Lee Teng-hui

Lee Teng-hui 李登輝
Lee Teng-hui (2004) on right
President of the Republic of China
In office 13 January 1988 – 20 May 2000
Vice President	Li Yuan-tsu Lien Chan
Preceded by	Chiang Ching-kuo
Succeeded by	Chen Shui-bian
Vice President of the Republic of China
In office 20 May 1984 – 13 January 1988
President	Chiang Ching-kuo
Preceded by	Hsieh Tung-ming
Succeeded by	Li Yuan-tsu
Chairman of the Kuomintang
In office 27 July 1988 – 24 March 2000 Acting： 13 January 1988 – 27 July 1988
Preceded by	Chiang Ching-kuo
Succeeded by	Lien Chan
Governor of Taiwan Province
In office 5 December 1981 – 20 May 1984
Preceded by	Lin Yang-kang
Succeeded by	Chiu Chuang-huan
Mayor of Taipei
In office 9 June 1978 – 5 December 1981
Preceded by	Lin Yang-kang
Succeeded by	Shao En-hsin
Minister without portfolio
In office 1 June 1972 – 1 June 1978
Premier	Chiang Ching-kuo
Personal details
Born	(1923-01-15) 15 January 1923 Sanzhi, New Taipei, Taiwan (Taihoku Prefecture, Japan at that time)
Nationality	Republic of China
Political party	Independent(2001–present)
Other political affiliations	Communist Party of China(1947–1948) Kuomintang(1971–2001)
Spouse(s)	Tseng Wen-hui (m. 1949)
Alma mater	National Taiwan University Iowa State University Cornell University (PhD)
Religion	Presbyterian

Lee Teng-hui
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	李登輝
Simplified Chinese	李登辉
Transcriptions Hakka - Romanization Lí Tên-Fî Mandarin - Hanyu Pinyin Lǐ Dēnghuī - Tongyong Pinyin Lǐ Denghuei - Wade–Giles Li³ Teng¹-hui¹ - Gwoyeu Romatzyh Lii Denghuei - MPS2 Lǐ Dēng-huēi - Bopomofo ㄌㄧˇ ㄉㄥ ㄏㄨㄟ Min - Hokkien POJ Lí Teng-hui - Taiwanese Romanization Lí Ting-hui Cantonese (Yue) - Jyutping lei5 dang1fai1
Japanese name
Kanji	巖里政男
Kana	いわさと まさお
Transcriptions - Romanization Iwasato Masao

This is a Chinese name; the family name is Li.

Lee Teng-hui (born 15 January 1923), sometimes called the "father of Taiwan's democracy", is a politician of the Republic of China (commonly known as Taiwan). He was the President of the Republic of China and Chairman of the Kuomintang (KMT) from 1988 to 2000. He presided over major advancements in democratic reforms including his own re-election which marked the first direct presidential election for the Republic of China. The first native Taiwanese to become ROC president and KMT chairman, Lee promoted the Taiwanese localization movement and led an aggressive foreign policy to gain diplomatic allies. Critics accused him of betraying the party he headed, secret support of Taiwanese independence, and involvement in corruption (black gold politics).

After leaving office Lee was expelled from the KMT for his role in founding the pro-independence Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU), which forms part of the Pan-Green Coalition alongside Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party. (Lee is considered the "spiritual leader" of the TSU.) Lee has been outspoken in support for Taiwanese independence though not necessarily a formal declaration.

Early life and education

Lee Teng-hui, junior high school student days wearing Kendo armor.

Lee Teng-hui (right) and his brother, Lee Teng-chin (left)

Lee was born to a Hakka family in the rural farming community of Sanzhi (Sanshi-kyō), Taipei County (Taihoku, now New Taipei City), Taiwan, which was then part of Japan. As a child, he often dreamed of traveling abroad, and became an avid stamp collector. Growing up during the Japanese rule of Taiwan, he developed a strong affinity for Japan. His father was a middle-level Japanese police aide, and his brother joined police academy and soon volunteered as for the Imperial Japanese Navy and died in Manila. Lee—one of only four Taiwanese students in Taipei high school class—graduated with honors and was given a scholarship to Japan's Kyoto Imperial University. During his school days, he learned kendo and bushido. A lifelong collector of books, Lee was heavily influenced by Japanese thinkers like Nitobe Inazo and Kitaro Nishida in Kyoto. In 1944 he too volunteered for service in the Imperial Japanese Army and became a second lieutenant officer of an anti-aircraft gun in Taiwan. He was ordered back to Japan in 1945 and participated in the clean-up after the great Tokyo firebombing of March 1945. Lee stayed in Japan after the surrender and graduated from Kyoto Imperial University in 1946.

After World War II, after the Republic of China took over Taiwan, Lee enrolled in the National Taiwan University, where in 1948 he earned a bachelor's degree in agricultural science. Lee joined the Communist Party of China (CPC) in September 1946, apparently briefly. He participated in the 228 Incident during this time. 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. In a 2002 interview Lee himself admitted that he had been a communist. In that same interview Lee said that he has strongly opposed communism for a long time because he understands the theory well and knows that it is doomed to fail. Lee stated that he joined the Communist out of hatred for 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 organization sponsored by the U.S. which aimed at modernizing Taiwan's agricultural system and at land reform. During this period, he also worked as an adjunct 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.

Lee encountered Christianity as a young man and in 1961 was baptised. For most of the rest of his political career, despite holding high office, Lee has made a habit of giving sermons at churches around Taiwan, mostly on apolitical themes of service and humility.

Lee speaks Mandarin, Taiwanese, English,^{[citation needed]} and Japanese. Lee speaks Japanese fluently. As of 1996 he is more proficient in Japanese than he is in Mandarin.

Rise to power

Shortly after returning to Taiwan, Lee joined the KMT in 1971 and was made a cabinet minister without portfolio responsible 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. Chiang sought to move more authority to the bensheng ren (residents on Taiwan before 1949 and their descendants) instead of continuing to promote waisheng ren (mainland Chinese immigrants who arrived in Taiwan after 1949 and their descendants) as his father had. President Chiang nominated Lee to become his Vice President. Lee was formally elected by the National Assembly in 1984.

Presidency

Chiang Ching-kuo died in January 1988 and Lee succeeded him as President. The "Palace Faction" of the KMT, a group of conservative mainlanders headed by General Hau Pei-tsun, Premier Yu Kuo-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 --bensheng ren: for the first time, bensheng ren 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 done with the KMT Central Committee, replacing several elderly waisheng ren with younger bensheng ren, mostly of technical backgrounds. Fourteen of these new appointees, like Lee, received PhDs in the United States. Prominent among the appointments were Lien Chan as foreign minister, and Shirley Kuo as finance minister.

1990 saw the arrival of the Wild Lily student movement on behalf of full democracy for Taiwan. Thousands of Taiwanese students demonstrated for democratic reforms. The demonstrations culminated in a sit-in demonstration by over 300,000 students at Memorial Square in Taipei. Students called for direct elections of the national president and vice president and for a new election for all legislative seats. On 21 March Lee welcomed some of the students to the Presidential Building. He expressed his support of their goals and pledged his commitment to full democracy in Taiwan. The moment is regarded by supporters of democracy in Taiwan as perhaps his finest moment in office. Gatherings recalling the student movement are regularly held around Taiwan every 21 March.

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 China 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.

The prospect of the first island-wide democratic election the next year, together with Lee's June 1995 visit to Cornell University, sparked the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis. The previous eight presidents and vice presidents of the ROC had been elected by the members of the National Assembly. For the first time the President of the ROC would be elected by majority vote of Taiwan's population. The People's Republic of China conducted a series of missile tests in the waters surrounding Taiwan and other military maneuvers off the coast of Fujian in response to what Communist Party leaders described as moves by Lee to "split the motherland." The PRC government launched another set of tests just days before the election, sending missiles over the island to express its dissatisfaction should the Taiwanese people vote for Lee. The military actions disrupted trade and shipping lines and caused a temporary dip in the Asian stock market. Ironically, the 1996 missile launches boosted support for Lee instead.

On 23 March 1996, Lee became the first popularly elected ROC president with 54% of the vote. Many people who worked or resided in other countries made special trips back to the island to vote. In addition to the president, the governor of Taiwan Province and the mayors of Taipei and Kaohsiung (as leaders of provincial level divisions they were formerly appointed by the president) became popularly elected.

Lee, in an interview that same year, expressed his view that a special state-to-state relationship existed between Taiwan and mainland China that all negotiations between the two sides of the Strait needed to observe.

Lee, observing constitutional term limits he had helped enact, stepped down from the presidency at the end of his term in 2000. That year Democratic Progressive Party candidate Chen Shui-bian won the national election with 39% of the vote in a three-way race. Chen's victory marked an end to KMT rule and the first peaceful transfer of power in Taiwan's new democratic system.

Supporters of rival candidates Lien Chan and James Soong accused Lee of setting up the split in the KMT that had enabled Chen to win. Lee had promoted the uncharismatic Lien over the popular Soong as the KMT candidate. Soong had subsequently run as an independent and was expelled from the KMT. The number of votes garnered by both Soong and Lien would have accounted for approximately 60% of the vote while individually the candidates placed behind Chen. Protests were staged in front of the KMT party headquarters in Taipei. Fuelling this anger were the persistent suspicions following Lee throughout his presidency that he secretly supported Taiwan independence and that he was intentionally sabotaging the Kuomintang from above. Lee resigned his chairmanship on 24 March and was expelled as a party member in December of the same year. KMT officials expressed dissatisfaction with efforts to "localize" the KMT and his tacit support of the new Chen administration.

Since leaving office Lee and the new party he went on to found, the TSU, have generally supported "green" causes in Taiwan. Lee continues to travel, make speeches, campaign for TSU candidates, and offer independent-minded commentary on Taiwan politics. Lee Teng-Hui University in Taiwan is named after him.

Taiwanization

Lee Teng-hui, during his term as president, supported Taiwanization. The Taiwanization movement has its roots in the home rule and independence groups founded during the Japanese era and sought to put emphasis on Taiwan as the center of people's lives as opposed to 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. Taiwan was often relegated to a backwater province of China in the KMT-supported history books. People were discouraged from studying local Taiwanese customs, which were to be replaced by mainstream Chinese customs. Lee sought to turn Taiwan into a center rather than an appendage. This shift was widely supported in Taiwan and found expression in Taiwanese literature movement. He further stated that he believed a Chinese identity and a Taiwanese identity were ultimately incompatible, a notion controversial in the KMT, even among those members who generally supported Taiwanization.

After the presidency

Since resigning the chairmanship of the KMT, Lee has campaigned actively on behalf of pan-green coalition candidates and opposed candidates of his former party who took pro-unification positions during the 2004 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 supported the Name Rectification Campaigns in Taiwan and proposed changing the name of the country from the Republic of China to the Republic of Taiwan. He generally opposes unlimited economic ties with mainland China, though he supports trade.

Lee has also stated that he believes that Taiwan cannot avoid being assimilated into the People's Republic of China unless it completely rejects its historical Chinese identity and that he believes that it is essential that Taiwanese unite and develop a unified and separate 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 the strategy will trigger an invasion by the Chinese government and the notion that Taiwan benefits economically by developing economic ties with China. He argues the People's Republic of China is a paper tiger and both its military strength and economic strength have been far overestimated. Lee 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 obliged to back down. He also believes that the PRC economy is doomed to collapse and that unlimited integration with the PRC economy, on the part of Taiwan or any country, 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 concern 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 concern shared between the United States and the People's Republic of China was the possible unilateral change of the cross-strait status quo by President Chen, leading 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 was intended to challenge the notion, which Lee had advanced, that American support of Taiwan was unconditional. After his close election in March 2004, Chen moved to distance himself from Lee, by stating explicitly that his regime's constitutional reforms would not rename "The Republic of China" to Taiwan. The difference in the two leader's positions was further highlighted by Chen's stated intent to establish greater economic links with China.

In February 2007 Lee shocked the media when he announced that he has never backed Taiwanese independence, when he was widely seen as the spiritual leader of the movement. Lee also said that he supported opening up trade and tourism with China, a position he had opposed before. Lee later explained that Taiwan already enjoys de facto independence and that political maneuvering over details of expressing it is counterproductive. He maintains that "Taiwan should seek 'normalization' by changing its name and amending its constitution."

Japanese support

Lee enjoys a warm relationship with the people and culture of Japan. Lee often assures Taiwanese audiences that Japan will support Taiwan if it formally announces its Taiwan independence. Taiwan was colonized by Japan from 1895 to 1945 and natives of the island who grew up in that period, such as Lee, attended schools where Japanese language, songs, and stories were taught. Lee's father was a low-level Japanese police aide; his older brother died serving in the Imperial Japanese Navy in World War II and is listed in the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. During his youth Lee had a Japanese name, Iwasato Masao (巖里政男). Lee speaks fondly of his upbringing and his teachers and has been welcomed in visits to Japan since leaving office. Lee's admiration and enjoyment of all things Japanese has been the target of criticism from both the Pan-Green Coalition and Pan-Blue Coalition in Taiwan, as well as from mainland China, due to the anti-Japanese sentiment formed during and after World War II.^{[citation needed]}

In August 2001, Lee said of Junichiro Koizumi's controversial visit to Yasukuni shrine, "It is natural for a premier of a country to commemorate the souls of people who lost their lives for their country".

In 2002, Lee remarked "the Senkaku Islands are the territory of Japan."

In a May 2007 trip to Japan, Lee visited the Yasukuni Shrine to pay tribute to his older brother. Controversy rose because the Shrine also enshrines World War II Class A criminals among the other soldiers.

During the 2012 China anti-Japanese demonstrations, on 13 September 2012, Lee remarked "The Senkaku islands were Japanese territory in the past and are still so at present."

Indictment

On 30 June 2011, Lee, along with former KMT financier Liu Tai-Ying were indicted on graft and money-laundering charges and accused of embezzling US$7.79 million in public funds.

Cancer

In late 2011, Lee underwent surgery to remove colon adenocarcinoma, the most common form of colon cancer. Doctors are hopeful the stage II tumor was detected early.

See also

• President of the Republic of China
• History of the Republic of China
• Politics of the Republic of China
• Special state-to-state relations
• Kuomintang

References

• Wang, Qingxin Ken. "Japan's Balancing Act in the Taiwan Strait." Security Dialogue. September 2000. Volume 31, No. 3. p. 337-342. DOI: 10.1177/0967010600031003007. Available at SAGE Journals.

Further reading

• Wang, Qingxin Ken. "Taiwan in Japan's Relations with China and the United States after the Cold War." "Taiwan in Japan's Relations with China and the United States after the Cold War." Pacific Affairs. Autumn (northern hemisphere) 2000. Volume 73, No. 3. p. 353-373. Available at JStor - Discusses Lee Teng-hui's relationship with Japan at p. 358

External links

• Biography from Office of the President, ROC
• Friends of Lee Teng-Hui Association
• Lee Teng-Hui Academy
• America and Taiwan, 1943–2004
• Cornell University Magazine Profile
• [1]
• [2]

Political offices
Preceded by Lin Yang-kang	Mayor of Taipei 1978–1981	Succeeded by Shao En-hsin
	Governor of Taiwan Province 1981–1984	Succeeded by Chiu Chuang-huan
Preceded by Hsieh Tung-ming	Vice President of the Republic of China 1984–1988	Succeeded by Lee Yuan-tsu
Preceded by Chiang Ching-kuo	President of the Republic of China 1988–2000	Succeeded by Chen Shui-bian
Party political offices
Preceded by Chiang Ching-kuo	Chairman of the Kuomintang 1988–2000	Succeeded by Lien Chan