he has stated that his actions were also based on the premise that a Chinese identity and a Taiwanese identity are ultimately incompatible, a notion that is very controversial on the island, even among supporters of localization.

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. He has stated a number of political positions and ideas which he did not mention while he was President, but which he appeared to have privately maintained.

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. The latter two positions conflict with the positions of the ruling party, supported by the more moderate supporters of Taiwan sovereignty, and also conflicts with incumbent R.O.C. President Chen Shui-bian. These differences in positions have been played down in the public.

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. Furthermore, in reference to Mainlanders, he believes that to be truly Taiwanese, one must assume a "New Taiwanese" identity.

He dismisses both the notion that this strategy will trigger a war with the PRC and the notion that Taiwan benefits economically by developing economic ties with the PRC. His argument is that the PRC is a paper tiger and that both its military and economic strength have been far overestimated. He asserts that when presented with a united and assertive Taiwan, Taiwan will receive support from the international community and also from the United States; and that the PRC will be forced to back down. He also believes that the PRC economy is doomed to collapse and therefore integrating Taiwan into the PRC economy is unwise.

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.

The shared worry between the U.S. and the P.R.C. about the possible unilateral change of cross-strait status quo by President Chen has led to a public rebuke of Chen from the United States President George W. Bush in December 2003. 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. To them Lee was a spy and a traitor all along his political career. He is the current spiritual leader of his political party, the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU). The TSU is considered a minor party in the politics of the Republic of China on Taiwan, in contrast to its larger Democratic Progressive Party ally.

Japanese connection

Lee has strong ties with Japan, and was criticized as such. His father was a low-level Japanese police aide. Lee's older brother died serving in the Japanese Imperial Navy in WWII and is listed in Yasukuni shrine. Lee went under the Japanese name Iwasato Masao (岩里政男) during his youth. Despite Taiwan's history of Japanese colonization from 1895 to 1945, Lee has never tried to hide his pro-Japan sentiment. He spoke fondly of his Japanese education and upbringing. 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. Most supporters of the Pan-Blue political spectrum view Lee as a traitor to the Chinese race when at one point he stated that he was a Japanese (Imperial) citizen when he was a youth, implying his part Japanese heritage. However, most supporters of the Pan-Green Coalition disagree, since most of them do not consider themselves to be Chinese. This has started a reassessment of the time of Japanese rule in Taiwan, with an undertone of conflict between those Taiwanese who lived under Japanese Imperial rule before the Nationalist takeover and those Taiwanese from the mainland who focus on actions of the Imperial Japanese Army during WWII. When Japan capitulated in 1945, Lee Teng-hui expressed deep sadness and reportedly cried.

He is also known for his post-retirement eccentric behavior, such as participating as a cosplay of Heihachi Edajima (江田島平八 Edajima Heihachi), a hawkish principal of a boarding school in the Japanese manga Sakigake!! Otokojuku (魁!!男塾) (Shonen Jump); this was used as an advertisement on his personal website and "school" (輝！李塾) beginning in late 2004.

This manga comic was a comedy centred on a fictitious reform school for contemporary boys, modelled under the Imperial Japanese Army. Lee Teng-hui's costumed role made him one of the highest profile people ever to publicly cosplay.

Trivia

• Lee speaks (in order of fluency) Taiwanese, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, and English (decreasing fluency since finishing his PhD thesis at Cornell).

See also

• Politics of China
• Politics of the Republic of China
• History of the Republic of China
• Special state-to-state relations
• Know Taiwan

References

External links

• Biography from Office of the President, ROC
• Friends of Lee Teng-Hui Association
• Lee Teng-Hui Academy

Template:PresidentROCTaiwan

• 1923 births
• Hakka people
• Living people
• Politicians of the Republic of China