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Lee Teng-hui and Taiwan’s Quest for Identity

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Lee Teng-hui and Taiwan’s Quest for Identity Shih-shan Henry Tsai

LEE TENG-HUI AND TAIWAN’S QUEST FOR IDENTITY

© Shih-shan Henry Tsai, 2005. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in 2005 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 1–4039–7056–4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tsai, Shih-shan Henry. Lee Teng-hui and Taiwan’s quest for identity / by Shih-shan Henry Tsai. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–7056–4 1. Lee, Teng-hui. 2. Presidents—Taiwan—Biography. 3. Taiwan— Politics and government—1988–2000. I. Title. DS799.849.L44T73 2005 951.24⬘905⬘092—dc22

2005040469

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: September 2005 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

To the memory of my father Tsai A-tsou 1911–2000 and my mother Li Kuei-chih 1916–1993


Contents

List of Tables Illustrations of Maps and Figures Preface Acknowledgments 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Taiwan at the Birth of Lee Teng-hui The Japanese Education of a Taiwanese Economist Clenched in the Jaws of War and Massacre: Lee Teng-hui’s Sorrowful Years, 1944–47 The Making of a Scholar Lee Teng-hui’s Conversion to Christianity and Kuomintang First Taste of Power Governor and Vice President, 1981–87 The Presidency of Lee Teng-hui, 1988–93 Leading Taiwan to Democratic Consolidation Epilogue

Notes Glossary of Chinese and Japanese Characters Bibliography Index

ix x xi xvii 1 27 47 69 91 111 137 163 193 217 225 249 253 263


List of Tables

1.1. 6.1. 7.1. 8.1.

Japanese governors-general in Taiwan, 1895–1945 Employment pattern in Taiwan, 1953–83 Vital statistics of Taiwan Provincial Government Statistical breakup of leading party, government and military personnel in 1988 8.2. Makeup of military leaders prior to Lee Teng-hui’s presidency

10 119 139 176 176

Illustrations

Maps 1.1

Lee Teng-hui’s Hometown

20 Figures

1. Lee Teng-hui’s family picture, taken in 1943 (courtesy of Lee Teng-hui) 2. Lee Teng-hui’s wedding (courtesy of Lee Teng-hui) 3. A bust of George Leslie Mackay in downtown Tamsui (photo by S. Henry Tsai) 4. Washington newspaper reporting Chinese exploitation of Taiwan in 1946 5. Lee Teng-hui bowing to Chiang Ching-kuo (courtesy of ROC Presidential Office) 6. Lee Teng-hui golfing with George Bush (courtesy of ROC Presidential Office) 7. Lee Teng-hui shaking hand with Nelson Mandela (courtesy of ROC Presidential Office) 8. Lee Teng-hui chatting with Colin Powell (courtesy of ROC Presidential Office) 9. Presidential Order to end civil war against Chinese Communists, dated April 30, 1991 (photo by S. Henry Tsai from ROC Presidential Office archives)

Preface

O

n March 23, 1996, an editorial of the People’s Daily, the print-media organ of the Chinese Communist Party, vilified the 73-year-old Lee Teng-hui as a “separatist” who had spurned the motherland, a “trickster” in league with the United States, and a man whose policies “have pushed Taiwan’s people toward the abyss of catastrophe.” On this same day, 14 million eligible voters in Taiwan, undaunted by China’s week-long war games and menacing missiles, freely cast their ballots at 12,597 polling stations throughout the island-nation and overwhelmingly elected Lee as their president. With his landslide victory and popular mandate, the Taiwaneseborn Lee has since repeatedly (and explicitly) refuted China’s purported claim over Taiwan. In fact, in his inauguration address, Lee declared Taiwan “a sovereign state,” vowing to keep it fully independent of the control of foreign powers. This proclamation constituted a radical departure from the explicit policy of his predecessors, Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo, who, after fleeing from the Communists in 1949, intended to use Taiwan only as a bastion from which the Nationalist government would eventually recover mainland China.1 Lee subsequently dismantled Taiwan’s provincial style of government and, in an interview with Deutsche Welle Radio of Germany on July 9, 1999, further demanded a “special state-to-state” diplomatic apparatus by which future China–Taiwan negotiations would be conducted.2 By declaring Taiwan a “sovereign state,” Lee Teng-hui clearly wanted to promote a form of “state nationalism,” which, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, had begun to dominate Europe with the proliferation of new sovereign states throughout the 1990s. Lee realized that the Chinese had so long accustomed to their millennial imperial power structure and, since the turn of the twentieth-century, been stimulated by the modern sentiment of nationalism. Nevertheless, he did not see Chinese culture as holistic, nor would he accept a single view of Chinese history. Thus, Lee wanted to apply the idea of culturalism and treat China as “a complete civilization comparable

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to Western Christendom, within which nation-states like France and England became political subunits that shared their common culture.”3 In Lee’s own scheme of historical evolution, “state nationalism” is a well-accepted strain of nationalism—such as the recently established sovereign states in Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine—and should not be interpreted as purely “ethnic nationalism.”4 Nor is it based on cultural differences in philosophy, art, literature, and religion, but instead on political structures and the unchanging realities of the island’s geography and folkways, that is, to distinguish Taiwan’s maritime-oriented constitutional democracy from continental China’s all-encompassing Communist totalitarian power structure. While Beijing may not have fully appreciated Lee’s new version of nationalism, the effects of Lee’s design of “special state-to-state” for China–Taiwan relationship are immediate, perpetual and emotional. Lee’s key strength was an ability to shrewdly read—and shape—domestic public opinion and to galvanize people to follow his cause. Despite the fact that most Taiwanese are ethnically Chinese and are thus generally imbued with varying degrees of Sinic culture, they have been separated politically, socially, economically, and even linguistically from their mainland Chinese cousins since 1895 (aside from four wartime years between 1945 and 1949). In fact, on May 25, 1895, before Japan took over Taiwan from the Ch’ing government, the islanders established the Taiwan Republic, hoping to attract European or American support. Even though the Republic was short-lived, this history “represents a historical starting point for the idea of a discrete Taiwanese national identity,” as it “symbolically and legally marks the original separation of Taiwan from China.”5 Over the decades, Taiwan’s separate national identity grew even stronger and ever more discernible, partly due to Taiwan’s democratization, increasing freedom and economic success, and partly due to Communist China’s regrettable record of human rights violations and her constant threats to “liberate” Taiwan by force. As of 2004, China arrayed approximately 600 missiles along the southern coast of China, targeting at Taiwan. Lee Teng-hui’s efforts to inspire a political consciousness of “state nationalism” seems to have won the support of the majority of ethnic Hoklo and Hakka Taiwanese, as well as of the aboriginal inhabitants of the island. However, a high percentage of “wai-sheng-jen,” or mainlander Chinese, who fled to Taiwan with the Nationalist government in 1949, continue to have deep personal and emotional links with China and generally neither trusted Lee personally, nor embraced his political agenda. In order to ease Taiwan’s conflicting multiple identities—Taiwanese versus mainlander Chinese, or independence versus unification—Lee Teng-hui explored the ambiguities of a new identity scheme, epitomized by the phrase “the New Taiwanese.” Lee’s poly-ethnic, multicultural program clearly distinguishes his brand of

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“state nationalism” from traditional “ethnic nationalism.” The all-embracing concept of the “New Taiwanese” encompassed all island inhabitants, regardless of their ethnicity or their time of arrival. This new identity came into vogue in the later 1990s when the Hong Kong-born Ma Ying-jeou proclaimed himself a “New Taiwanese” and defeated the popular Taiwanese-born Chen Shui-bian in the 1998 Taipei mayoral election. Lee Teng-hui’s concept of the “New Taiwanese,” however, was long in the making and can be just as fickle. When Lee first took over as President of Taiwan, he seemed to be, like his predecessors, an enthusiastic supporter of unification with China. But after his retirement, he underwent what psychoanalyst would call “a political atonement” by relentlessly denouncing the Kuomintang as an “exogenous regime” and by vigorously promoting an independent Taiwan.6 In a speech in January 2003, Lee said that “the Taiwanese have sold their body and soul to exogenous regimes for too long and it was time to take them back. Taiwan must belong to the Taiwanese.”7 Statements like these reflect Lee’s unmaking of his “Chineseness,” but were anathema on Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Furthermore, Lee has admitted that, as a young man, he felt more Japanese than Chinese, having grown up competing with his peers at Japanese-run schools, studying at Kyoto Imperial University, and serving in the Japanese army as a lieutenant. In short, the culturally hybrid Lee Teng-hui has been a man of many identities, and thus of many contradictions, considering himself first a Japanese, then a Chinese, and finally a Taiwanese. His personal story is at once microcosm and mirror of modern Taiwanese society, and this book is also the story of the making, unmaking, and remaking of Taiwan’s identity. The son of a small business proprietor in Sanchih—a small rural village near the Taipei suburb of Tamsui—Lee Teng-hui lived to witness almost the entirety of Taiwan’s modern historical development, from its status as a strategic Japanese island during World War II, to its entanglement in the Chinese civil war of the late 1940s, to the political, social, and economic transformations that have culminated in its current quest for a national identity. Lee also personifies Taiwan’s tradition of multicultural amalgamation—its long, continuous, and sometimes contentious melding of Chinese, Japanese, and Western cultures into a unique civil society. Therefore, the first two chapters of the book examines the geographical and historical background in which Lee grew up and also investigates to what extent Lee’s Japanese education was instrumental in the formation of his Weltanschauung—particularly, his views on China. After World War II, Lee returned to Taiwan and continued his college education at National Taiwan University, where he earned a B.A. degree in agricultural economics in 1949. Even though Lee was also educated at Iowa

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State University (1952–53), he never received a Master’s degree there as the media have falsely reported. But in 1968, at the age of 45, Lee earned his doctorate from Cornell University. A political survivor, Lee narrowly escaped the infamous 1947 massacre of the Taiwanese that began on February 28—the island’s major convulsion, as well as the so-called White Terror of the Chiang Kai-shek regime in the 1950s and 1960s. During these trying years, Lee Teng-hui, like his motherland Taiwan, suffered a great deal. However, his prolonged childhood illnesses, his brushes with death during World War II, and his fear and anguish in the interrogation rooms of the Taiwan Garrison Command (secret police) molded his patient, circumspect, and remarkably complex character. These ordeals also helped to deepen his thoughts, sharpen his instincts for survival, and stimulate his unpredictable nature. Chapters 3 and 4, therefore, provide a narrative of the most painful events in Taiwan’s history and elucidate how these events have influenced not only the evolving and often conflicting beliefs of Lee Teng-hui, but also the changing, multifaceted identities of the Taiwanese people. To facilitate the growth of industry, Chiang Kai-shek’s government focused its initial efforts on land reform, hoping thereby to establish an infrastructure that could meet the future demands of Taiwan’s planned economic expansion and social development. In 1972, with his credentials as an able technocrat who had made contributions to the modernization of Taiwan’s agricultural economy, the 49-year-old Lee Teng-hui, despite his checkered past as a World War II Japanese military officer and a Communist during his college years, gained entrance to the corridors of power as a token Taiwanese when he was made a “minister of state without portfolio.” After Chiang Kaishek’s death in 1975, his more pragmatic son, Chiang Ching-kuo, decided to relax the hitherto almost exclusive Chinese grip on power, gradually appointing an increasing number of native-born Taiwanese to higher positions in the government. Lee Teng-hui was named the mayor of Taipei in 1978, then governor of Taiwan and, finally, six years later, became Chiang Ching-kuo’s vice president. Lee succeeded the younger Chiang as the eighth President of the Republic of China upon the latter’s death in January 1988. He was then elected by the National Assembly in March 1990 to continue as president for a six-year term, finally receiving the electoral mandate directly from the people in 1996. Though an outspoken populist who frequently cited two sentences from the Chinese classic Book of History, “whatever the people desire, the realms must follow,” Lee ruled with authoritarian power he inherited from his predecessors. Chapters 5 and 6 consider the many faces of Lee Tenghui and analyze how he reinvented himself and remade his “Chineseness,” as well as follow the circuitous path by which Lee Teng-hui transformed himself from a technocrat into a statesman, and from a Marxist to a Christian.

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Lee’s ascension to the presidency of Taiwan was as politically astounding as it was historically significant. Before he reached the age of 65, Lee had been something of a political mystery, viewed by most as merely a caretaker who would soon be superseded by the rise of yet another mainlander “strong man” in Taiwanese politics. But Lee proved to be a capable, adroit, determined, and well-schooled politician in his own right. Having little political base within the Kuomintang and practically no influence over the military, Lee methodically created a moderate reformist block within the ruling party and navigated through the treacherous political waters with the combination of pragmatism, wisdom, and an artist’s prescience. His uncanny ability to imagine what could happen in the future and his dogged determination to succeed not only guided Taiwan’s smooth transition to democracy, but also helped spur an economic “miracle” on the island, making Taiwan a respectable member of the world community. However, his record as the leader of Taiwan was not spotless, as his administration was tainted by several corruption scandals. His inner circle was thought by some to be too closely tied to business tycoons of tarnished reputation and even mafia elements, and he himself was criticized for being domineering and a spendthrift, but not always choosing his ministers from among the most honorable and talented people. Chapters 7 and 8 discuss the island’s evolving polity and economy and how it helped Lee to reshape the state and society of Taiwan. Lee Teng-hui turned 80 on January 15, 2003, and the shadows were gathering for his Japanese-educated generation. He saw his career drawing to its close and was haunted by his failure to engage the Taiwan-oriented culture. After his retirement from the presidency, Lee Teng-hui could have easily become Taiwan’s “Political Buddha” by helping to sand down the rough edges of conflicting political creeds. But instead of staying above the fray of party strife, he chose to break with the Kuomintang and was instrumental in founding a new pro-independence party, the Taiwan Solidarity Union, on August 11, 2001. By doing so, he chose, in effect, to be the political version of a mere “Local Earth God,” or Tu-te-kung in Taiwanese. (Local Earth Gods can be found in every Taiwanese community; their temples are usually small, but they are close to the grassroots and intimately involved in the people’s lives.) In essence, Lee has become a stalwart ally of the Democratic Progressive Party, the current ruling party, which also champions Taiwanese independence, state nationalism, or, minimally, some form of self-determination by plebiscite. Thus, though remaining an active force in Taiwanese politics, Lee has also become an increasingly controversial figure. After Lee’s retirement, he had the time to reexamine and review Taiwan’s culture in the wake of its heavy reliance on Chinese culture. Because it is difficult to jettison the experiences of one’s formative life, Lee Teng-hui retains

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a nostalgia for Japan’s culture and history. But his increasing emphasis on bolstering cultural links with Japan has offended not only the Chinese on the mainland, but also the mainlander Chinese in Taiwan and elsewhere. His writings and public statements sometimes give the impression that he is happy to wear the withering flower of prewar Japan and ride forth as a modernday samurai. Ultimately, though, it is Lee’s hard-line stance on Taiwan independence and his bold concept of state nationalism that have angered the Communist Chinese and frightened a substantial number of the Taiwanese, many of whom simply want to maintain the island’s “status quo” and do not wish to provoke any conflicts with China. They also worry that Taiwan has become a quarrelsome rather than unified nation and that state nationalism, if manipulated by willful people, could easily be derailed and transmuted into the virulent ethnic nationalism that characterizes Northern Ireland and the post–World War I Balkan cauldron of nations of Austro-Hungarian Empire. Whether or not Lee Teng-hui can continue to wield significant influence in Taiwan remains to be seen. However, during the last two decades, Lee has forged the consciousness of Taiwan as did Nelson Mandela for South Africa, created an identity for Taiwan as did Lee Kuan Yew for Singapore, and enabled the Taiwanese to imagine an independent state free of foreign control as did Jose Rizal for the Philippines in the 1890s. Heeding the Chinese proverb, “a person’s legacy cannot be assessed until the person is nailed inside the coffin,” the final chapters analyze the dynamics by which Lee transformed democracy from a notion into a norm in contemporary Taiwanese political life, and from the harmonious landscape into the raging debates over the future relations with China. They also analyze the factors that have caused Lee to make a 180-degree volte-face both politically and personally, reinventing himself as a born-again native son of Taiwan, and allowing him at last to speak out from his heart of hearts and to be totally honest with himself, with his God, and with his people.

Acknowledgments

I

initially conceived of writing a book about the life and career of Lee Teng-hui in 1996 when Lee won a landslide victory in Taiwan’s first direct popular election of a president. Because I was deeply involved in completing my Perpetual Happiness: The Ming Emperor Yongle (University of Washington Press, 2001), I had to put the Lee project on the backburner. Then, in one of his Christmas greeting letters, Harry J. Lamley asked me if I had forgotten about my plans to write an account of Taiwan’s emerging national consciousness, as told through the biography of one of the central agents in that history. Even though this book has taken a number of twists and turns over its nine-year gestation, I hope I have not disappointed Harry, America’s pioneer Taiwan scholar. Throughout years of research for this project, I am indebted to Taiwan’s Academia Sinica and Ministry of Education for making a wide range of primary and secondary sources available to me. I benefit from the works of fellow Taiwan scholars who have done detailed research in various aspects of Taiwan history and society, in particular Chen I-te (Edward), Ramon H. Myers, Thomas B. Gold, Tsai Hui-yu (Caroline), Jay Taylor, George H. Kerr, and John F. Copper. I wish to acknowledge my debt to my younger brother Wen-chi, Mr. Hsu Teng-kung, and my student Ho Min-chang (Anthony) for arranging and facilitating my interviews with Lee Teng-hui and for providing copies of photos that are included in the book as illustrations. My son Rocky took time out from his busy law practice to copy-edit the first draft of the manuscript, and in doing so, to exhibit his genuine filial affection. I am grateful to June Teufel Dreyer, who spent a winter break reading the entire manuscript, and who provided me with many invaluable suggestions and insights regarding prominent Taiwanese and American officials. I have been fortunate in receiving research assistance and advice from colleagues and friends both in Taiwan and in America. My journalist friend Wang Ching-hung ( James) regularly called me from his station in

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Washington, DC and told me wonderful anecdotes about Taiwanese diplomats and officials accredited in the United States. Wang Jung-wen, publisher and author, shared his views with me on the politically driven “new Taiwan historiography” that has emerged in Taiwan in recent years. Other colleagues and scholars also helped me and encouraged me at various stages in this book’s preparation. They include Liu Ts’ui-jung, Chen Chiu-kun, Chuang Ying-chang, Huang Fu-san, Chen Tzu-yu, and Chen Yung-fa (all at Academia Sinica), Jina You, Hoyt Purvis, Chuck Adams, Donald Lamm, Jason Alter, and Beth Juhl. I also wish to acknowledge my debt of gratitude to Ing-chang Jong for helping me with Chinese computer software, Tatsuya Fukushima for proofreading Japanese transliterations, and my research assistant Yulia Uryadova for making hundreds of trips to the library on my behalf. I want to thank Taiwan’s Yuan-liou Publishing Company for permission to use photographs of several items from its Taiwan history collection. Taiwan’s Human Rights Education Foundation provided significant historical documents relating to the Green Island political prison camp, and Tanya ZanishBelcher photocopied valuable materials from Iowa State University Special Collections. I am also grateful to the Institute of Taiwan History at Academia Sinica for endowing me with a lectureship during the spring of 2004. Last but not least, I want to thank my wife Hsui-chuan and my daughter Shirley for their patience, unstinting support, and love during the course of my writing this book.

CHAPTER 1

Taiwan at the Birth of Lee Teng-hui

O

n the eve of Mother’s Day, May 11, 2002, some 20,000 Taiwanese held a parade in Taipei, urging every person who lived on the island to honor their motherland—Taiwan. Before the parade got started, the organizers of the parade read a statement issued by the 79-year-old Lee Teng-hui, former president of the Republic of China. It read: “Our mother is Taiwan, and we are the masters of Taiwan. For hundreds of years, our mother’s tolerance and kindness persevered and nurtured every generation of Taiwanese. Therefore, every one of us needs to have courage today and openly and loudly shout it out, ‘I am Taiwanese!’ ”1 For several centuries, Taiwan, or Formosa (meaning “beautiful island” in Portuguese), remained an autonomous entity, generally ignored by China, nor was it bound to the territorial claim of any country. In 1430, the Ming eunuch admiral Cheng Ho (ca. 1371–1435) sent to the Ming emperor an investigation report on the island, but created only a passing interest among court officials. One and a half centuries later (in 1582), a group of shipwrecked Portuguese sailors, on their way to Macao, sought refuge on the island’s southwest coast for six weeks, but did not set up any military or trade outposts there. The first known people to settle on the island were several tribes of Malayan–Austronesian extraction; by the early seventeenth century, the island’s population began to include some Japanese and a large number of emigrants from the Chinese provinces of Fukien and Kwangtung. Most of the estimated 30,000 to 50,000 immigrants, primarily fishermen and farmers, settled on the western coastal plains, which comprise roughly a fourth of the island’s land mass. (Taiwan is about the size of West Virginia, measures

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394 kilometers long and 142 kilometers wide, covering an area of 35,961 square kilometers.) In May 1626, a Spanish fleet in the Philippines set sail for northern Taiwan and, after occupying Keelung (Spanish called it La Santisima Trinidad), constructed a fort called San Salvador at the harbor. Two years later in 1628, the Spanish built another fort at Tamsui, which they called Fort Santo Domingo, to facilitate their occupation of northern Taiwan. During the next 16 years, the Spanish traders were busy mining the sulfur in the Taipei basin, while their Dominican missionaries enthusiastically propagated Catholicism, compiled a “Tamsui dictionary,” and taught Western medicine to the natives.2 In the meantime, Jan Pietersz Coen, the Dutch empire-builder who founded Batavia—today’s Jakarta—also claimed Taiwan as a colony. They built a military base on the Pescadores (meaning “fishermen” in Portuguese), an island group to the west of Taiwan known locally as Penghu. In hope of monopolizing the spice trade and controlling commerce of other prized products from Asia, the Dutch decided to evict all foreign entities from the island. The Chinese, who had made sporadic contacts with the natives of Taiwan but remained generally uninterested in the island, chose not to contest the Dutch claim over Taiwan. The Spanish, on the other hand, declared their resolve to defend their footholds in northern Taiwan. On August 24, 1642, the Dutch bombarded Fort Santo Domingo with heavy artillery and forced the Spaniards to abandon all claims to the island. After the Dutch captured the fort in September 1642, they celebrated their victory for eight days and proclaimed themselves the undisputed masters of Taiwan. In the ensuing years, the Dutch established Taiwan as one of their 19 main trading centers in Asia, exchanging Taiwan’s sugar and deerskin for Japanese silver and making impressive profits. The Dutch soon proceeded to rebuild Fort Santo Domingo with brick, stone, and unslaked lime so that it would become impregnable against any future attacks. The eight-foot thick walls were so well constructed that when the French bombarded the fort in 1884, the shells scarcely left a mark in the structure. The Dutch soon brought in European missionaries, notably Robertus Junius, to convert more than 6,000 islanders into Christianity and to reshape the island’s culture. They organized a semiautonomous local government called Landtadag, constructed Fort Zeelandia near Tainan in southern Taiwan, established Dutch and Latin schools in several communities, and also built a college. They also introduced such new crops as cabbage, beans, tomatoes, mangos, and chili peppers to Taiwan.3 However, the “Hollandization” of Taiwan came to an end in 1661 when they were driven from the island by Ming loyalists led by Koxinga (Cheng Ch’eng-kung, 1624–62). With the arrival of Koxinga’s troops, the history of Taiwan entered a new chapter.


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Born in Japan to a Chinese father and a Japanese mother, Koxinga—along with his pirate father—had been fighting alongside the hulking coast of China against the onslaught of the Manchus, who had seized Beijing, established a new dynasty called Ch’ing, and pacified nearly the entire Chinese empire by 1645. In 1661, Koxinga led an armada of 900 ships and 25,000 marines across the 200-kilometer strait separating China from Taiwan and overpowered the Dutch defenders. The Dutch governor, Frederik Coyet (1620–81?), surrendered the island to the Ming loyalists by signing a treaty on February 1, 1662. Koxinga intended to establish a kingdom on the island first, then to use Taiwan as a base to reconquer mainland China in the future, but he died within a year. Nevertheless, his exodus to Taiwan also brought hundreds of Ming partisans, scholars, and refugees of all kinds who started to develop the island on the model of a declining and degenerating Ming society. After the disintegrating forces of Ming culture entered the wilderness of Taiwan, they revitalized and established an orderly frontier society. Each military unit was required to designate certain amounts of time for both performing garrison duty and reclaiming lands and farming. The soldier-peasants took advantage of the tropic climate, the fertile virgin soil, and the plentiful water supply, and were able to produce three crops a year. The islanders also planted sugar canes and earned tens of thousands of silver taels (1 tael is equivalent of 1.208 English ounce) by exporting sugar to Japan and other Asian countries. Chinese now became the official written language, Ming-style schools soon replaced European teachings, and examinations based on the Confucian classics were held triennially, with successful candidates appointed to posts in the civil service. As a consequence, the identity of the island abruptly changed, from a quasi-European outpost to a partial representation of the Ming society, while the Manchus were already charging on the mainland.4 In the meantime, the identity of the fort in Tamsui also changed. After extensive repair, Koxinga renamed the fort Hung-mao-cheng—the Fort of the Red-haired Barbarians—a reminder of its European heritage. By the time Lee Teng-hui’s great-grandfather settled in that region of the island, the landmark was popularly known as the Red Fort. But the fort at Tamsui would soon change its identity again, as would the identity of Taiwan itself. Koxinga’s dreams proved fruitless as he died prematurely at the age of 39. Following his death, the Ming resistance movement began to lose its vigor. Endless domestic conflicts gradually weakened Taiwan’s defense, and in 1683, Koxinga’s generals surrendered to the Chinese imperial forces. But because Taiwan had never been part of the Chinese empire, the Chinese rulers in Beijing did not know what to do with it. In his Tai-wan t’ung-shih (A general history of Taiwan), Lien Ya-t’ang (1878–1936)—generally

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regarded the father of Taiwan history—records that the Beijing “imperial court considered Taiwan to be a dangerous and distant place and planned to evacuate its entire Chinese population.”5 John E. Wills, Jr. also notes that the Chinese authorities even tried to persuade the Dutch to buy back Taiwan, but the latter were not interested.6 After a vigorous policy debate among Chinese rulers, Taiwan was finally made a prefecture of Fukien province when Beijing sent to the island a garrison of force and a contingent of civil officials, and later acquiring its own provincial governor after the Sino-French War in 1885. Under Chinese imperial rule, the Chinese written language, as well as Confucian morality, continued to be taught to the islanders, while officials built temples and pavilions where they practiced Chinese customs and rituals. The new administration established the civil service examination system on the island, and the top administrative personnel were chosen from literati who formed a kind of gentry class in the Taiwan society. Each county was required to conform to official political and cultural policies. Whether under compulsion or from shared convictions, some of the frontier elites accepted the values of the Mandarins who governed the dominant center. However, such “trickle-down” Sinicization—Chinese cultural and organizational practices—did not make a huge impact upon the population at large. To be sure, Taiwan did produce a handful of Hanlin scholars and Chin-shih doctorate degree holders, and even one Earl Wang Te-lu (1770–1841, the only Taiwanese to have earned a noble title), but the generally ineffective and abusive imperial rule ultimately failed to fundamentally convert Taiwan into a genuine Chinese society. The Ch’ing empire accentuated division between inclusion and exclusion within their own borders whereas the frontier separated insiders from outsiders. There remained essential differences between the mainland and the island, as Taiwan remained a frontier region and the islanders generally treated as outsiders. A Taiwan resident known by the name of George Psalmanazar (1679–1763) bore witness to this situation as he gave an account of the unique religion, customs, manners, and government of the island in his letter to the Reverend Birch in London in 1752.7 Geographically, the dangerous strait functioned as a natural barrier, separating mainstream Chinese culture from the frontier pioneers in Taiwan, who were forced to adapt to the unruly environment, tropical diseases, measureless swamps, impenetrable mountains, wild beasts, typhoons, earthquakes, and indigenous aboriginals. The American diplomat George H. Kerr points out that Taiwan’s “outlying frontier villages, often at war with one another, were governed by family patriarchs and clan councils who were a law unto themselves within their own territories.”8 Thus, Chinese life entered the island, but Taiwan modified and developed that life in its own peculiarly Taiwanese tendencies. Throughout the eighteenth and into the first half of the


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nineteenth century, Taiwan was a meeting ground of savagery and civilization. The adventurers and pioneer farmers of Taiwan greeted the head-hunting aboriginals armed with weapons. Even as late as the 1870s, the Canadian missionary George Leslie Mackay (1844–1901) “witnessed conflicts between Hakka frontiersmen and the dwindling mountain tribes along the western fringes of the Central Range.”9 These conditions persisted until the end of the nineteenth century as William Alexander Pickering vividly described in his Pioneering in Formosa: Recollections of Adventures among Mandarins, Wrecks and Head-hunting Savages.10 Among the pioneer adventurers were the Hakkas, which means “guest settlers” in Cantonese. They comprised a migrant group that periodically moved to new regions in search of farmland or to escape warfare and injustice. According to Clyde Kiang, the Hakkas could trace their language, culture, and genetics to the plains of Manchuria, Mongolia, and the Baikal region and were more closely related to the Japanese and Koreans than to the Chinese.11 The first Hakka immigrants arrived in Taiwan in the early seventeenth century and ultimately became Taiwan’s largest ethnic minority. In every large Hakka community on the island, there was a Yi-min-miao, or Shrine of the Righteous People, where pioneers slain by aboriginals or killed during sectarian violence were worshiped as deities. The Hakka Taiwanese held an annual remembrance of their fallen heroes on the twentieth day of the seventh lunar month.12 Almost every Hakka Taiwanese claims that he is the descendant of the “Righteous People.” The Hakkas tradition is one of the several unique influences that shaped early Taiwanese growth and molded its character. At the same token, the thirteen Austronesian-speaking aboriginal groups continued to maintain their own customs and observe their traditional festivals. They included, among others, the fishing festival in mid-June of the Ami tribe; the harvest festival of the Atayal tribe; the monkey festival of the Puyuma tribe around the first of January; the maleva (reunion) celebration, held once every five years by the Paiwan group; the Bunun tribe’s “shooting the deer’s ear” festival; Rukai people’s practicing a hierarchical social system; and the millet ceremony conducted in May or June by the Yami people. Until recently, mainlandoriented historians have studied Taiwan mainly from the point of view of imperial China, emphasizing Chinese cultural influences on the island but neglecting the role which the frontier experience (Hakkas and the aborigines included) played in stimulating Taiwanese growth. These historical models treated Taiwan as merely a sinicized appendage of mainland China, thus, ignoring its maritime geography, its colonial past, and its indigenous traditions. Since the 1960s, a number of ethnic Taiwanese scholars began to study Taiwan as a part of the dynamic history of maritime Asia, hence refuting the

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thesis that Taiwan was one of the so-called Ming-Ch’ing “macroregions.” They emphasize Taiwan’s involvement with seagoing Europeans, Southeast Asians, coastal Chinese, Japanese, and even Americans.13 Shipwrecks, violent incidents as well as desire for procuring coal, tea, fresh water and food provisions, often drew the attention of major maritime powers to the island. It was a well-known fact that, during his historical trip to open up Japan in 1853–54, Commodore Matthew C. Perry (1794–1858) recommended “a protectorate over Taiwan,” while Townsend Harris (1804–78), the United States’ first envoy to Japan, “recommended outright purchase of the island.”14 As early as 1825, English merchants came to Keelung to purchase camphor, of which Taiwan was the world’s largest producer. In 1842, two English ships were wrecked off the Keelung harbor and 197 surviving sailors were executed. Simon Long points out that England “at one point toyed with the idea of turning Taiwan into a penal colony, like Australia.”15 Later in 1868, over the issue of controlling the market of camphor, England dispatched gunboats to Taiwan. Since then, English and American merchants, led by John Dodd, regularly traded at Tamsui, Kaohsiung, Anping (near Tainan) and Keelung. In the city of Taipei, the English and American traders established several stores at the waterfront of the Tamsui River (a handful of Western-style buildings still stand on present-day Kuei-te Street). They generally sold opium to the Taiwanese and used the proceeds to purchase tea for export, likewise making huge profit. Taiwanese called this waterfront the “foreigners’ quarters” and it was there that the Taiwanese intelligentsia, under the leadership of the philanthropist Lin Hsien-t’ang (1881–1956) and the prominent physician Chiang Wei-shui (1891–1931), organized the Taiwan Cultural Association, or Taiwan Bunkakyokai, in 1921 to advance the Taiwanese culture.16 In 1874, Japan sent a punitive expedition of some 3,600 troops to the east coast of Taiwan against the aborigines who, three years earlier, had killed 54 shipwrecked Ryukyuans. Ten years later, in 1884, France occupied the Pescadores as well as Tamsui and Keelung and blockaded the Taiwan strait for nearly a year during the Sino-French war over Vietnam. As for the Tamsui fort, its identity became even more blurred. In 1813, the commander for the Tamsui Battalion of the North Route Army ordered five cannons to be emplaced in the fort, each gun weighing 800 catties (about 484 kilograms). Then, in 1867, the fort was leased to the British government on a permanent basis while the British also built a consulate in the verandah colonial style in its surroundings. When Lee Teng-hui was a young student, he often came to the Tamsui fort and climbed to the top of the cannons, imaging Taiwan’s past. Lee Teng-hui has an AB blood type, in other word, he is one of those rare individuals who were denoted a “universal recipient”—his blood may be transfused with blood of any other type. Taiwan, too, has been


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a sort of “universal recipient,” its lifeblood continually admixed over the centuries, with Chinese, Japanese, and Western infusions of all types. Until 1972, the Tamsui fort, except for a brief interruption during World War II, would remain the site of the British Consulate. It also remains the symbol of Taiwan’s continuing search for its own identity. During Koxinga’s rule, the population of Taiwan ranged from 50,000 to 100,000, mostly settling around Tainan and a number of scattered communities on the west coast. Immediately after taking over Taiwan in 1683, the Ch’ing government ordered the return of all people who had migrated to Taiwan from the China mainland during the previous decade. Many staunch Koxinga supporters who were trapped by this edict were decapitated.17 In 1717 all the Chinese abroad were summoned to return to their home and allegiance. Those who had no close affiliation with Ming partisans were graciously exempted from all penalties. The Cantonese and Fukienese who wished to go overseas, including Taiwan, were required to apply for a migration permit under specific conditions, and the people living in the districts of Ch’ao-chou and Hui-chou of Kwangtung province, once the sanctuary of pirates and rebels, were prohibited from going abroad.18 However, because of the dense population and scant domestic resources, the residents of Fukien and Kwangtung provinces continued to risk the high seas and punishments to migrate to Southeast Asia and Taiwan in search of greater economic opportunities. They often used bribery and other unlawful practices to escape mainland China. By the time of the reign of Emperor Yung-cheng (1723–35), overseas antiManchu forces were greatly weakened, likewise, the Ch’ing government relaxed its prohibitory emigration law. In 1727 Yung-cheng was reported to have said, “I think those who traded abroad were mostly restless vagabonds. If we let them come and go without time limitation they would have nothing to fear and more and more people would stay abroad. From now on, we ought to make a time limitation. If they do not return within the time limitation, I would never want them to come back to China.”19 Nevertheless, five years later, in 1732, Emperor Yung-cheng permitted all propertied and law-abiding settlers in Taiwan and the inhabitants of Fukien to move between the mainland and Taiwan at their discretion. As a consequence of this lenient policy, there was a surge of immigration from mainland China during the second half of the eighteenth century and the first quarter of the nineteenth. The census data of Taiwan show a population of 600,147 in 1756; 839,800 in 1777; 912,000 in 1782; and 1,786,883 in 1824.20 The new colonists—known as the Hoklos—spoke a distinctive southern Fukienese dialect and hoped to establish their own “Feng-lai hsien-tao,” or the Immortal Island, in the land that they had won from the wilderness.

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Although “Feng-lai hsien-tao” signified the prodigious promise of a world where freedom-loving men could live a happy and peaceful life in the emerging backwoods society, the colonists nevertheless had to confront with the aboriginal peoples and suffer from periodic violence. Many of these disputes arose because of the unique frontier nature of Taiwan: there were conflicts over the differing approaches to commerce espoused by the new immigrants and the old settlers; about the exhaustion of free land; and concerning the oppressive behavior of imperial officials who imposed the pao-chia system on Taiwan since 1733. It is generally believed that the Northern Sung statesman Wang An-shih (1021–86) was the first to establish the pao-chia system for external protection as well as for internal security. Each locality was organized for self-policing, collective security, and collective responsibility, with families grouped pyramidally in units of ten, and a hundred. Nevertheless, the island’s colonists often defied Ch’ing authorities and organized resistance against arbitrary restraints, bureaucratic surveillance, and imperial control. The pao-chia system was likewise rendered an ineffective police organ in times of emergency. In fact, the Ch’ing officials in Chiayi County and Changhua County were still muddled in the administration of rural Taiwan as late as 1836.21 From 1684 to 1895, there were a total of 159 major uprisings, and in the period between 1768 and 1887, 57 armed clashes occurred.22 Also, during the reign of Emperor Chia-ch’ing (1796–1820), the notorious Taiwanese pirate-chief Tsai Ch’ien (?–1809) mustered a “private navy” and invaded the coastal town of Lukang in 1804. Two years later, his pirates nearly annihilated the entire Ch’ing garrison force in Taipei, then headquartered at the Mankah district along the Tamsui River. He then sealed off the high seas between Taiwan and the mainland. For the next two years, Tsai acted like the chief arbiter of Taiwan as he extracted 400 silver taels for each and every ship that passed through the Taiwan Strait. No wonder the Taiwanese folklore records: “Every three years there was an outbreak, every five a rebellion, among our ancestors.”23 Beijing’s empire-builders yearned for stability and attempted to apply its universalist law and order to a dangerous and distant Taiwan, but their local officials found it hard to stabilize in the island frontier. From the beginning, then, the history of Taiwan has been a continuing quest for more freedom and less control from empire-builders. By the late nineteenth century, the imperial government of China had lost its vigor, and Chinese society was hopelessly sliding toward the undulant rhythms of decadence. Beginning with the Opium War against Great Britain (1840–42) and for the next half century, China was to suffer a series of defeats at the hands of the Western Powers. Then, during 1894–95, China was soundly defeated by Japan in an acrid dispute in Korea and was forced to sign the Treaty of Shimonoseki, by which Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands


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were ceded to Japan. Once more, the islanders were confronted with an identity crisis as they leaped back over 200 years of fate and cursed the day Koxinga’s generals surrendered to the Chinese imperial government. The new Japanese authorities offered all the Taiwanese a two-year grace period in which to choose their affiliation. Any Taiwanese who wished to leave the island should feel free to do so before the deadline of May 8, 1897. But when the deadline came due, only 4,456 out of a population of 2.8 million (a mere 0.16 percent) actually packed their belongings and left Taiwan. They refused to leave the island partially because their forefathers had come to the island to free themselves from the influence of Chinese imperial institutions and oligarchical rule. Not unexpectedly, the Taiwanese were required both by the frontier culture and the islander’s temperament to rage inordinately and refuse the cession. Throbbing with anguish that the treaty brought, the islanders launched an independence movement. For the first time in the history of Asia, a Republic was proclaimed—by the Taiwanese on May 25, 1895. Unfortunately, this Republic was poorly organized, and the Taiwanese militia lacked a cohesive central command and heavy weapons. Consequently, the Republic was extinguished after less than five months.24 But as Stephane Corcuff and Hsu Chi-tun argue that the 1895 Taiwan Republic constitutes “a founding initiative in the history of the progressive emergence of Taiwan as a singular entity” and that “the notion of ‘Taiwanese,’ then expressed as Taimin or Taijen, first appeared.”25 Indeed, the dream of maintaining an Island of the Immortals free from oppression did not wane, as the islanders would, in the ensuing years, react to the restraints of the new Japanese imperial rule with a firmness of character and a bravery that had been the hallmarks of the pioneer farmers. Several Taiwanese partisan bands continued to put up a bloody, unyielding resistance against the Japanese, who spoke and wrote a different language, who imposed new taxes, and who used a different currency, and even a different weight and measurement system. The Japanese occupation of Taiwan is generally divided into three phases: Taiwanese resistance and military rule (1895–1918), the forced assimilation (1919–37), and the war years (1937–45). There were a total of nineteen governors-general, of whom ten came from military ranks (1895–1919 and 1936–45) and nine from a civilian background as the following table 1.1 indicates.26 Because of the initial fierce resistance from the Taiwanese, the ruling oligarchy of Japan believed that the island should be under military occupation, and that the governor-general of Taiwan should be a high officer of the army or navy in active service. They chose Rear Admiral Kabayama Sukenori (1837–1922), an old warrior from the Satsuma fief and a former navy minister,

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Table 1.1 Japanese governors-general in Taiwan, 1895–1945 Term

Names

Status

Duration

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

Kabayama Sukenori Katsura Taro Nogi Maresuke Kodama Gentaro Sakuma Samata Ando Sadami Akashi Motojiro Den Kenjiro Uchida Kakichi Izawa Takio Kamiyama Mannoshin Kawamura Takeji Ishizuka Eizo Ota Masahiro Minami Hiroshi Nakagawa Kenzo Kobayashi Seizo Hasegawa Kiyoshi Ando Rikichi

Admiral Lt. General Lt. General Lt. General General General Lt.General Civilian Civilian Civilian Civilian Civilian Civilian Civilian Civilian Civilian Admiral (Ret.) Admiral (Ret.) General

5/1895–6/1896 6/1896–10/1896 10/1896–2/1898 2/1898–4/1906 4/1906–5/1915 5/1915–6/1918 6/1918–10/1919 10/1919–9/1923 9/1923–9/1924 9/1924–7/1926 7/1926–6/1928 6/1928–7/1929 7/1929–1/1931 1/1931–3/1932 3/1932–5/1932 5/1932–9/1936 9/1936–11/1940 11/1940–12/1944 12/1944–8/1945

to enforce the occupation of the island. By the end of October 1895, Kabayama’s large contingent had crushed the main resistance, and on November 20, he gave a huge victory celebration in Taipei. But the Japanese had lost a commander, plus over 30,000 soldiers, most of them perishing from tropical diseases—such as malaria, cholera, and typhus. Moreover, the insurgency persisted and would cost both the Japanese and the Taiwanese dearly. Between 1896 and 1913, partisan bands—the Japanese called them either “bandits” or “rebels”—attacked and harassed the Japanese throughout the island. Between 1895 and 1902, Taiwanese partisans, led by low-ranking members of the gentry class, assaulted 54 Japanese installations and staged 94 attacks, sometimes with great losses—nearly 10,000 of them lost their lives. In the central Taiwan prefecture of Yunlin, a partisan leader named Ch’ien Yi organized a band of 600 strong and set up a quasi-revolutionary realm with Touliu as its headquarters. However, in June 1896, Kabayama’s troops, retaliating against the attacks launched by Ch’ien Yi’s partisans, slaughtered some 6,000 Taiwanese in the city of Touliu and its 55 neighboring villages. The Japanese also resorted to a scorched earth policy, burning down more than 4,200 houses.27 Nevertheless, the Taiwanese partisans continued their deadly guerrilla attacks and timely harassments, using the highlands as their base


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of operations. Lin Shao-mao, another partisan leader, operated in a remote southern Taiwanese town near Kaohsiung. Lin and several hundred comrades constructed a bamboo palisade and a moat; inside his realm, Lin built roads and irrigation canals, grew crops and raised livestock, processed sugarcane, distilled moonshine liquor, and ran a casino, a brothel, and a medical clinic. Lin was inveigled out of his domain and killed by the Japanese on May 30, 1902.28 Katsura Taro (1847–1913), the second governor-general of Taiwan, was a Yamaguchi samurai and a victorious commander during the Sino-Japanese War, who later served three times as Japan’s prime minister, earning three titles of nobility: count, marquis, and prince. But Katsura’s tenure as governorgeneral of Taiwan lasted for only five months, in fact he occupied his Taipei office for fewer than ten days. When Katsura’s fellow Yamaguchi samurai Nogi Maresuke (1849–1912) was appointed the third colonial governorgeneral, he continued to use military might to quell the Taiwanese rebels. Nogi, who was later to become a national hero in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) and the tutor of Crown Prince Hirohito, adopted what he termed a “triple-guard” system, tactically combining army units, military police and civil police to deal with different groups of partisans. Once the civil police joined the suppression forces against the Taiwanese partisans, an estimated 1,000 police stations were established, even in the most remote corners of the island. Based on the first Japanese census taken in 1905, Taiwan had a population of nearly three million at the turn of the century, meaning that there was a police station for every 3,000 island inhabitants. The islanders resented the ubiquitous and sometimes brutal Japanese police, calling them the “four-legged dogs.” (Japanese police always followed the orders from their superior, and also had the habit of urinating indiscriminately outdoor like the four-legged dogs.) Between 1898 and 1902, Japanese forces used this tripleguard system to kill approximately 12,000 Taiwanese partisans and to terrify hundreds of thousands of townspeople and villagers throughout the island. But the Japanese “pacification” program was becoming increasingly onerous with the colonial government being forced to earmark more than 40 percent of its so-called civil budget to maintain the police.29 Administrative dithering and delays of supplies from Japan made the protracted campaign even more difficult. Because the menace was so constant and the casualties—both from disease and from combat—were running so high, Nogi finally decided to modify his “pacification” policy. He offered not only amnesty but also positions of power to some of the partisan leaders. Notable Taiwanese collaborators, such as Ku Hsien-jung (1866–1937), were called to serve as mediators and to persuade Ch’ien Yi and others to surrender. Ku was elected to be a member of the House of Peers in 1934.

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The fiercely independent Taiwanese never really trusted the pacification scheme, with some cause: the brutal Japanese would abandon pacification once they believed they had the situation under control. At a so-called surrender ceremony in central Taiwan, on May 25, 1902, more than 260 partisans were ambushed and slaughtered, evoking new waves of violent reaction from the islanders. In fact, insurrections against the Japanese resumed between 1910 and 1915, partly inspired by the 1911–12 Chinese Revolution and partly caused by Taiwanese indigenous religious movement. In 1913, 500 Taiwanese followed their leader Lo Fu-hsing, a Miaoli Hakka, and started another major insurgence. Even though Lo was later strangled to death, large-scale insurrections persisted. An aboriginal tribe at Taroko Gorge, not too far away from the east coast port of Hualien, organized their own quasi-revolutionary domain behind the limestone walls and marble cliffs. In 1914, Governor-general Sakuma Samata (1844–1915) deployed more than 10,000 troops, including police and coolies, and used 200 machine guns to flush out the rebels who were hiding behind the perpendicular rock walls and inside labyrinthian tunnels. The 70-year-old Sakuma personally directed the attack but was severely wounded and died soon afterward. In 1915, a religious group, led by Yu Ch’ing-fang, started its own rebellion from Tainan’s Hsi-lai Buddhist temple (also known as the Tapani Incident). Of the 1,413 hardcore resisters brought to trial with Yu, 866 of them were sentenced to death. However, covert resistance and open defiance never really ended: in October 1930, a group of aboriginals in central Taiwan attacked the Japanese in a mountain region called Wushe Village (Musha in Japanese). The uprising lasted for 50 days, killing some 200 Japanese troops.30 Taiwan’s unyielding spirit and energetic resistance finally convinced the fourth governor-general of Taiwan Lieutenant-General Kodama Gentaro (1852–1906, ruled 1898–1906) that military suppression could never be completely effective. Even though Kodama also came from a Yamaguchi samurai background, he was a down-to-the-earth, pragmatic ruler. He soon learned that the island had 1,127 private schools, financed by local gentry and run by traditional Chinese schoolmasters. Kodama was not particularly impressed with this kind of old-fashioned tutorial education and decided to “modernize” the Taiwanese education system, so that Taiwanese children could learn technical and scientific skills. More importantly, he saw elementary schools as avenues through which colonial rulers could win the hearts and souls of the still restive population, thus ultimately establishing a civil society based upon Japanese culture. Because Kodama was concurrently serving in the Army Ministry, Education Ministry, and Home Affairs Ministry, he appointed a 42-year-old medical doctor by the name of Goto Shimpei (1857–1929) to act as his chief civil administrator (minsei chokan). It was


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now up to Dr. Goto to survey and catalog the colony, as well as to lay the groundwork for the agricultural, industrial, and educational development of the island. Goto immediately ordered both a land survey and a population census, then recruited the Scottish hygiene engineer William Kinninmond Burton (1856–1899) to design and build an infrastructure for Taiwan’s sewage disposal and the water pumps to supply drinking water, as well as restructuring the island’s public heath and medical system. Goto soon established a public hospital and a medical college in Taipei and helped to found treatment centers around the island to control the tropical diseases as well as to arrest the abuse of opium. Under Goto’s regulations, only the government could cultivate, import, and sell such contraband, but Taiwanese addicts were allowed to buy opium from licensed dealers. In fact, Lee Teng-hui’s paternal grandfather received such a license and sold government-sanctioned opium for many years, while his maternal uncle, being the head of a village ward or pao (ho in Japanese), was responsible for campaigns against opium smoking. As a result of strict enforcement, the number of opium addicts in Taiwan dropped from 165,000 in 1900 to only about 16,000 in 1930. By the time Lee Teng-hui was born, there were no reported opium smokers among Taiwanese who were 30-years old or younger.31 Goto reduced the violence and fear among the population by replacing the military police with regular police, by forbidding government officials and teachers from wearing uniforms and carrying swords, and by devising various ways of ascertaining and apprehending the dohi (bandits).32 As he believed that the Taiwanese should be “the solution to effective colonial rule” and that the Japanese should function only as “an external force,” he wanted the colonial people to take part in maintaining their own social order. Goto thereby adapted, but internalized and improved on, the pao-chia system, turning it into a new Japanese colonial controlling mechanism called the hoko system. The revived system carefully selected and trained hoko headmen, closely worked with the Japanese police, and ultimately forming what one scholar calls “the fourth-level of the colonial administrative hierarchy, which enabled the Japanese to penetrate further into local communities than Ch’ing China was able to achieve.”33 In order to demonstrate that the Japanese respected Taiwanese customs and indigenous traditions, Goto organized four “Respect the Elderly” parties between 1898 and 1900. Elderly Taiwanese who were octogenarians or older were invited to dinner at the governor-general’s office. Those who had reached the centenary golden age each received a cane. Of all the Japanese rulers in Taiwan, the Germaneducated Goto was the most effective in playing the so-called elder politics. But it could well be that the tenacious Taiwanese partisan resistance was the

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key reason that finally forced Goto and his Japanese colleagues to modify their colonial policy on the island. At any rate, Goto’s accomplishments in Taiwan were duly recognized by his government, as he was later appointed President of the Southern Manchuria Railway Company (Mantetsu), made a count in the House of Peers, and selected to serve as mayor of Tokyo, foreign minister as well as home minister of Japan. Goto’s reform programs were not so much altruistic as they were pragmatic. He knew he had to do something to mitigate the islanders’ resentment against governmental restrictions and to stop blood shedding, but he was also keenly aware of the ever-decreasing subsidy that he could receive from Tokyo. Goto knew that he had to find his own revenues from the island itself, an area not quite equal to one-tenth of Japan proper. At the onset of the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, the annual budget for the colonial government was about ten million yen. Of this sum, Tokyo annually doled out seven million yen to Taipei, while three million yen came directly from the resources of the island. By 1897, Tokyo’s subsidy was substantially reduced, from seven million to four million yen, meaning that the governor-general of Taiwan had to find new sources of revenue to make up his budgetary deficit. Goto’s land survey, population census, establishing the Bank of Taiwan (in 1899), and his various economic initiatives were all aimed at broadening his tax bases, stimulating Taiwan’s economy, and increasing revenues for his government. But the land survey, which ultimately established modern land-ownership rights and obligations in Taiwan, was the most ambitious and important task attempted by Goto. It yielded 257,810 chia (1 chia ⫽ 0.97 hectare or 2.4 acres) of land that were not previously registered on the government tax roll. As a result, Taiwan’s land revenues tripled from 920,000 yen in 1903 to a total of 2,980,000 yen in 1905.34 While some Taiwanese benefited from the land survey, becoming substantial landholders, the amount of wooded and arable land that fell to the government was enormous. Many new lands were sold cheaply to Japanese companies and Japanese immigrants. Land had become a commercial commodity, and it was vitally important for Japanese capitalism. With a minimum of investment, and with the establishment of internal security, Taiwan soon became a valuable resource in the Japanese empire’s economy. By 1926, more than 500 Japanese companies had set up enterprises in Taiwan, each with capital exceeding 300,000 yen. Take the sugar industry as an example. Prior to its occupation of Taiwan, Japan had been compelled to rely heavily on imported sugar for at least 80 percent of its supply, because little sugar was produced within the Japanese empire. However, once the Japanese discovered that Taiwan was an ideal sugar-producing land, they bought a substantial amount of farmland in the island’s central and southern coastal plains and converted


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them into sugarcane plantations. By 1902, the Japanese had invested 2.7 million yen in eight sugar refineries on the island. Since these plantations suited the needs of Japanese consumers so well, the colonial government promoted scientific farming and provided generous subsidies; consequently, plans progressed rapidly for the expansion of sugarcane plantations in Taiwan, and investments in sugar refining plants rose from 9.2 million yen in 1908 to 15 million yen in 1912. By 1939, Taiwan was the world’s seventh largest sugar producer. Among the most notable refineries were the Dai Nippon Sugar Manufacture Corporation at Huwei, the Taiwan Sugar Corporation in Pingtung, the Meiji Sugar Manufacture Corporation at Matou, and the Yen-shui-kang Sugar Manufacture Corporation north of Tainan.35 Ultimately, a typical colonial economy was developed, and Taiwan became an important economic appendage of Japan—Japan sought the economic growth of Japan in Taiwan, not the economic development of Taiwan. Japan imported high-grade lumber and agricultural products from Taiwan and exported industrial products to the island. The colonial government built more than 6,500 kilometers of railroad lines and highways, including the construction of the island’s north–south artery railway in April, 1908. It constructed concrete dams and reservoirs, plus 16,000 meters of canals to facilitate irrigation and harness hydroelectric power. It also took measures to monopolize the production and sale of commodities such as tobacco, liquor and wine, camphor, opium, and salt, as well as to establish companies controlling commercial shipping, railroads, and telegraphy. In 1922, one year before the birth of Lee Teng-hui, Japanese agricultural scientists successfully developed a new medium-grain strain of rice in Taichung called “Feng-laimi,”or “Immortal Island Rice,” which gained immediate popularity in Japan because of its taste and stickiness. This new brand was aimed at solving Japanese rice shortage problems and was thus grown exclusively for export to Japan, not for Taiwanese consumption.36 Most important, however, Goto adopted a “cultural rule policy” that focused on the education of the island’s elite—the gentry class—with the ultimate goal of allowing certain influential Taiwanese to take part in local politics. Goto identified 151 Taiwanese gentry elites and personally invited them to attend a weekly “literary seminar” at Tamsui, beginning on March 5, 1900. Even though only 72 of them came, Goto tried to persuade the islanders to start learning Japanese culture and to gradually shift their loyalty to the new rulers. Since language is the key to any cultural understanding, Goto’s top priority was to begin teaching Japanese to the Taiwanese, starting in elementary school (there was no middle school for the Taiwanese until 1915). Goto’s ultimate goal was to assimilate the Taiwanese: to turn them into loyal Japanese subjects, make the Taiwanese identify themselves with the

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Shinto religion, the imperial chrysanthemum, and the Sun Goddess Amaterasu. This was evidenced by his construction of the Taiwan Shinto Shrine in Taipei (on the site of the present-day Grand Hotel) in 1901. Goto’s immediate successors started building the 11-story Taiwan Governor’s Office in 1912 and by the time it was completed in 1919, this new office became the largest building in Northeast Asia and represented an important symbol of Japan’s power. In order to strengthen Japan’s hold on the colony, two subsequent governorsgeneral, Akashi Motojiro (1864–1919) and Den Kenjiro (1855–1930), continued to promote the assimilation of the Taiwanese. Lieutenant-General Akashi, whose credentials included serving as the commander-in-chief of military police in Korea, the army chief of staff and the chief of the department of police in Japan, tried to make the Taiwanese more cooperative and more susceptible to Japanese national interests, but had no intention of bringing about equality for the Taiwanese. During his tenure in Taiwan, from June 1918 to October 1919, Akashi sought to educate enough Taiwanese to work as government clerks, interpreters and agricultural technicians, as well as to channel ambitious and capable Taiwanese youths into the professions of teaching and medicine. In 1919, Akashi issued an education rescript requiring strict segregation between Japanese and Taiwanese students. At this time, only 6 percent of Taiwanese school-aged children attended school, whereas 90 percent of Japanese children were enrolled in primary school. Akashi even went so far as to give Taiwanese educational institutions names that were distinctly different from the common titles for Japanese schools. In contrast, Den Kenjiro, Taiwan’s first civilian governor-general, who served from October 1919 to September 1923, advocated a much broader version of assimilation, proclaiming “the Japanization of Taiwan and the assimilation of the Taiwanese people” to be his major goal.37 Baron Den, a railroad tycoon-turned-politician, was serving as the minister of communications when, in the wake of the Versailles Peace Conference, he was tapped to come to Taiwan. So far as Den was concerned, it would be a mistake to conceive of Taiwan as merely a commercial market, a source of raw materials, or a military supply base. Instead, Taiwan should be made an integral part of the Japanese empire, and the Taiwanese should be transformed into pure Japanese imperial subjects (komin-ka) by means of education. Den’s liberal policy was an extension of the liberal party politics in Japan in the 1920s, which resulted in major political and economic changes in the Japanese occupation of Taiwan. For one thing, the administration of the colonial government was now placed in the hands of civilians. Taiwanese were now admitted to the highest circles of the colonial government in


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an advisory capacity. Business laws were eased so as to allow Taiwanese entrepreneurs to compete with the Japanese. Furthermore, education opportunities were increased, particularly in practical vocational training, teaching, and the medical profession. In August 1927, the Taiwanese published their first daily newspaper, called Taiwan Mimpo (Taiwan People’s News). Previously, the Japanese had monopolized the print media so that the islanders could only subscribe to three Japanese newspapers: Taiwan nichi nichi shimpo (Taiwan Daily News), Tainan shimpo (Tainan News), and Taiwan shimbun (Taiwan News). In December 1922, a Tamsui native by the name of Tu Ch’ung-ming (1893–1986) became the first Taiwanese to graduate from Tokyo Imperial University (Todai) with a doctorate in medicine. In 1928, Taiwan’s first university, Taihoku Imperial University (present-day National Taiwan University, and Lee Teng-hui’s alma mater) was established. The decade of the 1920s also saw the blossoming of a number of Taiwanese writers, including Yang Hua (1906–36) of Pingtung, and Lai Ho (1894–1943) and Hsu Ku (1891–1965), both natives of Changhua. Another accomplished Taiwanese writer Chang Wen-huan (1909–78), a native of Chiayi who wrote in Japanese, received the monopoly right to advertise Japanese-controlled Korean ginseng in his edited journal, Taiwan Literature. With the steady advertisement income, the journal sold between 2,000 and 3,000 copies per issue. However, when Yang Hua and Lai Ho attempted to expose colonial oppression and social injustices in their works, they were both arrested by Japanese authorities and charged with spreading “dangerous thoughts.”38 Thus, there remained a limit to which the Taiwanese could truly and freely express themselves. Between 1921 and 1934, the Taiwanese submitted a total of 15 petitions to the Imperial Diet of Japan, requesting the establishment of a Taiwan Assembly and an elective Taiwanese representation in the Imperial Diet, but to no avail. The driving force behind the home rule campaign was the Taiwan Cultural Association, established on October 17, 1921 by a small group of wealthy Taiwanese. With the philanthropist Lin Hsien-t’ang as its president, the Association sponsored some 300 public speeches annually, reaching out to more than 110,000 audience and attempting to inculcate nationalism among the masses. It also offered summer seminar at Lin’s own home at Wufeng (in Taichung) as well as publishing a bilingual magazine, in both Japanese and Chinese, called the Taiwan Youth (Taiwan Seinen) in Tokyo. To make sure that the magazine would promote his brand of home-rule government, Lin made his private secretary Tsai Pei-ho (Sai Baika, 1889–1983) the editor. In 1923, Tsai was jailed for promoting Taiwan’s nationalistic self-rule. It was during his incarceration, Tsai composed the

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following well-rhymed Taiwanese poem:39 The Island of Immortals is indeed lovely, The foundation of our ancestors remains intact, We cultivate the fields and gardens, we plant the trees, Enduring the hardships generation after generation, Must understand, must understand, we are the pioneers not the dumb slaves, The entire island should be self-ruled, we should manage our own affairs. The Taiwan Cultural Association subsequently split over resistance strategies into a nationalist right wing and a socialist left wing in 1927. The left-wing members then formed the Taiwanese People’s Party (Taiwan Minshuto)—the first political party legally registered with Japanese authorities—and continued to vigorously champion for broader Taiwanese constitutional rights. Taiwanese writer Ong Joktik characterized the Taiwanese nationalist movement in the 1920s and 1930s as sturm and drang (storm and force) because its leaders were either jailed, killed, or forced into exile.40 Thus, the Taiwanese political movements did not bring about immediate, tangible results as the record shows that throughout the half-century of Japanese colonial rule, only four Taiwanese had ever been elected to the House of Peers, the first one in 1934 and the next three near the end of World War II. Nevertheless, Edward I-te Ch’en points out that the movement “helped Formosans to learn about the many hitherto totally alien concepts of democracy, such as home rule, popular election, and universal suffrage.”41 It was against the backdrop of Japanese liberal party politics that Governor-General Den sought to nourish the islanders with Japanese spirit. In 1922, Den issued an integration rescript, making all government schools accessible to both Taiwanese and Japanese students. (During the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, the nineteen governors-general, who were invested not only with executive power but also legislative and judicial authority, issued more than 500 rescripts, which had the force of law.) However, there was a catch to the integration: students who spoke good Japanese would be admitted to “primary school,” whereas students who spoke little or no Japanese would be enrolled in “common school.” Under this policy, Japanese school children, who of course spoke better Japanese, always had an advantage over their Taiwanese counterparts. As a consequence, only a very small percentage of Taiwanese children could enroll in “primary schools.” As idealistic as Den was, there obviously remained in him a certain desire to maintain Japanese supremacy. In 1926, the daily wage of a Taipei carpenter was 1.8 yen, while


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a Japanese carpenter of like skill earned 3.5 yen a day. Thus, the assimilation of the Taiwanese did not necessarily mean equality with the Japanese. The curriculum of the common school differed from that of the primary school. While Japanese children in Taiwan were taught by outstanding teachers brought from Japan, learning the same lessons as their counterparts in Japan, with the aim of becoming future administrators, engineers, professors, writers, managers or other skilled professionals, Taiwanese children were limited to learning more “practical” vocational skills, and more directly applicable to the daily lives of the pupils. Accordingly, the common school curriculum placed heavy emphasis on arithmetic, basic science, agriculture, commerce, health, physical education, handicrafts, and manual arts.42 These were the kinds of educational materials that awaited Lee Teng-hui and that ultimately led him to become an agricultural expert. Lee Teng-hui was in many ways the product of Taiwan’s complex and variegated history. Based upon bits and pieces of folklore and family records, we know that the Li (or Lee as preferred by Lee Teng-hui) clan first settled at Ninghua, a mountainous boarder town between Fukien province and Kiangsi province, then sought opportunities at Yungting near the Kwangtung border, as several of the Li descendants scattered around China’s southeastern coast. According to the Li clan genealogy, two Li brothers Ch’ung-sung and Ch’ungwen—the latter being Lee Teng-hui’s great-great-great-grandfather—opted to leave their native Fukien in 1760 and try their luck in the wilderness of Taiwan. The Li brothers landed on the shore of what is today Lungtan county in Taoyuan prefecture and did not succumb to fever on the Taiwanese beach.43 Even though Lungtan county was a predominantly Hakka community, Li Ch’ung-wen—a first-generation immigrant and therefore an outsider— continued to struggle in what he hoped would be his promised land. Ch’ungwen raised three sons and kept his family alive and whole in those hardest of years. Ch’ung-wen’s oldest son was named Hsing-fa, who would pass on the legacy of Ch’ung-wen to all of his descendants. Hsing-fa sired seven boys; the fifth one, Li Ch’ien-ts’ung, was to become the great-grandfather of Lee Tenghui. By this time, the supply of free land along the western coastal plains had been exhausted. There were, however, still some cheap lands available in the mountain region. In the midst of this deprivation, Ch’ien-ts’ung decided to leave Taoyuan and betook himself to the frontier. About 70 kilometers north of Taoyuan, there was an isolated and underdeveloped hilly community called Sanchih (see map 1.1), where one could buy several hectares of land for less than one hundred dollars. Located at the northeastern tip of the jagged Ta-t’un Mountain, Sanchih is a slope, facing the Taiwan Strait to the north and neighboring the beautiful and evergreen Mt. Yang-ming (the Japanese called it Mount Grass) to the south.

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Map 1.1 Lee Teng-hui’s Hometown

Before Sanchih was developed, the entire area had subsisted in a state of isolation, for transportation and communication to and from the Taipei basin and its uplands was difficult and slow. Tall trees covered Sanchih’s sky, and its forest was filled with wild boars; hence, it was nicknamed “the boar’s county.” The Ch’ing garrison command built three forts in the area, but the Japanese renamed it Sanchih, meaning three colors of the orchid flower. Even though Sanchih was near the ocean, its sandy soil made it unsuitable for developing into a commercial port. On the other hand, because of its tropical climate, it


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became an ideal farmland for growing rice and tea. It is dry and humid during the summer, but showers often appear on afternoons, creating huge rainbows afterward. In winter, it is rainy and damp and light rains often accompanied by spongy clouds and fog. When Lee Teng-hui was growing up, more than 80 percent of Sanchih’s inhabitants were engaged in the production of these two agricultural items. Rice requires an extremely moist soil, either rain-fed or artificially flooded, and the Sanchih farmers, who carved terraced paddies into the mountain slope, kept the paddies under water during most of the growing season. Between the rice-growing seasons, the farmers attended to the cultivation of tea plants, which also requires ample rainfall and an extremely moist soil. Lee Teng-hui’s great-grandfather Ch’ien-ts’ung quickly and easily adapted to the frontier lifestyle. He first worked as a tenant farmer in a slope village called P’u-p’ing, a small Hoklo community with a few number of Hakka families. By virtue of hard work and frugal habits, he not only was able to purchase his own land with the money he had saved, but also lived in a handfashioned red brick house called “Yuan-hsing-chu.” This is where Lee Teng-hui was born. Li Ch’ien-ts’ung’s second son, named Li Ts’ai-sheng—Lee Teng-hui’s grandfather—became literate and in fact could write intelligible Chinese prose. When Li Ts’ai-sheng was still a teenager, his father arranged for him to marry a sturdy Hakka girl named Yang Mei, who did not suffer from the crippling effects of foot-binding, as did many Hoklo Taiwanese girls, and who, it was said, was fit to do the work of two men. As he grew older, Ts’ai-sheng became more enterprising, and in 1926— when Lee Teng-hui was only three years old—decided to move his family from the hill to the busy, bustling Sanchih square, where he opened a tea store and also set up a licensed opium counter. Ts’ai-sheng’s one-story house was used both for his businesses and for raising his two sons, Li Ch’ing-lung and Li Chin-lung, the latter being Lee Teng-hui’s father. Both Ch’ing-lung and Chin-lung could speak Hakka as well as Hoklo, and both were trained to buy and sell rice and tea rather than to grow them in the field. In 1899, the colonial government instituted a junior grade of assistant patrolmen and added a sizable Taiwanese contingent to its police force. Among them was Li Chinlung (meaning gold dragon in Chinese), who won a judo black belt while studying at the police academy and who was later assigned to several posts in the Taihoku shu, or Taipei province (there were five provinces [shu] and three subprovincial jurisdictions [cho] in Taiwan at this time). When Li Chin-lung was barely 16 years old, he was engaged to marry a tall Hoklo Taiwanese girl named Chiang Ching, who was over 170 centimeters tall, had a loud voice, and sported a complexion like brocade (Ching means

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“brocade” in Chinese). By this time, most of the hardy Hakka inhabitants in hilly Sanchih, through constant contact with the preponderantly Taiwanese Hoklo population, had been assimilated. It is evident that Lee Teng-hui’s paternal grandfather had become a well-to-do bourgeois, as well as a well-respected member of the Sanchih community and now wanted to solidify his status by means of marriage with a Taiwanese gentry family. He found Chiang Ching, the youngest sister of a Sanchih ward headman, most suitable for his purposes. As the headman of the ward, Chiang was responsible for maintaining order; providing corvee for the construction of roads, buildings, and other public works; and collecting taxes and fees for the government. He was also required to help the police keep tabs on criminals, unregistered opium smokers, and unruly members of his ward. In addition, he recruited males between 17 and 50 years of age to serve in the local militia and to assist in community service projects such as malaria prevention campaigns. (By 1903, there were a total of 4,815 recorded pao, as well as 41,660 chia throughout the island. In addition, there were more than 134,600 militia “volunteers,” organized into 1,058 regiments.)44 Even though the headman of a pao, like Lee Teng-hui’s maternal uncle, was unpaid, he represented his 100 constituent households in dealing with the local police, including Taiwanese patrolmen, exercised close supervision over the inhabitants of his community, and enjoyed a certain degree of authority. He was, in essence, a “man of significance” in the hilly community of Sanchih. The marriage of Lee Teng-hui’s parents followed, more or less, the traditional six rituals, or liuli. The young bride Chiang Ching soon learned how to cook Hakka cuisine, such as dried cuttlefish, tofu, ginger, fried eggplant with basil, and preserved vegetables. She also learned how to cut sheets of rice dough into pan tiao, the best known of the Hakka rice foods. From time to time, she cut leaves from the heads of mustard greens, then preserved them in crocks. Chiang Ching bore Li Chin-lung two sons—Teng-ch’in and Teng-hui—in what was considered a fairly well-to-do family. Because Chiang Ching spoke no Hakka, she raised her sons like ordinary Hoklo Taiwanese children and, consequently, Lee Teng-hui never learned how to speak the Hakka dialect.45 When Lee Teng-hui (teng-hui means “rise to glory” in Chinese) was three years old, his grandfather sent him to a tutorial school called “Chih-cheng t’ang,” or “Acquiring Knowledge School,” where he learned beginner’s Chinese and Japanese. Among the primers was the Three-Character Classic written in the thirteenth century. It gave in jingle form a concise summary of basic knowledge and doctrine in 356 alternately rhyming lines, each line having three Chinese characters. The opening lines convey the prime doctrine of Mencius (372–289 BCE) that human nature is fundamentally good, an idea universally promulgated in Confucian-dominated countries such as China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Lee Teng-hui, his older brother, and other


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youngsters were required to memorize every line and to sing them like songs. Whether or not the young Lee Teng-hui truly comprehended the moral philosophy underlying these ditties, he later claimed that Mencius was one of the philosophers who helped him formulate his thoughts and attitude toward life. Lee Teng-hui seems to have inherited his mother’s physique and appearance, but his grandfather’s character and personality. He has a large head, thick hair, heavy jaw, and prominent eyes and nose. Lee Teng-hui’s older brother Teng-ch’in was expected by tradition to be the future head of the Li clan, and naturally became the favorite of Li’s grandparents and parents. Teng-hui, being the second son and thus carrying lower expectations from the family, developed a more independent personality, ultimately becoming a resourceful and resilient man. Teng-hui characterizes himself as “precocious,” “obstinate,” and “rebellious,” having developed a strong sense of “self-consciousness” and “self-assurance” when he was still a small child.46 Working as a policeman in the Taihoku (Taipei) administration, Li Chin-lung was transferred from precinct to precinct, and wherever he went, he took Lee Teng-hui with him. This is why Lee Teng-hui attended four different elementary schools— Hsi-chih, Nankang, Sanchih, and Tamsui. Teng-hui recalls that his constant moving made it very difficult for him to make friends and might have contributed to his becoming an introvert, as well as a bookworm. In 1929, Lee Teng-hui, who was then six, was enrolled at Hsi-chih Common School, where his father resided. (Even though 98.3 percent of Japanese school-aged children in Taiwan were enrolled in primary schools at this time, only 30.6 percent of Taiwanese school-aged children were enrolled in common schools.) With the exception of a handful of Taiwanese faculty who were normal school graduates, the school principal and senior teachers were all Japanese. In general, a Taiwanese teacher earned only one third or less of the salary of a Japanese teacher, who was also provided with housing facilities. There were three classes in Hsi-chih’s first grade: the first class was called the urban boys’ class, the second class the urban girls’ class, and the third class the country boy-and-girls’ mixed class. Teng-hui was enrolled in the urban boys’ class and, according to his first-grade teacher—Mr. P’an Yin-kwei— Teng-hui was the tallest boy in the class of 47 pupils and was therefore assigned to sit in the last row. P’an said that Teng-hui had an impulse for intellectual growth and physical strength, as well as unbridled imagination. From the first week of school, Teng-hui revealed a strong penchant for books and ideas. He was observant and seemed enjoy examining the faces of people with fearless curiosity. Ultimately, Mr. P’an chose Teng-hui to be the class leader, the role he would play for the next two-and-a-half years. In a Japanese school, class leader was always chosen from among the best students; the class leader’s duty, as well as authority, included collecting pupils’ homework for

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the teacher, commanding the class in outdoor drills, and coaching the relay teams at the school’s track meets. Teng-hui soon became the teacher’s pet. No wonder, then, that Mr. P’an recalled that Teng-hui was courtly but not arrogant, playful but disciplined, and an effective and able class leader who, as a first grader, already showed signs of astuteness and ingenuity.47 Lee Teng-hui followed his father’s changing job assignments and lived in several of Taipei’s neighboring towns. After only one year at Hsi-chih, he was transferred to the nearby Nankang Common School. When Teng-hui was a fifth grader, he was transferred to Sanchih Common School, where he spent another year close to his family. In March 1935, when Teng-hui was 12 years old, he graduated from Tamsui Common School where he was ranked second in a class of 104 graduates.48 During his six years of elementary education, Teng-hui learned, among other subjects, ethics, Japanese language, arithmetic, Japanese history, geography, science, drawing, singing, physical education, sewing, and home management. He also learned how to write calligraphy and use an abacus. Twice a week, Teng-hui learned some classical Chinese, which was unfortunately abolished from the common school curriculum in 1937 when Japan and China were waging war against one another. In addition, he was in the habit of reading from a Children’s Encyclopedia that his father spent 15 percent of his monthly salary to buy for him. As for extracurricular activities, the common school regularly sponsored hiking and mountain climbing excursions, and Teng-hui, being a strong, active, and energetic boy, always relished these outdoor activities. Clearly, the Japanese rulers designed their elementary education curriculum with the aim of indoctrinating Taiwanese children to become loyal and productive imperial subjects of Japan. In 1929, when Teng-hui was enrolled as a first grader in a Japanese-run common school, Japan had by and large subsumed Taiwan. Thus, Kawamura Takeji (1871–1955), the governor-general of Taiwan, vowed to make the Taiwanese “dress, eat, and live as Japanese do [and] speak the Japanese tongue as do Japanese born in Japan.”49 The effects of colonial language policy on the multilingual environment of Taiwan had made people like Lee Teng-hui to become a cultural hybrid. However, several decades after graduating from Tamsui Common School, Lee Teng-hui, then the President of the island nation, publicly proclaimed that he was not a Japanese, but a Taiwanese. (In private, Lee Teng-hui has admitted that, for the first 22 years of his life, it would not be an exaggeration to consider him a Japanese.50) In an interview with a Japanese magazine in 1996, Lee Teng-hui compared the Taiwanese experience with that of America: It was because Taiwan had experienced lengthy governing of Spain, the Netherlands, Ch’ing dynasty, and Japan that the people of Taiwan now so


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desperately demand freedom and democracy. Taiwan and the United States are very similar in this regard. Americans are actually emigrants from various countries and regions in pursuit of liberty and democracy. These values, not their countries of origins or ethnicity, constituted the identity base of the American people. Taiwan is the same. Taiwan has thirteen [sic] aboriginal nations, and the ancestors of most Taiwanese came from mainland China in pursuit of freedom. My ancestors came to Taiwan some 260 [sic] years ago to escape the tyranny of the [Ch’ing] dynasty. The so-called wai-sheng-jen (mainlander Chinese) also came to Taiwan 50 years ago to escape Communism. We have not come to Taiwan to rule others, but to build a new state. We have to constantly keep this in mind and construct our society based on the principles of liberty and democracy.51 Nearly 300 years ago, Lee Teng-hui’s forebears came to the wilderness of the Immortal Island (Feng-lai hsien-tao) to free themselves from unbearable hardships, minute regulations, and the social restraints of imperial China. On March 23, 1996, 14 million eligible voters of Taiwan, undaunted by China’s week-long war games and menacing missiles, freely cast their ballots and overwhelmingly elected Lee Teng-hui their president, thus consummating Taiwan’s transformation from dictatorship to democracy. Lee’s landslide victory was more than just a personal triumph or a mere electoral mandate. By electing Lee as its first native-born president, the Taiwanese nation demonstrated its yearning for an identity of its own, as well as its determination to be fully independent of the control of empire-builders.52 Thus, the people of the Immortal Island had entered their next frontier full of hope and had also vowed to remain there resolutely. But the circuitous path that Lee Teng-hui had to travel to reach this point would prove to be most hazardous and unpredictable, and his own identity—like that of his motherland—would have to be obliterated and recreated again and again before he could dare to call himself a Taiwanese.


CHAPTER 2

The Japanese Education of a Taiwanese Economist

T

amsui, a cultural and historical site where mountains, plains, and waters meet was Lee Teng-hui’s spiritual homeland. It was also the adopted home of a Canadian Presbyterian missionary named Dr. George Leslie Mackay. Mackay arrived in Tamsui on March 9, 1872, married a Taiwanese woman, and reared two daughters and one son. In 1880, during a visit to his native home in Oxford, Ontario, on his first furlough, Mackay raised enough money to establish a seminary called Oxford College right beside Tamsui’s former Fort Santo Domingo. The seminary was founded on Scottish Free Church ideals and designed for educating Taiwanese male students to become preachers, who would in turn spread the gospel among the assimilated lowland aborigines called Pepohuan. In 1914, Mackay’s Taiwanese son transformed Oxford College into a middle school and opened it to the native population. In 1925, Canadian Christians raised enough money to rebuild the school with red bricks according to a design by Kenneth W. Dowie. Because there were only a handful of public middle schools in Taiwan at this time, and because the colonial government still adhered to a double-standard admission system in favor of Japanese pupils, it was extremely difficult for Taiwanese natives to gain admission to governmentrun middle schools. Unlike other private middle schools, which never received government recognition, Tamsui’s Presbyterian Middle School appointed the Reverend Hugh MacMillan (B.D., M.A., Ph.D.) as principal in August 1935 and began conforming to Japanese public school curriculum, including instituting military drills on campus. It was finally accredited in 1938 by the Japanese education ministry so that its graduates had official standing.1

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It was at this school that Lee Teng-hui, after twice failing to gain admission to Taipei’s public middle schools, would spend the next four years of his life. During his six years of compulsory elementary education, Lee Teng-hui came in contact with Japanese teachers, learned to speak Japanese, and memorized Japan’s national anthem “Kimigayo” in praise of the emperor. In fact, when he was in fifth grader, he boarded with a Japanese teacher (a Kyushu native named Kanamoto) in Tamsui. But it was his Hakka grandfather who, having experienced pervasive racial barriers during his lifetime, placed a premium on the education of his grandsons—so that they could hope to overcome the roadblocks set up by the Japanese government. The then 13-year-old Teng-hui faced a couple of options: either to try to become a teacher by going to the Japanese Language School in Taipei for five years, or to choose medicine as a profession. While tuition at the Japanese Language School was free, a teacher’s pay was generally meager, and the profession did not appeal to Teng-hui. Becoming a medical doctor required a total of at least 11 years of schooling, but scholarships were difficult to obtain and had too many strings attached. Judging from the financial condition of the Li family— Teng-hui’s grandfather was a tea and rice merchant, as well as a licensed opium dealer while his father now worked for a Sanchih farmers’ cooperative— they should have been able to afford the expensive tuition. However, Tenghui put off his decision for the time being and chose to enroll at a middle school not knowing what the future would hold. Immediately after graduating from Tamsui Common School in late March of 1935, Teng-hui took the entrance examinations, hoping to gain admission to one of Taipei’s public middle schools. The Taipei First Middle School, a five-year secondary education institution, was established in 1908. However, this school was designed to serve primarily Japanese students, as the enrollment record of 1939 shows: 963 Japanese attended, but only 28 Taiwanese were enrolled there. Once again, Japanese youths enjoyed preferential treatment, and even the brightest of Taiwanese youths could not easily get into this middle school. But with a new social dynamic—including a soaring urban population and increasing literacy—spurring the trend of continuing secondary education among middle-class children, the government was forced to open up a second middle school in Taipei in 1922. Whereas the Taipei First Middle School admitted predominantly Japanese students, the Taipei Second Middle School aimed at serving both the Japanese and the native population as the enrollment statistics for 1939 demonstrate: 508 Taiwanese and 217 Japanese were enrolled there at that time.2 However, in spite of his intellectual ability and fairly good common school record, Lee Teng-hui was twice rejected by Taipei’s middle schools. Teng-hui took these

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failures so seriously that he became very ill and was bedridden for nearly half a year.3 The frustrated Lee Ten-hui had now begun to comprehend the meanings of educational discrimination, political inequality, and social injustice. From his father, Lee Teng-hui learned that the Taiwanese faced roadblocks in their access to political rights, housing, employment, and social equality. Taiwanese police were paid one-third less than their Japanese counterparts, and there was a well-recognized glass ceiling above that it was nearly impossible for a Taiwanese professional to climb. These could well have been the reasons why Teng-hui’s father quit the police force altogether in 1932. Failing to be admitted to one of Taipei’s public middle schools was certainly a painful setback for Teng-hui, but it was also an important test of his character. While others resigned themselves to the debilitating circumstances of oppression and discrimination, the Li family somehow managed to overcome these obstacles. For the first time, the young Lee Teng-hui demonstrated the dogged determination that would become his hallmark. After recovering from his sickness, he signed up for academic preparatory courses at the Tamsui Common School and started preparing for yet another entrance examination. He boarded sometimes with family friends, sometimes with teachers, and adhered to a parsimonious regimen of unrelieved drudgery. During the daytime, he walked to school and took classes at the Tamsui Common School, while from late afternoon until deep into the night, he spent his time at a cram school (juku in Japanese), where he studied with tutors. One of Teng-hui’s classmates named Lin Kai-pi recalled, “When Mr. Lee Teng-hui studied, he was very diligent and rarely played with us. Though he was taciturn, he was congenial and honest. He seemed to be blessed with a retentive memory. Fifteen years after our graduation, I could no longer recognize him, but he still called me by my name.”4 The countless hours spent in the books shaped his mind and taught him the importance of discipline and stamina. To sustain Teng-hui’s strenuous study routine and to make sure that Teng-hui’s spirit would not flag, his mother would, from time to time, bring Teng-hui his favorite Hakka dishes: one called fu tsai—made by steaming pork legs with soy sauce and preserved mustard greens—and the other called tzu pa, a dumpling made from rice flour and coated with sesame seed powder. Even though Teng-hui rarely ate more than three bowls of rice at the boarding house, he often joked about eating too much pork and actually believed that pork was the reason that he was to grow so tall.5 In 1937, the 14-year-old Lee Teng-hui was transferred to a private school in Taipei called Kuo-min Middle School (present-day Taipei’s Ta-t’ung High School). Even though this school was not accredited by the Japanese ministry of education, its principal was able to recommend his top students to other

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middle schools from time to time. In fact, it was upon the recommendation of the principal of the Kuo-min Middle School that Lee Teng-hui was finally admitted to the government-accredited Tamsui Middle School in 1938. It is to be noted that the Tamsui Middle School acceptance rate was about 27 percent at the time, compared with 15 percent for the Taipei Second Middle School, and the de facto zero percent rate for Taiwanese at the Taipei First Middle School. In 1938, Arisaka Issei, a scholar of English literature, replaced Reverend Hugh MacMillan as the principal of the Tamsui Middle School. Since then the exclusively Japanese faculty, who were mostly from Kyushu region, all wore dark uniforms, black caps rimmed with gold lace, and carried short swords. Among the 430 students, who were required to wear gray uniforms, visored caps, and puttees, only nine were Japanese, while the rest were Taiwanese, mostly children from wealthy families from all over the island.6 Every Monday morning, the teachers and students at Tamsui Middle School had to bow reverently in unison toward the imperial palace in Tokyo, even though it was 2,000 kilometers away. The school naturally adopted the traditional Japanese holidays, including celebrating February 11 as the National Founding Day (Kigensetsu)—the day selected by the Meiji government to mark the mythical founding of the Yamato state in 660 BCE—as well as observing September 24 as the autumnal Imperial Ancestor Festival when the Japanese offered sushi at their neighborhood association’s equinoctial service. The Tamsui Middle School was erected on the hill overlooking the Tamsui Harbor. From there one could see the blue waters of the Pacific Ocean, gorgeous views of the Taiwan Strait, and the dark green hills of the far inland. The adjacent Tamsui Girls’ School, also founded by Mackay in 1883, later merged with Tamsui Middle School and was renamed Tamkang High School in 1956. Buildings in both schools were constructed with warm-hued bricks and covered with red tiles, and the green courtyards were enhanced by tall, slim tropical trees. It was thus into a relaxed atmosphere and a quiet campus that young Lee Teng-hui entered. In the vicinity of the campus stood Taiwan’s oldest Presbyterian church, established by Mackay in 1872 and reconstructed by Mackay’s son in 1932, where students could attend Sunday services if they so desired. In addition to the mandatory curriculum of a public middle school, including languages, geography, history, mathematics, and the natural sciences, the Tamsui Middle School also taught Christian theology and the Bible on Sunday. It is certain that the youthful Lee Teng-hui occasionally attended Sabbath, mingled with the school’s elders (presbyters), learned to sing a few hymns in Taiwanese, and heard from trained Taiwanese preachers about the Day of Judgment, but he was not required to take communion, nor to make public confession of his faith in Christ (Lee Teng-hui ultimately


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converted to Christianity in 1961, when he was 38 years old). It is to be noted that the vast majority of the Taiwanese student body grew up in a culture that emphasized every man’s fulfillment of his potential, and that promoted a syncretic approach to religion. The Taiwanese generally espouse the Confucian teachings of loyalty to one’s state, filial piety, and cultivation of the five human relations—father and son, husband and wife, older brother and younger brother, master and servant, and friend and friend. They don’t hesitate to invoke the bodhisattva’s name—Kuan Yin (Kannon in Japanese)—when they are in distress and in need of her saving powers. One place where Teng-hui and his middle school classmates often visited was the nearby Goddess of Mercy Mountain, where they walked up hundreds of stone steps to a breathtaking summit, prayed to a statue of the wonder-working Kuan Yin with 24 arms, had a vegetarian meal, and then stayed overnight. Teng-hui has admitted that, at this point in his life, he was very interested in the teachings of Zen Buddhism, in particular the tenets of the Rinzai sect founded by Eisai (1141–1215), which taught the value of introspection, tight discipline, and self-reliance.7 Most Taiwanese also pay their respects to their ancestors by annually sweeping their tombs on April 5. (The Hakkas have a four-month window, between January 16 and April 5, to perform this tomb-sweeping duty.) When Lee Teng-hui was attending middle school, he often accompanied his family when they traveled to the ancestral tombs where the urns containing the remains of their ancestors were buried. At the burial site, they cut down weeds, placed some make-believe paper money on and around the tombs, and offered their deceased ancestors a special food called ai pan, made from rice flour and sugar, which they wrapped in leaves to keep it fresh and clean.8 While Lee Teng-hui was learning as much as his young mind could absorb at the Tamsui Middle School, Japan was suffering from the lingering effects of the Great Depression and had become more violent at home and more bellicose and aggressive abroad. The 1930s witnessed the invasion of Manchuria by the Kwantung Army, the demise of party government in the Imperial Diet, the assassinations of several political and financial leaders, secession from the League of Nations in 1933, outbursts of terrorism, and finally the rise of the totalitarian fascists. In 1935, the Education Reform Council was established as an advisory body to the education minister and charged with the mission of ascertaining the direction in which Japanese education should proceed. After one year of deliberation, the Council submitted a recommendation that called for the “reformation of learning and education on the basis of the concept of national polity [kokutai] and the Japanese spirit.”9 In other words, the premise of Japan’s wartime educational reform was to be based upon the trinity of “Shintoism, state, and indoctrination.” Thus, education was to play

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the role of servant to the state and, indeed ultimately did come to serve as such. The fate of the teenaged Lee Teng-hui was henceforth inextricably tied to the increasingly militaristic Japanese empire, and his body and soul would be shaped according to the needs of his colonial masters. He was required to undergo intense physical and military training, including calisthenics, judo, kendo, bathing in cold water in the morning, and enduring three hours of military drills weekly. In compliance with the government’s decree, the Tamsui Middle School set up a dojo (training hall) for teaching students in Japanese martial arts. According to Lin Yen-lung, a classmate of Teng-hui at the Tamsui Middle School, Teng-hui loved kendo, ultimately becoming a member of the school’s kendo club. Using a long wooden sword as a weapon for both offense and defense, Teng-hui first learned the elements, rules and philosophy of Japanese swordsmanship, and gradually gained an intuitive understanding of the physical principles, as well as mental discipline, involved in kendo techniques. During an interview with Taiwan’s Lien-ho-pao (United Daily News) in 1988, Lin, then serving as a school principal in Ilan county, showed a photo of Teng-hui posing with his kendo uniform. On the back of the photo, Teng-hui signed RTK, the initials of the Japanese pronunciation of his Taiwanese name: Ri Toh-ki.10 Lin also remarked that Teng-hui earned stellar grades, quickly emerged as an outstanding student and was usually assigned to carry the traditional “Hinomaru” rising sun flag during the military drills. Teng-hui also discovered a talent for drawing and studied with a well-known Tamsui artist named Ch’en Ch’ing-hui for two or three years. Teng-hui tried his hand at watercolor, oil painting, and sumi ink printing. He loved to visit art exhibitions, in particularly, those featuring the works by the famed Taiwanese woman painter Ch’en Chin (1907–98). Ch’en was the first Taiwanese woman to ever compete at Tokyo’s annual Imperial Arts Exhibition (1934). In his recollections, Lin seems to want to avoid any unpleasant memories of this period of harsh Japanese rule. He also equivocates about the things that Taiwanese school children were forced to do in order to support the so-called Japanese divine mission to liberate Asian peoples from Western imperialism. In their spare time, students were required to clean parks, dig ditches, and pick up trash and fallen leaves in the Tamsui streets. This was because the Taiwan economy and virtually all of its manpower had been mobilized to serve the war effort, so that Tamsui could not provide even routine municipal services. In fact, during the period of Japan’s mobilization for total war, 1937–45, schools as well as public offices in Taiwan kept only a few or no janitors. Lee Teng-hui noted wryly in his own memoirs that he usually woke up early in the morning and began cleaning the school’s toilets before sunrise. He also maintained a small garden plot on the school grounds and carried


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human excrement in buckets to fertilize his vegetables.11 The Japanese believed that such skills were useful everyday knowledge and would become handy when and if these students were sent to the front to fight. But the emphasis on physical labor and martial sports was merely one spoke in the complex wheel that was to become what Premier Konoe Fumimaro (1891–1945) called the New Order in East Asia. In the early spring of 1937, Japan’s ministry of education published a new textbook entitled, Cardinal Principles of the National Polity (Kokutai no hongi), with the intent of indoctrinating young students like Lin and Lee and, indeed, every school child in Japan and as well as in Taiwan. It was a text of propaganda pure and simple, aiming to instill Japanese nationalism, to imbue young minds with loyalty and obedience to the Japanese emperor, and to justify Japanese totalitarian policies.12 In the meantime, the colonial government in Taiwan banned the publication of all Chinese language books, newspapers, and magazines. Bilingual newspapers, which had been permitted to publish for the convenience of older readers like Teng-hui’s grandfather, were now banned. The sole Taiwanese-owned paper, Hsing-nan shimbun (Rising South News) was absorbed by the Osaka Mainichi shimbun (Osaka Daily News). Subsequently, all other papers in Taiwan were ordered to merge with the Taiwan nichi nichi shimpo (Taiwan Daily News), which ceased to publish its Chinese columns.13 For a newspaper devotee like Lee Teng-hui, who read everything in the paper, this was a real disappointment and a great loss. Before the mid-1930s, Japan only attempted to assimilate (do-ka) the Taiwanese, but after the war broke out against China in 1937, it changed its policy, now seeking to imperialize (komin-ka) the entire island population, including the aborigines. Admiral Kobayashi Seizo (r. 1936–40), the seventeenth governorgeneral of Taiwan, had three goals: first, to speed up Taiwan’s strategic industries, such as chemicals, metals, and shipbuilding, so that it can materially support the war effort; second, to use Taiwan as a springboard for Japan’s “southward advance” into southern China and Southeast Asia; and third, to vigorously promote the imperialization campaign. On September 27, 1937, Kobayashi, a man of considerable international experience and a thoughtful navy officer, sent a group of Taiwanese “auxiliaries” to China to serve as army doctors, interpreters, occupation security personnel and so on.14 He also encouraged the Taiwanese to speak Japanese at home and to change their names into Japanese so that they could be fully “imperialized” by Japanese culture and achieve genuine komin-ka (union with the Emperor’s people) in mind as well in spirit. Families that spoke Japanese would hang in front of their houses a big sign, “Mother Tongue Speaking Family,” and receive the better class of wartime coupons (which were black in color), allowing extra rations for food and daily necessities. As a result, the families carrying such signs increased

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from 38 percent in 1937 to 71 percent in 1944. Also, because legal restrictions against intermarriage between Japanese and Taiwanese were lifted, there was an increasing number of mixed-blood children born on the island, as well as in Japan.15 When Lee Teng-hui’s father was serving as a policeman, he had already changed his name from Li Chin-lung to Iwasato Tatsuo. By early 1940, when the imperialization campaign was kicking into high gear, Li Chin-lung, like other Taiwanese fathers who desired to improve their families’ social and economic conditions, decided to take Japanese names for his entire family. He changed the name of his oldest son from Li Teng-ch’in to Iwasato Takenori, and that of his second son from Lee Teng-hui to Iwasato Masao. Iwa means rock in both Japanese and Taiwanese—this name was chosen to refer to the Sanchih rock. Sato’s Taiwanese pronunciation is li, thus, the surname Iwasato clearly signifies “the Li clan of the rocky Sanchih.” Unlike the Li family, however, the majority of the Taiwanese opted to retain their original names. By the end of 1941, only 70,000 Taiwanese (out of a population of more than 5.7 million) had applied to change their names and two years later, the number increased to only 120,000. But whether the Taiwanese agreed to change their names or not, they were uniformly coerced to demonstrate their allegiance to His Majesty Hirohito and to worship in public Shinto shrines. By 1942, Taiwan had a total of 68 large Shinto shrines plus 128 smaller shrines. In addition, every Taiwanese family was required to set up a “Shinto altar [the kamidana] upon which to display emblems of the Sun Goddess and her latest descendant, the Emperor Hirohito.”16 Criticizing or questioning Shinto supremacy would be treated as sacrilege. During the komin-ka campaign, the tropical islanders found it cheap and convenient to adopt Japanese wooden clogs (geta) and mat-floored rooms in their living quarters, even though very few would replace their traditional Taiwanese attire with the kimono. Educated younger Taiwanese, like Lee Teng-hui’s father, generally opted for Western-style dress, as did more modernized Japanese. As for popular entertainment and theater, the Taiwanese, high and low, male and female, continued to prefer their own drama to Japanese kabuki theater, or Noh, although sumo tournaments became genuinely popular. In every Taiwan community, young boys and young girls were induced to join the “Youth Corps,” which regularly sponsored a series of evening activities to cultivate the “Japanese spirit.” The 1940 Gazettes of Hsinkang (means New Port in Chinese, a small community in Chiayi district), shows ten such youth corps with a membership of 4,190.17 Generally speaking, the komin-ka era was a very difficult and confusing time for the islanders in general and for Taiwanese students in particular. At home, students like Lee Teng-hui spoke Taiwanese with their families, but in school or at the Youth


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Corps gathering, they had to speak Japanese, or else they would be ostracized. If culture means a people sharing the same way of life, speaking one common language and observing a generally adopted mode of ethics and custom, then the Taiwanese were at the brink of losing their ethnoculture. In the meantime, Lee Teng-hui, like millions of his fellow Taiwanese, faced a serious identity crisis. Many struggled over these identity problems; others managed to preserve the continuity of their indigenous Taiwanese culture. For example, Lin Hsien-t’ang, the most prominent champion of Taiwan’s self-rule, preferred to speak Taiwanese, and refused to change his name or have anything to do with assimilation.18 While Lee Teng-hui has admitted that, until he was 22 years of age, he always considered himself a Japanese, his detractors go further and brand him a committed, even zealous, convert of Nipponism. In an interview with the popular Japanese woman writer Kamisaka Fuyuko, Lee Teng-hui said, “During my formative years, young naval officers assassinated Prime Minister Inukai [on May 15, 1932], and a bloody coup d’etat was plotted by the [Imperial Way (Kodoha)] militants on February 26, 1936, all in the name of patriotism. These and other dramatic and well-publicized events made a deep impression on me. At that time, I thought that life was as slight as a bird’s feather and that I might as well personally try to experience the meaning of war. That was why I decided to become a soldier later. I was such a fool then and I remain a fool now.”19 Because Lee Teng-hui was only nine or ten years old when these violent events took place, his detractors do not believe such events really had a formative effect on him, even question whether he told Kamisaka Fuyuko was believable. But it is nonetheless true that the Japanese indoctrination of Taiwanese youths was so pervasive that a terrorist act or a political assassination could instantly induce acts of misguided heroism and martyrdom. The impressionable Lee Teng-hui, like millions of other Japanese and Taiwanese youths who daily read the government-censored Taiwan nichi nichi shimpo, now blindly obeyed the state orders and would soon be made into cogs of the Japanese war machine. When the Crown Prince Hirohito conducted a 12-day inspection tour of the island, from April 16 to April 27, 1923, a quarter of a century had elapsed since Japan set up its colonial government in Taiwan. By this time, the overwhelming military might of Japan as well as its effective utilization of the patriarchal Taiwanese pao-chia system had already substantially reduced the Taiwanese resistance to Japanese. Fifteen years later, after the Japanese troops had occupied Nanjing in 1938, Hirohito was worshiped as their “Personal God” by the majority of Taiwanese students, including Lee Teng-hui. As the war expanded and escalated, the school term at secondary and higher educational institutions was shortened in order to secure the supply of

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combat and working personnel. In addition, the ministry of education created a Science Board and set about increasing and expanding school and university departments for scientific and technical education. As a result, between 1941 and 1945, the graduates of the science and engineering departments reached a figure of about 100,000, accounting for nearly 23 percent of all college graduates.20 It was against the backdrop of these new policies that, in the spring of 1941, Lee Teng-hui completed his courses at the Tamsui Middle School—in less than four years, instead of the previous requirement of five years. With a nominal endorsement from his middle-school principal (no diploma was required), Teng-hui sat for a higher education entrance examination, which tested his proficiency and knowledge of, among other subjects, Japanese language and literature, mathematics, English, and Chinese language. This time, everything went without a hitch, and Teng-hui was accepted to the island’s celebrated Taihoku Koto Gakko, or the Taipei Higher School. Established in 1925 in downtown Taipei, the Taipei Higher School— present-day National Taiwan Normal University—offered preparatory courses for students to advance to specialized colleges or to universities.21 Accordingly, the colonial government committed a great deal of resources and careful planning to the school building’s Gothic-style construction and to a library that housed some 40,000 volumes in Chinese, English, Japanese, and German. Rows of beautiful green Vienna palm trees were juxtaposed against the redbrick buildings, creating the kind of environment that helped nourish the minds of the college-bound students. Lee Teng-hui would later say that he spent the happiest days of his life there, and that whenever he sang his alma mater’s school song, “The Lion-head Mountain,” his fond memories would quickly return.22 But once again, the faculty was all Japanese, although some of them had received their graduate training in the United States, and admissions of Taiwanese students to the school were kept well below those of the Japanese. In 1940, nearly 5.7 million Taiwanese, as well as 346,630 Japanese, lived on the island, but the school’s enrollment record shows that there were 334 Japanese students but only 87 Taiwanese enrolled at the Taipei Higher School. In 1941, the student body was composed of 363 Japanese and 104 Taiwanese.23 Students were generally sons of high-ranking Japanese officials, doctors, professionals, and businessmen. The few Taiwanese youths who gained admission to this preparatory school truly represented the cream of the crop of Lee Teng-hui’s generation. The Taipei Higher School offered four preparatory categories: A-category and B-category in the humanities and social sciences, and A-category and B-category in sciences and technology. Each category in each class had approximately 40 students, typically only


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four or five Taiwanese, and the rest Japanese. Lee Teng-hui searched for a major appropriate to a Taiwanese youth and to his then-prevailing ambitions: he decided to become an agricultural economist so that he would have a better chance to get a job with the Southern Manchuria Railway Company (Mantetsu). (Between 1931 and 1945, there were an estimated 5,000 Taiwanese in Manchuria, most of whom were young physicians, engineers, technicians, teachers and their families.) He was thereby assigned to the A-category in the humanities and social sciences. This class had a total of 38 students, only five of whom were Taiwanese. Normally, it took three years for a student to complete all of his preparatory courses. However, during the war, many students, including Lee Teng-hui, managed to pass the college entrance examinations after only two years of study at the preparatory school. The period between 1940 and 1941 was an eventful one for the adolescent Lee Teng-hui, who lost his paternal grandmother during this time. The family performed a traditional ritual every seven days, up to the forty-nineth day after her death, then placed a memorial tablet for her on the Li household altar. This was also a very eventful time for Taiwan and the world at large. During this period, Japan set up a puppet government in Nanjing in March, 1940, signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy in September, and completed the occupation of French Indochina by the summer of 1941. But a sequence of aggressive acts caused the United States to embargo the sale of scrap iron to Japan in October, 1940, ultimately leading to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7 (December 8 in Japan), 1941. On the home front, Taiwan had a new governor-general, Admiral Hasegawa Kiyoshi, who was a former vice minister of the navy and a commandant of the Yokosuka Naval Yards. During his tenure in Taiwan from November 1940 to December 1944, Hasegawa not only effectively turned Taiwan into a launching pad for Japanese military conquests in the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries, but also systematically mobilized Taiwan’s labor force and material resources for supporting the escalation of the war. To accomplish these goals, Hasegawa recruited the first division of Taiwanese army “volunteers” in April 1941 and started training Taiwanese navy “volunteers” in May 1943. (By July of 1943, more than 316,000 Taiwanese had applied to volunteer the navy, among them was Lee Teng-hui’s older brother.) Hasegawa also organized the Imperial Subjects’ Public Service Association, or Komin hokokai, which was also used to deepen Japan’s control over the social and cultural life of the islanders, as well as to increase the tempo of wartime indoctrination and propaganda. Nevertheless, the Taipei Higher School, considered the center of the island’s intellectual pulling and hauling, remained free from the tumult of the outside world. There, the privileged Lee Teng-hui, then 18-years old and 180 centimeters tall, was provided with good

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teachers, adequate room and board, a voluminous library, and all the time he needed to seek and acquire knowledge. Teng-hui was inquisitive, and he became an intense, tireless and voracious reader, with wide-ranging interests. Required reading at the preparatory school included Japanese early mythology, history, ancient poetry, and Japanese classical literature—in short, a curriculum generally designed to cultivate a true and unsullied Japanese spirit. Naturally, Lee Teng-hui studied the Kojiki (Record of ancient matters), compiled in 712, in which indigenous Japanese myths, legends and history were selected and interwoven to enhance the prestige of the royal family and to solidify the foundations of imperial power. The impressionable Taiwanese youth was taught to believe in Japan’s national superiority, for Japan had been the land of mighty gods and goddesses. Among Teng-hui’s early intellectual idols was the literary critic and historian Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801) who in 1798, published the 44-volume Kojiki den (A commentary on the ancient matters), which maintained that divine linkage to Shinto deities was the key to understanding the nature of Japanese society.24 Nevertheless, there were other Japanese intellectuals—especially those who were trained in the West—who did not subscribe to the logic of this type of nationalism and whose more liberal and cosmopolitan views were also quite popular among preparatory students. Among them was Nitobe Inazo (1862–1933), the quintessential apologist of Japanese colonialism, who directed Taiwan’s “Sugar Industry Bureau” from 1901 to 1903, and later held the chair of Colonial Policy at Tokyo Imperial University (Todai) and advocated humanitarian treatment of colonial people. Nitobe graduated from Sapporo Agricultural College (later Hokkaido Imperial University), then studied in the United States, married a Wisconsin woman, and converted to Quaker religion. Holder of three doctorate degrees and as a member of the House of Peers, Nitobe frequently urged his fellow Japanese to become cosmopolitan “world citizens” and to abandon narrow Japanese particularism. Lee Teng-hui says that he read many of the books written by Nitobe, including Nitobe’s Suggestions for Reforming Taiwan’s Sugar Industry (written in 1901), but the one volume that struck him most deeply was a little volume entitled, Bushido: The Soul of Japan, first published in 1889 and running ten editions in six years. Bushido is a summary of the Japanese code of ethics and social norms, discussing such issues as rectitude, courage, benevolence, politeness, veracity and sincerity, honor, self-control, treatment of women, suicide and redress. But while Nitobe urged young Japanese to cultivate a virtuous personality, he also maintained that the “Japanese spirit was not the alpha and omega of education.” Instead, Nitobe promoted what he called “patriotic cosmopolitanism.” In a press conference in early 1932, Nitobe openly declared that communism and militarism were the


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two forces that threatened the world peace and that, of the two, the latter might do the more harm. It is not certain if Lee Teng-hui, who was then caught up by the wave of nationalism that swept the Japanese empire, was able to reconcile the conflicting views between Motoori and Nitobe on patriotism. It seems reasonably certain that Teng-hui was careful enough to avoid being branded as a “disloyal,” “unpatriotic,” and “traitorous” Japanese, the kind of adjectives that right wing groups used to characterize Nitobe.25 The preparatory school’s readers also featured Lady Sei Shonagon’s miscellany, The Pillow Book, and Lady Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari), both detailing the court life of Japan around 1000–1002. Another required history book that made a deep impression on Lee Teng-hui was Tale of the House of Taira (Heike monogatari), which tells of the wars between the Taira clan and the Minamoto clan, the latter’s triumph over the former in 1185, and the establishment of the first shogunate. This heavy fare, Lee Teng-hui admitted, was occasionally diluted with Japanese romantic literature and the then-popular shosetsu, a sort of autobiographical fiction in which the character was a plausible likeness of the author.26 Among the shosetsu that caught Teng-hui’s fancy was Abe Jiro’s (1883–1959) Santaro’s Diary (Santaro nikki), which portrays a defiant youth who rebels against the restraints of Japanese society. It was the kind of confessional and contemplative book that, after the turn of the twentieth century, became enormously popular among the young and the restless. Teng-hui’s other favorite book was Kurata Hyakuzo’s (1891–1943) The Priest and His Disciples (Shukke to sono deshi), a drama dealing with religion, ethics, and social themes.27 The one autobiographical novelist whom Teng-hui admired above all, and whom he continues to talk about even in his golden years, was Natsume Soseki (1867–1916). In Grass on the Wayside (Michikusa), which was first serialized in the Asahi shimbun, Soseki wrote movingly about his childhood, his harsh father, his heartless adopted parents, and the fact that he often skipped meals in order to save money to buy books. Teng-hui reveals that by the time he was attending the Taipei Higher School, he already owned more than 700 volumes of Japanese books published by Iwanami Shoten, including every novel even written by Soseki. He says he read, several times over, Soseki’s I Am a Cat (Wagahai wa Neko de Aru, 1905), And Then (Sorekara, 1909), The Gate (Mon, 1909), and Soseki’s masterpiece, The Heart (Kokoro, 1914). But Teng-hui’s favorite novel was Sanshiro (1908), in which Soseki creates a timid, unsophisticated provincial youth who came to study at Tokyo Imperial University. Even in 2001, Lee Teng-hui could still remember Sanshiro’s night with a strange woman on his way from Kumamoto to Tokyo, his hopeless ventures into the university library, and the many memorable scenes, some exhilarating and others frightening, in Sanshiro’s world.28

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It is evident that the intellectually curious Lee Teng-hui delved into philosophical matters—the nature of men, of human society, and of the universe—as he read Japanese translations of Lawrence of Arabia, Albert Einstein’s The Birth of Physics (both published by Iwanami Shoten), as well as the translations of Immanuel Kant’s philosophical treatises by Kyoto University Professor Nishida Kitaro (1870–1945). However, it is very difficult to ascertain the extent to which the didactic stories and philosophical messages that sloshed into Lee Teng-hui’s young mind at this point in his life ultimately helped to formulate his thoughts and define his world view (Weltanschauung). Japanese writers of that era often sent mixed signals and offered conflicting ideas about life and death, about faith and religion, about state and patriotism, and about personal salvation. Lee Teng-hui claims that he admired Abe Jiro’s books, but then again, Abe, a self-styled neo-Kantian, emphasized what he called “ethical individualism” and criticized the existing Japanese kokutai (polity), which vigorously promoted the so-called familystate ideal of the government. In such a government, the emperor became the supreme leader of a hierarchy under which the Japanese society was structured. Soseki, for his part, ridiculed those who justified every action in terms of patriotism as he wrote: “But, wouldn’t it be awful if [one] always had to . . . eat [one’s] meals for the state, wash [one’s] face for the state, and go to the toilet for the state?”29 After Pearl Harbor, Lee Teng-hui, like every student in the preparatory school, was asked to do everything he could for the state. He was required to don Japanese attire, bring a lantern, and join a nighttime victory parade in the streets of Taipei whenever Japanese troops occupied a major city, such as occurred following the occupation of Hong Kong (on December 25, 1941), Manila ( January 2, 1942), Singapore (February 15, 1942), and Rangoon (March 8, 1942). It was during this time, as the students drank in the euphoria of victories and conquests that Lee Teng-hui hurt his right shoulder trying to throw a hand grenade in a school-sponsored military drill. The injury was so severe that it kept him away from playing baseball for a long time.30 Consciously or unconsciously, Teng-hui and his classmates were being indoctrinated to study for the state, live for the state, and in the case of his elder brother Teng-ch’in— who “volunteered” to fight in the Philippines—to die for the state. While groping for political and philosophical convictions, Lee Teng-hui met a history teacher named Shiomi Kaoru, who not only aroused his interest in history, but also introduced him to Karl Marx. The Japanese study of Marxism commenced mainly in the faculties of economics and history, but soon the idea of socialism spread among the impressionable and idealistic students. Shiomi came under Marxist influence when he was studying at Tokyo Imperial University. Likewise, when Shiomi taught Chinese history he used


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Marxist theory of mode of production to interpret the ills of Chinese society. Lee Teng-hui told the author that Shiomi used only two or three lectures to cover Chinese history from antiquity to the Opium War in 1840—which of course was a gross injustice—but spent the rest of the year discussing China’s cultural stagnation, antiquated political system, and the problems of China’s land ownership and agricultural production and distribution. The impressionable Teng-hui thus acquired his initial knowledge of Chinese history and culture from this obviously “biased” and “limited” Japanese history teacher. Shiomi viewed Chinese society like “a big soy sauce pot” that had remained stagnant, stale, and static for centuries. Such society resisted changes, its culture tended to nurture selfishness, and its political traditions became conducive for the rise of dictatorship. Ultimately, Shiomi’s teaching was crucial in the formulation of Lee Teng-hui’s own Weltanschauung on China. There is no question that Shiomi inspired and excited the young Lee Tenghui who would read all sorts of history books, including volumes relating to the Renaissance in Europe. In fact, at this point in time, Teng-hui’s first love was history, but because it was nearly impossible for a Taiwanese to get a job with a history major, he realistically opted for agricultural economics, hoping that he could be employed later by the Southern Manchurian Railway Company.31 With the escalation of the war and the necessity of total mobilization of manpower, the Japanese government announced that preparatory school humanities and social sciences courses would be shortened by six months (science courses were exempted). Lee Teng-hui had two choices at this point: either to complete his preparatory schooling in two years, then enroll in a university; or be immediately called up by the military. Because the sea-lanes between Taiwan and Japan remained open, and because Taihoku (Taipei) Imperial University did not offer courses in agricultural economics, Teng-hui decided to continue his higher education in Japan. It needs also to be noted that during the prewar era, graduates of Hokkaido Imperial University were usually sent to Taiwan while Kyoto Imperial University graduates could easily find jobs with the Southern Manchurian Railway Company. It was against this backdrop that Lee Teng-hui sat for the two-day Japanese college entrance examination in the summer of 1943. (Thus, Lee belonged to the class of Showa 18th, meaning the 18th year of the Reign of Emperor Showa.) The examinations were, as usual, extremely competitive and Teng-hui had to score much higher than the Japanese students to have a chance to be admitted into Kyodai.32 But his hard work paid off and immediately his parents helped him raise money for tuition, travel, and proper university uniforms—60 yen for tuition for each semester, 17 yen for one way ticket from Taipei to Kyoto, about 25 yen for monthly living expenses, and so on. Before he departed for Japan, the Li family posed for a picture. Sitting in the front row, his grandfather

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wore the traditional Taiwanese black attire, his parents were in their formal summer white suits, and his sister-in-law sported a neat two-piece white blouse and skirt. Teng-hui, dressed in his dark school uniform without a cap, and his elder brother Teng-ch’in, who was much shorter and also wore a summer jacket and suit, stood in the back row. It was both a joyful and painful occasion, but Teng-hui showed no emotion. In the late summer of 1943, before Admiral Chester Nimitz’s (1885–1966) forces had effectively occupied the Central Pacific islands and started their bombing of Japan, 21 regularly scheduled shipping lines provided service between Taiwan and the world. Lee Teng-hui, who needed neither visa nor passport to make the journey, first took the train in Taipei, then boarded a ship at Keelung Harbor. Among the passengers were officials, professionals, business people, and students of all kinds, who generally occupied the thirdclass cabins. Teng-hui first went to Moji in Northern Kyushu; from there another ship sailed through the scenic Inland Sea and took him to the great international commercial port of Kobe. The total voyage took three nights and four days, while the train took only 40 minutes to carry Teng-hui and his luggage from Kobe to Kyoto station. Located at the northeastern corner of the ancient city, Kyoto University was founded by Imperial Ordinance on June 18, 1897, and was noted for its liberal faculty and academic freedom. A small coterie of professors merrily rowed against the rightist political currents of the time. Several prominent Japanese communists, labor union activists, and pacifists of all sorts had come within the ambit of intellectuals from Kyoto University. In fact, after Japan began its all-out invasion of China in 1937, it was almost impossible to find a president for the university who would be acceptable both to the government and to the faculty. Finally, Haneda Toru assumed the presidency in November 1938, guiding the university through its most difficult and turbulent wartime period until his retirement in November 1945. The Faculty of Agriculture was established in 1923 as the university’s seventh Faculty, with six departments and two attached institutions—an experimental farm and a university forest. Within this Faculty, there were Category-A majors (Humanities and Social Sciences) and Category-B majors (Natural Sciences). Lee Teng-hui was enrolled in Category A. The curriculum in Category A included such courses as “Basic Sociology and Economics for Agriculture,” “Livestock Economics,” “Farm Accounting and Finance,” “Farm Management,” “Agricultural Marketing,” “Comparative Agricultural History,” “Rural Resource Economics,” and “Agricultural Policy Analysis.”33 The Faculty of Agriculture at Kyoto University was so outstanding that its program became the template from which Japanese future agricultural science was to be cut. Lee Teng-hui stayed in the university dormitory. Even though class attendance was not mandatory, Teng-hui was required to meet with his


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supervisor regularly and report on his progress in school, behavior and accomplishments, the most important of which was passing his final examinations. Teng-hui spoke fluent Japanese, although with a slight bumpkin accent, and was occasionally snubbed by the natives. The new environment, likewise, made him homesick, made him conscious of the problems in Taiwan and often caused him to wonder if he was only a second-class citizen, one who would never be accorded all the rights of a full-fledged Japanese. Nevertheless, here he was in the center of intellectual activity and Teng-hui made the most of this opportunity. Indeed, Teng-hui learned a great deal not only through the lectures of his professors, but also through his contact with an assortment of students: Japanese, Koreans, Taiwanese, and Chinese from Manchuria. Tenghui had read the writings of several Kyoto University professors, but seemed to have been particularly attracted to Marx’s basic economic theory that the commercial value of any commodity is established by the number of man-hours required to produce it, and that thereby the worker becomes a commodity himself. Teng-hui admired the Marxist economist Kawakami Hajime (1879–1946) who (among other socialist books) published a series in the Osaka Asahi shimbun entitled Tales of the Poor (Bimbo monogatari) between 1916 and 1917. Even though Kawakami had long since resigned his post and was in fact imprisoned (he was arrested on January 12, 1933), many of Kyoto’s free-thinking faculty continued to attack Japan’s capitalist economic system and bourgeois lifestyle. They maintained that poverty was not the fault of the poor but was caused by capitalist-oriented legislation.34 While Lee Teng-hui was apparently not exposed to more liberal Western thinkers, we know that he added other German ideas to his intellectual baggage. Teng-hui’s Japanese professors made him read Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s (1749–1832) Faust. Dr. Faust, who is not satisfied with the results of his studies, gives his soul to the devil Mephistopheles, who promises to grant Faust every wish. The moral of this drama is that personal pleasures are not the same as happiness. Lee Teng-hui liked this story so much that he later had his son Li Hsien-wen write a commentary on Dr. Faust.35 From Goethe, Lee Teng-hui was introduced to the Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), who translated Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Apprenticeship (1796) into English. Between 1833 and 1834, Carlyle published his semiautobiography in the guise of a philosophical satire, entitled Sartor Resartus (The Tailor Re-tailored). While detailing the crises in his life and affirming his spiritual idealism in a rhapsodic, disjointed style, Carlyle also criticized the falseness of material wealth. Carlyle, like Lee Teng-hui’s history teacher Shiomi Kaoru (at Taipei Higher School), was also deeply concerned with the living conditions of workers, and his book naturally appealed to the idealistic Teng-hui, whose immediate goal was to survey the livelihood of peasants and laborers in Manchuria.36

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For Japanese university students, English was a prerequisite for a successful career. Before enrolling at Kyoto University, Lee Teng-hui had had at least six years of English in middle school and preparatory school, but he said that he was then still unable to read Carlyle’s book in English. German was his choice for a required second foreign language, but once again he was unable to read Goethe’s works in German even after two years of intensive training in grammar and reading. Thus, Lee Teng-hui continued to rely upon Japanese translations in acquiring his “Faustian” knowledge, including that of Adolf Hitler’s (1889–1945) Mein Kampf (My Struggle). The other point about Lee Teng-hui’s “German connections” is his approving recitals of German lore, about which he and his Japanese biographers have been reticent. For example, he did not choose to recognize the chasm that separated the Germany of Kant and Goethe from the Germany of Hitler and Goebbels. He was, in fact, programmed to have a sense of affinity with the German sentiment of “Deutschland uber Alles”—the Third Reich national anthem that called for German domination over all others and which essentially echoed Hitler’s idea of Lebensraum (living space). Like every other Japanese college student, he was required to sing a Nazi song called Englandlied, the ending of which says: “keep well my sweetheart, keep well, keep well. Then we go, then we go, then we go to England.”37 Teng-hui’s 14-month study at Kyoto University, from 1943 to 1944, was an intense experience both intellectually and emotionally. He had been at one of the most prestigious universities in Japan and had consorted with the best minds in the empire. Kyoto enchanted the young provincial from Taiwan with the stark beauty of its landscape gardens and its priceless depository of Japan’s ancient treasures and cultural heritage. He often strolled about the grounds of the ancient Yoshida Shrine, browsed through Kyoto’s many old bookstores, shopped in the Shijo district, and sketched some scenes of the spectacularly situated Kiyomizu temple. In the suburbs of Kyoto, Teng-hui appreciated the beautiful scenery of Arashiyama, visited the Ryoanji Temple, admired the Zen monks at Daigo Temple, and enjoyed Kyoto’s colorful festivals and processions of floats. Unfortunately, bad times came along with good times, and by early 1944, because of the shortage of manpower, students were mobilized for labor in factories and in farming villages for nearly one-third of the year. Worse still, Japan was losing the war. During the first week of July 1944, the Americans took Saipan, and the food shortage became a serious problem. Everything was scarce: eggs, somen (thin noodle), meals with pork and fish. Even rice was becoming more and more difficult to procure. The popular Kyoto o-zoni (rice cakes in white miso soup with taro, radishes, and other vegetables)—Teng-hui’s favorite breakfast— were hard to come by. And because of the power shortage, there were


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frequent blackouts. On July 18, Tojo Hideki (1884–1948) resigned as prime minister, and after Japan lost six carriers at the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines, Taiwanese students enrolled in every Japanese university were summoned to the offices of the military instructors and invited to “volunteer” for military duty. Once they signed up, their names would be posted in a prominent public place. It was rare and indeed very risky to refuse to “volunteer.” Peng Ming-min (1923–), a personal friend as well as political rival of Lee Teng-hui, who was then a student in Tokyo Imperial University, writes: “My name remained posted as the only one who had not yet volunteered, and I began to fear arrest. I moved my lodging from time to time and went to the campus less and less often.”38 While the campus was gripped in fear and uncertainty, the Kyoto University faculty spent their time guessing the site of an American amphibious landing-the leading candidates were Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Okinawa. A persistent rumor had it that the newly appointed prime minister, General Kuniaki Koiso (1880–1950), was moving an estimated 180,000 troops from Manchuria to defend Taiwan. Letters and occasional telegrams from relatives and friends in Taiwan repeatedly mentioned that all the island’s males under 60 years old were being mobilized to dig trenches and tunnels on the hills and build pillboxes and barbed-wire barriers along the coast. Women were also asked to haul rocks and sand for military installations, as well as to serve as emergency nurses. School children suspended their studies so that they could help prepare for a last-ditch resistance.39 Even the most celebrated Taiwanese puppetmaster Li Tien-lu was recruited by Japanese authorities to perform anti-American puppet shows around the island.40 Whether it was because of this rumor, or because he had been thoroughly indoctrinated by Bushido, or simply because he was just not contumacious enough to say no to the Japanese military authorities, Lee Teng-hui “volunteered” to join the army. He was then honored at a chilling send-off party, where he drank a cup of top-grade “Haku-roku” sake and was then asked to “please die beautifully” (rippa ni shinde kudasai). On the day of his departure for Kobe, representatives of the university and some Taiwanese who had long resided in Kyoto came to the train station and bade him farewell. Lee Teng-hui thus began a journey that would lead him to taste the life of a solider, witness the terror and destruction of war, suffer from the despair and humiliation of defeat and, finally, lose his Japanese identity altogether. After the Japanese unconditional surrender in 1945, Lee Teng-hui and millions of his fellow Taiwanese struggled to rebuild war-torn Taiwan, but the curse of the seventeenth-century conqueror Koxinga struck again. Less than a year after Lee Teng-hui returned to his homeland, thanks to the arrival of the new Chinese rulers and the clash of two different cultures, Taiwan was plunged into a firestorm of violence and cruelty, causing the islanders to once again suffer a severe crisis of identity.


CHAPTER 3

Clenched in the Jaws of War and Massacre: Lee Teng-hui’s Sorrowful Years, 1944–47

B

y October 1944, General Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) had kept his vow and had returned to the Philippines. On November 13, 1944, more than 1,000 American planes, primarily carrier based airplanes joined by some B-29 ( Japanese called them B-san), bombed major Taiwanese cities. Japanese headquarters in Tokyo and Taipei were paying close attention to Washington’s next move. Because Manila was only about 900 kilometers from Kaohsiung, and because the Japanese fleet was now in tatters, no longer able to control the Bashi Channel that separated the southern tip of Taiwan from Northern Luzon, it was assumed that Kaohsiung was a prime American invasion target. Accordingly, General Ando Rikichi (1884–1946), who was appointed the nineteenth and the last governor-general of Taiwan at the end of 1944, called up approximately 180,000 troops and began to prepare for a long siege.1 It was against the backdrop of this strategic maneuvering that Lee Teng-hui and 35 other Taiwanese student volunteers from the Kansai (western) region of Japan were slated to be quickly dispatched to Kaohsiung. They were to first assemble at Moji in Kyushu, and from there they would take the first available ship across the East China Sea en route southward to Taiwan. Among these volunteers was a young man named Yang Ke-chih, a student from the Osaka Foreign Languages Institute, who was unable to bestir himself from a coffee shop at Moji port. Yang’s mindless meandering ultimately caused the whole group to miss their ship. But when the ship that Lee Tenghui’s group missed reached the Goto Islands of Western Kyushu (not far from Nagasaki), it was torpedoed by an American submarine. This would not be

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the last time that Lee Teng-hui would fatefully escape life-threatening danger.2 By the mid-December of 1944, Lee Teng-hui finally returned to Taiwan; he was immediately assigned to an antiaircraft unit in Kaohsiung. Kaohsiung, the second largest city as well as the most active fishing port on the island, was originally called Takou, or “beating the dog,” by the aborigines, but this name was changed to Takao by the Japanese. For over three centuries, Kaohsiung had been considered an important strategic location by its occupants. Its neighboring town Tsoying was used by the Dutch and the Manchus to garrison their troops and train their navy. The Japanese further developed Kaohsiung into a major harbor so that it could facilitate their expansion into southern China and Southeast Asia. At the time of Lee Teng-hui’s arrival, the Kaohsiung garrison headquarters was located on a hill called Longevity Hill, which was 390 meters high and had a panoramic view of the entire city and its harbor. Thus, it also became an ideal place for installing antiaircraft batteries. As a college student volunteer, Lee Teng-hui was made a sublieutenant. While Lee Teng-hui was stationed in Kaohsiung, he met his elder brother Li Teng-ch’in, who was then training at the Tsoying naval base. They spent one entire day together, but Lee Teng-hui forgot what they talked about that day—only that his brother told him he was about to be shipped out at any moment. Shortly after their joyful reunion and sorrowful parting, he received a post card from his brother. It was mailed from “a port which has sea and a beautiful sunset.” Lee Teng-hui intuitively guessed that it was Manila and that his brother was serving as a security guard somewhere in Luzon. There was even a possibility that his brother was assigned to guard the Bataan Death March survivors at the fiendish Camp O’Donnell.3 The brothers had of course been apprehensive that either one of them or both might fall in the field of battle. Alas, this apprehension proved to be correct—this was their last meeting! Spectacular victories scored by Admiral Nimitz’s forces in the Central and Western Pacific suddenly caused Washington to change its offensive strategy against the Empire of Japan. The Joint Chiefs of Staff decided to scratch their well-planned Operation Causeway, the Allies’ code name for the invasion and conquest of Taiwan. As the Japanese observed an anxious and joyless New Year in 1945, there were prevalent rumors and mixed signals that the American forces would soon invade Okinawa, or even land directly in Tokyo Bay. Tokyo’s strategists reacted accordingly by removing some of Taiwan’s troops to the defense of the Japanese homeland. Taiwan’s military population thus changed from week to week as units frequently moved through the island to and from Japan and the front. In January 1945, Lee Teng-hui was ordered to return to Japan, and his new assignment was training at an antiaircraft military academy in Chiba on the east side of Tokyo Bay, directly

In the Jaws of War and Massacre

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opposite Yokohama. Lee Teng-hui first took the train from Kaohsiung to Keelung, then boarded a ship for Kobe. In order to avoid the high probability of an American attack, the crew of the ship that carried Lee Teng-hui and his fellow soldiers doubled up its vigilance and decided to adjust its route. Instead of going straight northward, the ship sailed eastward and followed China’s coastline until it reached the Yellow Sea. In a surprise revelation while serving as the Mayor of Taipei in 1979, Lee Teng-hui told a story about his brief stay in the Tsingtao Harbor of Shantung peninsula during this voyage. As he and the rest of the ship sought refuge in Shantung, he set foot on the soil of China for the first time. His description of Tsingtao—which was first developed by the Germans, then by the Japanese—was rather brief, but he was struck by the poverty and hardships that the people in Shantung had to endure.4 Judging from the heavy toll on shipping between Taiwan and Japan taken by American submarines, Lee Teng-hui began to realize the growth of American power and the diminution of Japanese military might. His confidence began to wane as he worried that Japan might not win the war. Nevertheless, like most kamikaze volunteers, who valued patriotism and honor above life and death, Lee Teng-hui put on an act, followed his order, and was enrolled in the academy’s eleventh class. While the kamikaze pilots were trained to learn about the nuances of ships so that they could damage or sink American carriers, Lee Teng-hui studied radar, learning about the speed and altitude of American airplanes.5 The training was harsh. Japanese military training stressed discipline, loyalty, and victory at all costs. It aimed to turn a soldier like Lee Teng-hui into an automaton who never questioned authority and would do only what he was expressly ordered to do. Such training would suit him well when he later served Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975) and Chiang’s son Ching-kuo (1910–88). Upon his graduation from the military academy in April, Lee Teng-hui was made a second lieutenant and sent to Nagoya to defend the Ise Bay and the Chukyo metropolitan area. However, Japanese radars proved to be insufficiently equipped, and their antiaircraft batteries were rendered ineffective in preventing B-29s from causing maximum damage to the Nagoyans, and for that matter, to the entire Japanese civilian population. Between March and August, 1945, firebombs dropped by American airplanes wiped out 62 Japanese cities and damaged 40 percent of Nagoya. These deadly statistics were due partly to the fact that the average Japanese wooden house took only 12 minutes to burn down, and partly because many of Japan’s small factories, which generally housed flammable materials, were built throughout residential districts. In addition to destroying communications, industries, power plants, and gasoline depots, the air raids also killed some 668,000 Japanese civilians, twice as many as the combatants who died on the battlefield.

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In March alone, estimated 100,000 civilians died in Tokyo, with the heaviest casualties centering around the northeastern district of Asakusa. As Lee Teng-hui daily witnessed the evils unleashed by the war and faced ever-increasing hardships, his fighting spirit began to sag and his assiduity gradually flagged. Instead of shooting down enemy aircraft, all he could and did do was to bring the wounded to the hospital, help children and the elderly evacuate to the country from Nagoya, drill civilian volunteers in fighting with bamboo spears, and dig pillboxes along Ise Bay to prepare for an American invasion. Anticipating a possible Armageddon, his mood changed from disappointment to disillusionment, and from disillusionment to despair. He felt miserable, scared, and hopeless. But once again, he managed to survive the ordeal. Then came the cruelest month in Japanese history: on August 6, the first atomic bomb killed between 130,000 and 140,000 Japanese in Hiroshima, and on August 9, the second bomb killed another 60,000 to 70,000 people in Nagasaki. Lee Teng-hui, like the vast majority of the Japanese, did not immediately learn of these horrors, but the Nagoya newspapers did carry a special announcement that the Americans had used a new weapon that caused considerable damages to these two cities. As Lee Teng-hui was to learn later about the atomic bombs, a sword of anxiety and fear split his psyche. On August 15, His Majesty Hirohito agreed to accept the unconditional surrender demanded by the Allied leaders at the Potsdam Conference on July 26. Exactly at high noon of that day, and with a peculiar, forlorn, and sometimes tremulous voice, Hirohito told his people in a radio broadcast to “endure the unendurable” as well as to “suffer what is unsufferable.”6 Immediately following what the Japanese called “the Jade Voice Broadcast” of the emperor, rumors became rampant that a number of lower-echelon military officers in Tokyo were unhappy with the peace terms and were plotting some sort of coup d’etat. In fact, Japanese airplanes dropped propaganda leaflets, one of which said: “Both the Army and Navy are alive and well. We expect the nation to follow our lead.”7 However, the Japanese at large no longer had the stomach for any more acts of madness. Moreover, two weeks after the broadcast, a triumphant General MacArthur arrived in Japan and wasted no time in disarming and demobilizing the Japanese troops. By the end of November 1945, when the demobilization was near its completion, Lee Teng-hui stopped receiving his military allowance. Fortunately, the United States had already started shipping emergency supplies of grain, meat, and dairy products, but Lee Teng-hui, like millions of Japanese, would live in the shadow of hunger for the next few months. After Lee Teng-hui was discharged from his Nagoya antiaircraft service, he quickly burned his military insignia and other identifications. He put his valuables and a few books in a furoshiki (a square-wrapping cloth), traveled


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through several freshly built shanty towns in the Kanto plain, and crossed the scorched fields of Tokyo, finally coming to a facility in Tokyo’s Shinbashi area. Though the facility survived the American bombings, it was surrounded by piles after piles of charred wood, shattered concrete, and all kinds of debris. Most other stranded Taiwanese students, however, found shelter in the Meguro district’s Choshu-ryo, or O-chiu-liao in Taiwanese, which means “dormitory for the black drongos,” a very popular Taiwanese bird looks like sparrow. The property originally belonged to a Sendai daimyo (lord), who was required to pay homage to the Tokugawa shogun at Edo (Tokyo) every other year. This ritual was called Sankin Kodai (alternate attendance), which also required that the daimyo leave members of his family at Edo as hostages. After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the property was confiscated by the Tokyo municipal government with a new address: 530 Shirogane Sanko-cho, Meguro-ku. The Japanese authorities later used this old facility as a dormitory to better supervise and control the young Taiwanese students who attended the various schools in the Tokyo metropolitan area. Even though Choshu-ryo was severely damaged, its makeshift facility remained a popular meeting place where Taiwanese youths from different parts of Japan could spend a few days together and discuss issues of common interest. During the next four months, Lee Teng-hui often took a 30-minute train ride to Choshu-ryo so that he could meet with like-minded young Taiwanese, several of whom also went to Tamsui Middle School. Strangely enough, as soon as Lee sang the Choshu-ryo’s house song, he felt a sense of relief and hope.8 At Choshu-ryo, Lee Teng-hui befriended such notable Taiwanese youth leaders as Chu Chao-yang, Yang T’ing-chien and Yang’s younger brother, Yang T’ing-i. These idealistic Taiwanese, having been imbued with various degrees of socialist ideology before the war, were now eagerly waiting for an incarnation of Marxism. In October, 1945, Japanese Communists, many of whom were set free from years in prison on MacArthur’s orders, legally formed the Japanese Communist Party. At this juncture, leftist Japanese intellectuals and students hailed Americans as “liberators” rather than “occupiers” and immediately promoted a “peaceful revolution” on Marxist line. During this brief postwar public discourse, several prominent Japanese “modernists,” such as Maruyama Masao, Otsuka Hisao, and Fukutake Tadashi, believed that Marxism was the best means to transform Japan from an imperial and feudal system to a modern and humanistic society.9 Lee Teng-hui, the Yang brothers, and several other Taiwanese youths, now living in desolated bleakness and perplexity, became attracted to a postwar slogan called “establishment of the modern self ” (kindaiteki jiga no kakuritsu). They began to read works (in Japanese translation) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels at this time.

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In an interview with the author, Lee Teng-hui confirmed that it was also at this juncture that he first read different Japanese translations, some of them only abridged versions, of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital.10 In this huge erudite work, Marx focused on the economic and social conditions produced by the Industrial Revolution, which he maintained created new classes—he called the bourgeoisie and the proletariat—which were engaged in an inevitable class war. However, Marx was not always clear about the various elements of his theory, nor did he prove to be right in his predictions regarding the subsequent development of industrial society. Lee Teng-hui admitted that at the outset he encountered difficulties in his first in-depth study of Das Kapital, which is filled with complex statistics, ambiguous terms, and unusual prose style. Nevertheless, the Taiwanese youths at Choshu-ryo discussed the feasibility of applying Marxist ideology to transform postwar Taiwanese society. They viewed Das Kapital as a masterpiece of scholarship and believed that Marxism was an ideology for modernism, humanism, and peaceful transformation. They were so enthusiastic about the modernism/Marxism theory that in January 1946, they went to the Tokyo Railway Station to welcome the return of Nozaka Sanzo (1892–1993), the most able of Japanese Communist exiled leader, who had been working for the Third International in Russia and then at Yenan with Mao Zedong. However, after returning to Taiwan, Yang T’ing-chien and Yang T’ing-i were both arrested, respectively in 1947 and 1950, by the Nationalist Chinese authorities. The older Yang was charged with reading such Communist magazines as Red Flag and was imprisoned for six years; whereas the younger Yang was executed because of his evidenced Communist activities. Lee Teng-hui’s other Choshu-ryo friend, Chu Chao-yang, a Tokyo University graduate, first organized the “Revive Taiwan Reconstruction Study Society” in early 1946, then founded a shortlived Yen-p’ing University in Taipei. Chu, like Lee Teng-hui and several other Choshu-ryo affiliated people, nearly escaped the 2.28 Massacre in 1947.11 Between 1937 and 1945, a total of 80,433 Taiwanese served in the Japanese military and more than 126,750 Taiwanese functioned as auxiliaries and conscripts, mostly assigned to China and Southeast Asia. At the time of the Japanese surrender, an estimated 40,000 Taiwanese soldiers and conscripts had died in the battle fields while 30,000 Taiwanese were stranded in Japan. The ashes of the dead Taiwanese were first stored in Tokyo’s Yasukuni Memorial Shrine but were later sent to a Buddhist shrine in Hsinchu prefecture in northern Taiwan.12 The stranded Taiwanese, on the other hand, were given two options: either to remain in Japan, or be repatriated to Taiwan. For a while, Lee Teng-hui considered staying in Japan so that he could complete his education at Kyoto University. But the more he thought about his bereaved family in distant Taiwan, the more he felt the call of home and the


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yearnings of a peaceful postwar Taiwanese society. Consequently, he decided to join the approximately 8,000 Taiwanese who decided to break free of their Japanese moorings and to return to their home island. It was an end, but also a beginning. He was now transformed from a cocoon into a butterfly: the Japanese youth Iwasato Masao was reborn as the Taiwanese man Lee Teng-hui. In reality, however, a change of name would not easily jettison his experiences in 23 years of his formative life. He would carry with him forever his war scars and his Japanese intellectual baggage. Finally, in the spring of 1946, Lee boarded an American Liberty Ship at the Uraga port in Kanagawa Prefecture, setting sail for Keelung Harbor and for his unknown future. The American Liberty Ship was a standard cargo vessel, one of many hastily constructed right after Pearl Harbor. As a part of the demobilization process, the Supreme Command of the Allied Powers (SCAP) used such ships to bring home some six million Japanese servicemen and civilian expatriates over the course of the next 15 months. The majority of the passengers in this particular Taiwan-bound Liberty Ship were young Taiwanese who had been conscripted to work at the Atsugi Naval Yards in Kanagawa and at other sites in the Japanese military–industrial complex. During the voyage, some of the sentimental conscripts would sing popular, melancholy Japanese songs. These songs were mostly about love and about loss, and could quickly stir the emotions of a lonely man. The homesick Lee Teng-hui would occasionally hum a popular lyric called “Accidental Meeting at Yuraku-cho,” whose first two lines run: “If I am waiting for you, the rain will fall.”13 Lee Teng-hui now anxiously awaited for the rain of hope to fall on him again. When the ship reached northern Kyushu’s Saga area, one of the passengers was found to have a skin rash on his face and was also running a fever. The ship was forced to stop at Saga’s Karatsu port so that this sick person could go ashore and receive medical treatment. However, by the time the Liberty Ship had entered Keelung Harbor, a telegram from Karatsu confirmed that the sick man had contracted smallpox. As a result, every passenger was thoroughly examined and duly vaccinated against any communicable diseases. During the 20-day quarantine, a fellow passenger named Ho Chi-ming, a wealthy Taiwanese who studied medicine at Tokyo Imperial University, befriended Lee Teng-hui. About a year later, Ho would hide Lee Teng-hui when Lee was hunted by Chinese garrison troops. In his declining years, Ho served as the president of the Tamsui Golf Club and frequently teamed with Lee Teng-hui when they played golf.14 Spring had arrived on the tropical island in March 1946—Taiwan’s azaleas were in full bloom. Lee Teng-hui again stood upon the soil of his home island. While he was astonished to see a crowd of Nationalist Chinese soldiers in ragged and dirty uniforms at Keelung Harbor and at the Taipei train

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station, he was really elated to embrace his aging grandfather, his bed-ridden mother, and his ever optimistic father. The five-and-half million islanders generally greeted the news of the Japanese capitulation; in fact, a number of leading Taiwanese had begun to bid for an independent Taiwan as soon as Japan surrendered Taiwan to the SCAP at Yokohama on September 3. However, on October 25, the nineteenth and the last Japanese Governor-General of Taiwan, Ando Rikichi, signed the surrender documents and delivered Taiwan, together with an estimated two billion U.S. dollars worth of Japanese properties, to the Nationalist Chinese general Ch’en Yi (1883–1950).15 Thus, the half-century of Japanese rule over Taiwan was brought to an end by American forces. Thereafter, the status of Taiwan remained unsettled because neither the Cairo Declaration (November 27, 1943), nor the Potsdam Declaration ( July 26, 1945), nor the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty (April 28, 1952) specified who should be the legal recipient of Taiwan. Unfortunately for the island’s inhabitants, they were doomed to experience yet another bout of identity crisis as their ancestors did in1661 when Koxinga’s troops drove the Dutch out of the island and also in 1895 when the Japanese took over Taiwan from the Ch’ing authorities. Even the Tamsui fort had a different namesake and a new outlook. Following their victory in Singapore in early 1942, the Japanese expelled all British diplomatic personnel from Taiwan and sealed off the Tamsui fort. But right after the Japanese unconditional surrender, the British reclaimed the fort and announced their intention to convert it into a consulate for perpetuity. Amid all these identity realignments and remaking of “Chineseness,” a number of Taiwanese intellectuals fervently sought Chinese traditions to replace discarded Japanese colonial symbols. For one thing, Taiwan’s newspapers and journals were now published in Chinese instead of Japanese, and one of them would soon draw the islanders’ attention to the history of the Tamsui fort by publishing an old poem written by the Ch’ing scholar Lin Feng-yuan. It describes the fort as follows: High terraces stand straight at the rim of water and clouds, When the visitor climbs up to the top, the sun shines all over the sky; Upon composing one stanza, he sees a line of cranes flying pass by, As huge canvases marking the returning ships. Scars of war dotted the lonely fortress, Scattered new villages covered with evening smoke; Though mountains and seas are now free from torches and fires, White-haired folks still remember the warring years.16 The black-haired Lee Teng-hui would of course never forget the war years, but his mind was now set on resuming his college education. Soon after his


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return to Taiwan, the Chinese ministry of education in Nanjing announced that all Taiwanese students who had been enrolled at Japanese imperial universities were entitled to continue their degree programs at National Taiwan University, formerly the Taihoku Imperial University. Established at the southeastern corner of the city of Taipei in 1928, Taihoku Imperial University contained only two colleges—a College of Medicine and a College of Liberal Arts and Political Science. It was essentially a research institute, aimed at enhancing Japanese colonial interests. As such, its core curricula focused on tropical medicine, tropical agriculture, and the subtropical regions of south China, Southeast Asia, and the Indies; fitting its research orientation, there were more faculty and research assistants than students, as the records show a teaching staff of 708, and only 373 students in 1939. Because it was a university of the Japanese, by the Japanese, and for the Japanese, native faculty were rare and only a few Taiwanese students were accepted to this institution. The following chart reflects this heavily enrollment skewed in favor of the Japanese:17 Year

Japanese students

Taiwanese students

1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944

283 235 196 388 384 268

90 85 61 69 69 85

The majority of the Taiwanese students enrolled at the island’s sole true university studied medicine. Only a handful of Taiwanese were allowed to major in liberal arts and political science: the records show five native youths studying such subjects in 1940; three in 1941, 1942, and 1943, respectively; and two in 1944.18 The university had a library of more than 400,000 volumes, of which approximately half were in Western languages. After the Japanese surrender, the reconstituted National Taiwan University (popularly known as Taita) annexed the Taipei Higher Commercial College (founded in 1919 primarily for training Japanese students) and acquired 50,000 additional books. It was also expanded to include six colleges in all—Liberal Arts, Law, Sciences, Medicine, Engineering, and Agriculture—comprising 22 departments with 585 students.19 When professors from mainland China took their teaching positions at Taita, they also brought along Chineselanguage books to add to the library holdings. To be in line with the university system in China, Taita changed from a three-year European system to a four-year American-style university. And, since the war had impacted every

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aspect of Taiwan society, the main street that led to the entrance of the campus was renamed Roosevelt Boulevard in grateful memory of President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945). In short, Taita now had its own new identity as well. Before Professor Lu Chih-hung assumed the presidency of Taita in August 1946, the university had already accepted about 30 Taiwanese students who were previously enrolled at a handful of Japanese imperial universities, but whose degree programs were interrupted by the war. Among these culturally hybrid students were Lee Teng-hui in agricultural economics, Ho Chi-ming in medicine, and Peng Ming-min in political science. Despite Lee’s previous achievements, he now had to use an entirely new language to express his ideas. Moreover, since everything was in transition, several departments remained understaffed and suffered from a lack of funding. In fact, the whole Department of Agricultural Economics had only two students: Lee Teng-hui and Ch’en Chieh, a native of Changhua county. In January, 1988, right after Lee Teng-hui was elected the President of the Republic of China, Ch’en Chieh was interviewed by Chung-hua jih-pao (China Daily News, formerly Tainan shimpo). In the interview, Ch’en Chieh recalls the many quarrels he had with Lee Teng-hui during their time at Taita but every time after they had made peace, they swapped their lunches. Ch’en says that when he and Lee Teng-hui first got to Taita, there was a shortage of faculty, thus the students had to find their own instructors, some of whom spoke Mandarin Chinese while others spoke only Taiwanese. Taita’s students at that time were often responsible for setting up their own textbooks and preparing mimeographed copies of their lessons. Some even resorted to teaching themselves. Instruction— consisting primarily of reading and discussion—was generally conducted in the instructors’ offices rather than in classrooms.20 The two faculty who had something to do with Lee Teng-hui’s academic progress at Taita were Hsu Ch’ing-chung and Wang Yi-t’ao, the former a Taiwanese agricultural breeding specialist and the latter a native of Chekiang province and a graduate of Tokyo Imperial University who had taught at Beijing University before coming to Taiwan. Hsu’s expertise in agriculture would soon draw the attention of Chiang Kai-shek as Chiang appointed Hsu to be the vice premier of the Nationalist government. It was through Professor Hsu that Lee Teng-hui later received a government appointment. But Hsu’s relationship with Lee Teng-hui gradually turned sour; in fact, Hsu’s oldest son, Hsu Yen-tao, ultimately became one of Lee’s virulent critics.21 While Lee Teng-hui once again saw daylight with regard to his education at Taita, darkness fell upon his family in Sanchih. In the early summer of 1946, his mother Chiang Ching succumbed to cancer and depression; four months later, his beloved grandfather Li Ts’ai-sheng passed away. Both were


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buried nearby Lee’s Sanchih home. Furthermore, the official status of his elder brother Li Teng-ch’in remained missing-in-action, and the hopes of his returning home from the jungles of the Philippines became dimmer and dimmer as weeks and months passed by without news. During the Japanese occupation, Lee Teng-hui’s family owed, to a certain degree, their social status to the Japanese assimilation policies, and they benefited economically from the colonial bureaucracy. Counting among their number, a licensed opium dealer, a rice merchant, and a director of the farmers’ association, the family had access to raw materials even during the wartime rationing period. Lee Teng-hui’s father once served as a Japanese police officer, and his maternal uncle was the head of a pao (100 households)—thus both had access to the government bureaucracy. The islanders who held more rigidly to their traditions and beliefs often stigmatized such Taiwanese collaborators as “three-legged running dogs” (this to be contrasted with the “four-legged Japanese dogs”).22 Those who know what happened to the French Nazi collaborators right after the liberation of France in 1944 can understand why the “three-legged” Taiwanese were fearful of retaliation by their own folk. Indeed, many of the “three-legged” Taiwanese went into hiding for several weeks until apparent order was restored. In the remote community of Sanchih, things were much quieter, however, and the people less vindictive. But the vicissitudes of the Li family had just begun. Somehow Lee Teng-hui learned to bear the loss of his loved ones and was able to concentrate on studying agricultural economics as well as reading new books from China. The perfectionist Lee Teng-hui did not believe that he had learned enough from his Taita instructors—consequently, he decided that he ought to acquire additional knowledge from outside readings, particularly in the areas of sociology, philosophy, and history. There were now more Chinese books available to him at Taita, but he was attracted particularly to those authors who were strongly iconoclastic in their opinions concerning China’s traditional culture and its place in the modern world. Teng-hui loved the pai-hua (vernacular) essays published by Dr. Hu Shih (1891–1962), who used plain spoken language, instead of classical cliches and allusions, to convey his meaning. Teng-hui read Kuo Mo-jo’s (1892–1978) Bronze Age (Ch’ing-t’ung shih-tai, 1945) as well as Kuo’s other treatises that criticized Chinese traditions. He was impressed by Lu Hsun’s (1881–1936) The True Story of Ah Q, in which the author creates a boastful, arrogant, stupid, and indecisive caricature. Ah Q clearly represented the ignorance, superstition, hypocrisy, apathy, and lack of compassion at all levels of Chinese society.23 While Kuo Mo-jo and Lu Hsun attempted to solve China’s problems by revolutionary means, Hu Shih remained opposed to using violence to change Chinese society. Lee Teng-hui’s knowledge about China had now led him to

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affliction. However, it is difficult to ascertain which, if any, of these three prominent Chinese writers helped to convert the impressionable Teng-hui into a critic of China’s cultural and political inertia. As his life story unfolded, Teng-hui at one time shared Kuo Mo-jo and Lu Hsun’s Marxist leanings, but ultimately, as he grew more mature—and particularly after receiving his American graduate training—he chose to follow Hu Shih’s footsteps in utilizing a more liberal Western methodology to reinterpret Chinese culture and politics. The voracious Lee Teng-hui also read Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s (1821–81) The Idiot (1869), a portrayal of the contradictions and confusions of modern man. A proto-existentialist, Dostoyevsky pitted Western rationalism, materialism, and skepticism against the suffering, faith, and redemption that he had rediscovered in Christianity while living in exile in Siberia. Dostoyevsky’s penetrating analysis of human nature, particularly his relentless inquiry into the nature of awakening and goodness, astonished the youthful Lee Teng-hui.24 In fact, one might even say that Lee Teng-hui is himself a Dostoyevskian character. Lee Teng-hui suffered a great deal during the war and would suffer even more during the so-called White Terror of the Kuomintang (KMT) regime. He would flirt with Marxism, only to later betray his earlier beliefs. He would make a 180-degree volte-face and enthusiastically collaborate with the KMT, the very regime that had repeatedly violated his human rights and ruthlessly oppressed his fellow Taiwanese. Here we find the quintessential Dostoyevskian protagonist full of contradictions and confusions. Even though Christianity has not loomed large in Lee Teng-hui’s life so far, the reader will later learn that Lee Teng-hui would ultimately discover Christianity and regain his faith in Taiwanese struggle against what he calls “foreign regimes,” meaning the Japanese colonial masters and the KMT. After gaining power, Teng-hui began to redeem and reinvent himself, standing side by side with his people as he became Taiwan’s most consequential public figure. He helped to effectively break up the power-grip of the KMT and relentlessly pursued what most Taiwanese truly wanted—a free, independent, democratic state. In a nutshell, Lee Teng-hui is a man of many beliefs, many contradictions, many personalities, and many identities, calling himself a Japanese first, then a Chinese, and finally a Taiwanese. His story is one of suffering, faith, and redemption—exactly as Dostoyevesky would have scripted it. And his life is a constant struggle of making, remaking, and unmaking of his “Chineseness.” By the time he reached the age of 70, Teng-hui, who clearly has a talent for survival, had also substantially reinvented himself politically. In his golden years, Teng-hui has become a man totally honest with himself, with his God, and with the Taiwanese people as he tirelessly champions for Taiwan’s “state nationalism.”


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Lee Teng-hui never denies his membership in Taita’s “Marxist Study Club,” which was a fashion of his generation (nearly every college student belonged to one or more such study clubs). In fact, Teng-hui openly admits that he was an “acquaintance” of a Taiwanese Communist by the name of Ch’en Ping-chi, who fled to China in1947 but returned to visit him in Taiwan 50 years later. Lee also says that he applied the Marxist theory of class struggle and surplus labor in writing his undergraduate thesis, “A Study of the Problems of Taiwan’s Agricultural Labor.” He even worried that his advisor might detect his Marxist ideology and refuse to pass him. One must remember that Marxist publications multiplied in China between 1935 and 1947; the authors most in demand were Marx, Engels, Lenin, Bukharin, and Kawakami Hajime. Because of the corruption and ineffectiveness of the Nationalist government in face of the Japanese invasion, and because of the deteriorating social and economic conditions in China, more and more young Chinese intellectuals were attracted to Marxism. The intellectual appeal of Marxism lay in part in its claim to being scientific. It appealed to Lee Teng-hui at a propitious moment, when he was living in a postwar ravaged society and when he had serious doubts about traditional Chinese political and economic systems. It should also be noted that there was a civil war going on in China and that, by the autumn of 1947, the Communist forces had gained momentum, while the Nationalists were on the defense. Whether or not Lee Teng-hui actually joined the Communist organization is an issue that may never be satisfactorily resolved. Thus far, Lee Teng-hui has maintained a “no comment” stance with regard to this issue, but his inner circle and apologists, including Professor Ch’en Fang-ming of Chingyi University, have vehemently and consistently denied that Lee ever became a member of the Communist Party. On the other hand, his detractors, particularly the popular writer Li Ao and the legal scholar Hsu Yen-tao—the son of Lee Teng-hui’s Taita mentor Hsu Ch’ing-chung—insist that Lee Teng-hui twice joined Communist organizations, but twice backed out of them.25 In light of the conflicting reports on Lee Teng-hui’s Communist affiliation, a brief history of Communist activities in Taiwan is called for so that this controversial issue can be put in perspective. Taiwanese Communists had less to do with the Japanese leftists than with the Chinese Communists. A small coterie of intellectuals, journalists and political radicals established the Japanese Communist Party on July 15, 1922; it was dissolved in March 24, 1924 but reestablished as an underground party on December 4, 1926. Following massive arrests of Japanese Communists in 1928, a handful of Taiwanese radicals, including the legendary female activist Hsieh Hsuehhung (1901–70), fled to Shanghai and organized the Taiwanese Communist Party (TCP). In the 1930s, the TCP periodically sent its members to the

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island to set up some kind of base, but without much success. During World War II, the TCP linked up with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and in August 1945, the CCP sent a Taiwanese native by the name of Tsai Hsiaochien to Taiwan to recruit new members and establish an underground network. With the help of prodding from the CCP’s East-China Bureau (Hua-tung-chu) as well as from a liaison branch office in Hong Kong, Tsai began to set up cells on the island, but once again made little or no progress. At the outset of the Chinese civil war in 1946, the CCP sent Chang Chihchung to Taiwan, in an attempt to enlist the support of intellectuals, popular local leaders, and those who had served in the Japanese army. Chang joined Tsai in organizing the Taiwanese Communist Youth League (Tai-wan kungch’an-chu-i ch’ing-nien t’uan).26 It is alleged that through this youth league, and upon the recommendation of Wu K’e-t’ai, Lee Teng-hui joined a cell unit called the “New Democratic Comrade Society” (Hsin-min-tsu t’ung-chih-hui). Wu ran a Mandarin language school near the square of Nanjing West Road as a Communist front, right in the same building where Lee Teng-hui’s future wife resided. Other sources allege that Lee Teng-hui was required to write a synopsis of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital as well as an autobiography, before being admitted as an “alternate member” in September 1946. In January 1947, Wu organized an anti-American demonstration at Taita’s Law School, where Lee Teng-hui allegedly made enthusiastic speeches, passed out leaflets, and fomented student unrest. Lee Teng-hui’s dossier was then submitted to Tsai Hsiao-chien, who approved Lee’s application and made Lee a full-fledged Communist member in October 1947. But six months later, Lee got cold feet and asked to withdraw his membership in early June of 1948. He reportedly pledged not to reveal the nature of the “New Democratic Comrade Society.” In May 1950, the Nationalist government identified more than 80 leftist groups on the island and arrested 45 Communists, among them Tsai Hsiao-chien and Yang T’ing-yi, the latter being Lee Teng-hui’s Choshu-ryo friend at the end of World War II. In addition, two members of Lee’s “Taita Marxist Study Club” were also arrested. Lee Teng-hui’s association with these people ultimately led his detractors to charge that Lee sold off his “comrades” in exchange for his own survival.27 Even though no conclusive proof has come to light, Lee Teng-hui’s alleged complicity with the Taiwanese Communists would haunt him for the next two decades. He would be arrested in the early summer of 1969, and set free only after a lengthy investigation and a series of horrid interrogations by KMT secret police. But the fact that none of Lee’s Taita classmates ever either openly or privately implicated Lee as a Communist tends to weaken the credibility of the above-mentioned allegations. Furthermore, the KMT secret


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police, headed by Chiang Kai-shek’s son Chiang Ching-kuo (1910–88), kept Tsai Hsiao-chien alive so that they could make him divulge all of the Communist activities and members on the island. Tsai, who died of natural causes in Taiwan’s garrison prison in 1982, never did identify the Taita Lee Teng-hui (from Sanchih county) as a member of his “New Democratic Comrade Society.” There is, however, a strong possibility that the Lee Tenghui that appeared in the Communist documents was an entirely different person—Lee Teng-hui is a popular Taiwanese name, very much like John Smith in America. One must remember that the notorious KMT secret police preferred to calumniate, and even put to death, 99 innocent suspects than let one real culprit get away. Indeed, it was because of this sordid political culture and utter contempt for basic human rights that the islanders, who still harbored suspicions toward the mainlander Chinese, rose up on February 28, 1947, staging the biggest uprising against “foreign rulers” in the island’s history. When war broke out against China in July 1937, Taiwanese of every age and class were subjected to intense levels of Nipponization as well as antiChinese propaganda. China was depicted as a backward, poor, inefficient, and superstitious Asian neighbor. The Japanese generally despised the Chinese and called them “chinkoro,” or the slaves of the Manchus, very much like the Sinophobian Americans called the Chinese immigrants in the United States “chink.” Consequently, the Taiwanese by and large compared the Chinese unfavorably with the Japanese. As Japan began to lose battle after battle toward the end of World War II, it desperately needed the loyalty and continued support of the Taiwanese. Even though colonial administrators took great pains to discourage Taiwanese political ambitions, by the spring of 1945, the Japanese government—many would characterize it as “fascist”—granted “full and equal political rights” to the Taiwanese and allowed Taiwanese representatives to sit in the Imperial Diet. This rather belated concession was construed by skeptics as a political ploy. Nevertheless, many Taiwanese leaders, after having sit in the Imperial Diet, albeit only briefly, found it most difficult to serve a new master—especially an impoverished, war-shattered, and demoralized China. Perhaps it was the same old curse of Koxinga: Taiwan was once again placed on the edge of the Chinese world, thanks this time to the military might of the United States. But the retrocession of the island to the mainland led to yet another tragic chapter in Taiwanese history. What happened next would also shatter the world of Lee Teng-hui. As stated earlier, in September 1945, the administration of the island was taken over from the Japanese by Chinese forces assisted by small American teams. At the outset, the islanders had high expectation of reuniting with the “motherland”; likewise, enthusiastically and sincerely welcomed the Chinese

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forces as “liberators.” Taiwanese by and large held welcome celebrations by shooting firecrackers, parading in the streets, and by showing off their lion and dragon dancing skills. In addition, a “Taiwan Retrocession Salutation Delegation,” led by such leading Taiwanese as Lin Hsien-t’ang and Koo Chen-fu (son of Ku Hsien-jung and a graduate of Taipei Imperial University, who worked in Manchuria from 1940 to 1942) traveled all the way to Nanjing on August 29, 1946 to talk with Chiang Kai-shek. After paying homage at the mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat-sen (1866—1925) and the tomb of the Ming Emperor Hung-wu (1328–98), the Taiwanese delegates went to the ancient city of Xian, then kowtowed at the tomb of the legendary Yellow Emperor. The Yellow Emperor, Dr. Sun (who spearheaded the revolution to overthrow the Ch’ing Manchus regime in 1912), and Emperor Hung-wu (who ended the Mongol rule in China in 1368) had since the 1920s become the symbol of Chinese nationalism. But instead of treating the Taiwanese as their own brothers and sisters, the Chinese wasted no time in exploiting Taiwan’s rich resources—including coal, rice, sugar, cement, fruits, and tea—to support their own tottering economy and corrupt political machine. On March 21, 1946, The Washington Daily News carried a front page headline: “Chinese Exploit Formosa Worse Than JAPS Did: Exclusive Inside Report, page 3.” Taiwanese elites, including Lin Hsien-t’ang, who had worked so hard and so long to win autonomy from foreign rulers, expected political equality and full participation in the new government of Taiwan. Instead, they were excluded from any important role in public life and, in fact, were coerced to endure the rule of a new conqueror. The Chinese administration in Taiwan was headed by Lieutenant General Ch’en Yi, a controversial figure and a long-time associate of Chiang Kai-shek. Ch’en and Chiang came from the same Chekiang province, graduated from the same Japanese military school Shimbu Gakko, and frequented the same Shanghai social circle, which included the notorious Green Gang and the powerful Soong family.28 Married to a former Japanese geisha, Ch’en had been the “Chairman of the Fukien Provincial Government” for several years and was considered an old Taiwan hand. However, his administration was heavily staffed with carpetbaggers from Chekiang province and Shanghai, who came to serve the interests of Chinese financiers, manufacturers, and shipping magnates instead of the Taiwanese people. They were so greedy and so corrupt that the Taiwanese were soon characterizing them as “ah-shan-ah,” meaning wild pigs scavenging in the hills. A popular Taiwanese saying went like this: “the pigs have come to replace the four-legged dogs. Dogs are to be feared, but at least they protect you from thieves. Pigs can only eat.” The Chinese carpetbaggers misused their powers so callously that it required only a small spark in early 1947 to start a popular uprising, or a “rebellion”


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as reported by General Albert C. Wedemeyer (1897–1989), who was Commander-in-Chief of American Forces in China since late 1944.29 Taiwanese popular resentment toward Chinese maladministration and the undisciplined Nationalist security forces, coupled with the deterioration of the island’s economy and the serious unemployment problems facing World War II Taiwanese veterans, steadily escalated the tensions between the mainlanders and the islanders. On the eve of February 27, 1947, a small team of government “Monopoly Bureau” officials came to investigate contraband cigarettes along the Tamsui River in the northwestern district of Taipei City. They harassed a widow peddler named Lin Chiang-mai and killed a bystander named Ch’en Wen-hsi. A boisterous crowd then gathered in front of the Taipei Police Bureau and soon turned into an angry mob, shouting “ah-shan-ah, ah-shan-ah,” or “evil pigs, evil pigs”—the derogatory term the Taiwanese contemptuously used to refer to the Chinese mainlanders. The next day (a Friday), the island’s leading newspaper, Tai-wan hsin-sheng-pao (The Taiwan New Life Daily, formerly Taiwan nichi nichi shimpo) carried a brief account of the event, and the spark suddenly grew into a gleaming blaze. At high noon, an angry mob appeared in front of the Monopoly Bureau, beating two Chinese officials to death and ransacking its stocks of cigarettes and liquor. By early afternoon, two to three thousands of armed Taiwanese had taken over the Governor-general’s office, and soon after they had occupied the Taiwan national radio station, the whole island was in convulsion. Disgruntled Taiwanese in the nearby cities of Keelung and Panch’iao quickly joined the action, beating Chinese mainlanders and burning government offices. Governor-general Ch’en Yi then asked for reconciliation, but violence spread further south to Taoyuan and Taichung. By March 2, the cities of Chiayi and Tainan had started their own rioting, while a few Communists, numbering no more than 50, came out of hiding to fuel agitation against the Nationalist government. Their activities were limited to central Taiwan and had very little impact on either the direction or the outcome of the event.30 One day later, the uprising in the southern port city of Kaohsiung had also begun. On March 5, a group of some 600 aborigines circled and attacked a Chinese battalion. The island was now gripped by fear and chaos.31 While the whole island was bathed in violence and bloodshed, leading Taiwanese presented Thirty-two Demands to the Chinese authorities, requesting self-rule and representation by elections. The Chinese authorities, who could then muster only 3,500 troops, were negotiating from a position of weakness. They proposed to establish a Settlement Committee first in Taipei, then in every major city, so that some kind of prototype of self-government could be formed. Based upon various accounts and interviews, we know that, on February 28, Lee Teng-hui was taking a bus from Tamsui to Taipei and

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first learned about the uprising when he saw a huge crowd gathering at the Taipei station. Until he retired from the presidency, Lee Teng-hui rarely talked about the 2.28 Incident. Only recently did he reveal that he actually attended a few Settlement Committee meetings in Taipei’s Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, although he claimed he did not voice his opinions. He knew that the Chinese authorities were not sincere and that their ploys were nothing but political shenanigans. He told the Japanese popular writer Kamisaka Fuyuko: “The end result is that it was a dilatory trick. They were waiting for the relief troops from the mainland and purposely delayed any settlements. Not unsurprisingly, those who had the gall and spoke at the meetings were afterwards all arrested one by one.”32 Indeed, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, who later pleaded ignorance of what was then going on in Taiwan and who rejected the Thirty-two Demands, had already ordered two army divisions to be dispatched to “restore order” on the island. Between March 8 and March 9, some 2,000 military police and 11,000 heavily armed troops landed in Keelung and Kaohsiung simultaneously. According to Peng Ming-min, Lee Teng-hui’s Taita classmate, “As the Nationalist troops came ashore, they moved out quickly through Keelung streets, shooting and bayoneting men and boys, raping women and looting homes and shops. Some Formosans were seized and stuffed alive into burlap bags found piled up at the sugar warehouse and were then simply tossed into the harbor. Others were merely tied up or chained before thrown from the piers.”33 Ho Chi-ming, a medical student at Taita and later Lee Teng-hui’s golfing buddy, put on a Red Cross badge and went from street to street in Taipei to help “pile after pile of wounded and dead people” indiscriminately shot by the Chinese soldiers. In Nantou, a Chinese battalion commander went to the Farmers’ Coop and demanded a huge amount of rice. When the coop director asked to see his coupon, he pulled out a pistol and said, “this is my coupon!” He then fired randomly into the crowd, injuring many bystanders. Afterward, the coop director was arrested and sent to jail for two years and nine months.34 In Chiayi, a large number of young students were killed, their bodies were stacked in trucks, taken to a public square, and pushed into the square’s fountain “as an example for the public.” In Kaohsiung, the Chinese troops sprayed the wharfs and streets with gunfire, shooting anybody on sight, and the same atrocities were committed in Taichung, Tainan, Pingtung, and other cities.35 As the Nationalist troops were terrorizing and killing the islanders, Ch’en Yi declared martial law and rescinded the legitimacy of the settlement committees. In fact, members of the settlement committees were the first to perish. Others who gave their names and addresses in a petition to Ch’en Yi’s office were hunted down and executed. In the ensuing days and months of


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1947 and beyond, the Chinese troops massacred, imprisoned, and tortured hundreds of thousands of innocent Taiwanese, including professors, college students, judges, lawyers, doctors, artists, councilmen, journalists, and high school teachers. As a consequence, an untold number of well-educated Taiwanese were taken away by the military police at night and disappeared for good. Others had to live in fear, or to choose exile from their hometowns. A pall of fear descended over the island as the KMT secret police and informers of all stripes, many of whom were Taiwanese, infiltrated every school, every community, and snooped every office and every factory. In his white-washed report, General Ch’en Yi said, “what caused the Incident is the poisonous propaganda and ideas produced by 51 years of Japanese rule. . . . Those who thought like the Japanese and opposed us were young people under 35 years of age, most of whom did not know anything about China and only looked down on the Chinese, soiled the cultural system of China, and considered that nothing was as good as the Japanese.”36 Ch’en Yi, however, was clearly not up to snuff as he was recalled on May 15, 1947. Chiang Kai-shek later used Ch’en Yi as a scapegoat to placate the Taiwanese and charged him with complicity with the Communists. Ch’en Yi was executed by a firing squad in a Taipei racecourse on June 18, 1950. Alas, in the jungle of Chinese politics, life was smitten with life—the instinct for survival, in this case Chiang Kai-shek’s. According to Dr. Ho Chi-ming, Lee Teng-hui sensed his peril and took refuge in Ho’s home in downtown Taipei. Ho’s father owned a rice warehouse, which proved to be a good hiding place. Nevertheless, the family constantly worried that the military police might come and knock on their door in the middle of the night. Once again, however, the frightened but prudent Lee Teng-hui—unlike several of his unlucky classmates and acquaintances— survived the ordeal. Afterward, Ho and Lee, together with three other friends, opened a book store on Taipei’s Chung-shan North Road (near present-day Executive Yuan building) and loaned out used books for a living.37 How many people perished during this uprising and in the massacre that ensued? In their thoroughly documented A Tragic Beginning: The Taiwan Uprising of February 28, 1947, Lai Tse-han, Ramon H. Myers and Wei Wou estimate that approximately 8,000 people, including a small number of Chinese mainlanders, were killed during the 2.28 Incident. This number is less than the estimated figure of between 10,000 and 20,000 made by Peng Ming-min and also far smaller than other proffered estimates, one of which went as high as 100,000.38 But in the end, scholars who debate over the statistics have missed several critically important points. Whether the casualties were 8,000 or 20,000 or more, one of the important points is that the 2.28 Massacre decimated the best and the brightest of the Taiwanese population.

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The chilling effect was that younger Taiwanese were henceforth taught to be wary of politics and public service. Indeed, for many years, Taiwanese parents would tell their children to stay away from politics because it was a dirty profession and a bloody business. On May 23, 1950, Chiang Kai-shek’s government announced that it had completed the investigations and trials of those responsible for the 2.28 Incident and that the case was closed. However, the scars of the 2.28 Incident would not be healed for a long long time; its psychological toll and political ramifications are unfathomable and are still being felt today. On February 28, 2003, exactly 56 years after the bloody massacre, when the Mayor of Taipei Ma Ying-jeou, a mainlander Chinese, attended the annual memorial service at the 2.28 Peace Memorial Park, he was spat upon by an angry Taiwanese.39 It is difficult to calculate the impact of this historical event on the lives of ordinary people caught in the turbulence of a nation struggling to break free from the chains of oppression. While the KMT officials and mainlander Chinese generally prefer to “let bygones be bygones,” Taiwanese activists tend to invoke this tragedy to stimulate Taiwanese nationalism and to sustain their struggle for a free, separatist Taiwan. Robert Edmonston characterizes the 2.28 Incident “as an event, a memory, a silence, a protest, and a history,” and that “the Incident has been key to the formation of Taiwanese identity.”40 As the American revolutionary leader Thomas Paine (1737–1809) said, “Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.” In this sense, the blood of the 2.28 Massacre had become the seed of a new Taiwanese independence movement. As with his alleged Communist membership, Lee Teng-hui has not yet told the whole truth with regard to his involvement in the 2.28 Incident; in fact when he himself became the top dog of the KMT, his publicly expressed attitudes toward the historical tragedy remained equivocal and contradictory. Upon assuming the presidency of the Republic of China in February 1988, Lee held his first press conference, and when asked about the bloody massacre of 2.28, he made the following remarks, severely vexing many of his fellow Taiwanese: Those who love to talk about the 2.28 Incident are primarily people under forty years old. I find it strange. . . . What were the circumstances then? There were so many things that happened at the time, shouldn’t we leave these issues to the historians to study? Why do you want to bring up this problem now? You want to stir up something and say “Don’t forget 2.28,” “Don’t forget the Peace Day.” Don’t you?41 Such politically disingenuous remarks naturally disappointed many a sensible Taiwanese, as Lee Teng-hui continued to stonewall whenever asked


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about this very explosive issue. Lee Teng-hui was well aware that the 2.28 Incident could easily arouse both Taiwanese outrage and Chinese shame. At the time of these remarks, he had just gotten his hands on the KMT power apparatus and his position was still tenuous. Even after he was elected the Chairman of the KMT on July 8, 1988, Lee continued to operate behind the shadow of Madam Chiang Kai-shek and remained extremely careful not to offend the KMT old guard—for nearly all of them were mainlander Chinese. For example, he even lobbied the mayor of Kaohsiung to exclude the name of P’eng Meng-chi—commander of the Nationalist troops in Kaohsiung area in 1947—from a 2.28 memorial monument to be erected in downtown Kaohsiung.42 At this point in time, one misstep or misspoken sentence might have completely ruined Lee’s political career. Nevertheless, at this same news conference, Lee Teng-hui also hinted that he would soon appoint an ad hoc committee to gather materials, make initial findings, and finally face up to this issue. But it would take two long years before the KMT-dominated parliament would make a similar conciliatory gesture. On February 27, 1990, the entire body of Taiwan’s legislative branch stood in silence for one minute before opening the session for business. A few weeks later, Lee appointed a “2.28 Incident Materials Search Committee,” headed by Chiu Chuang-huan, who had just recently stepped down as the governor of Taiwan, to begin the first step of official investigation of the massacre.43 In the 1990s, after having secured his position and built his own power base, Lee Teng-hui, became more agreeable to the requests repeatedly made by the opposition party, as well as by the families of 2.28 victims, who wanted the government to erect a memorial monument and to pay compensation for their losses. On February 28, 1995, standing in front of the freshly cut memorial monument in Taipei’s New City Park, then-President Lee Teng-hui openly apologized to the survivors of the 2.28 Massacre as well as to the offspring of those who perished. After officially renaming the park “the 2.28 Peace Memorial Park,” Lee Teng-hui said: “I personally experienced the 2.28 Incident. For many years, I have felt terribly sad and distressed that we did not avoid what could have been an avoidable event, that we did not stop the escalation of what should have been stopped: an historical tragedy.”44 In 1997, Taiwan’s junior high school students for the first time could read about the 2.28 Incident in their social studies and history textbooks. Today, on Taipei’s Yen-p’ing North Road, on the very spot where the first blood was shed, stands a granite memorial monument, which gives a synopsis of the 2.28 Incident. Its last paragraph writes: The President of the Nationalist Government, Chiang Kai-shek, failed to investigate the truth and dispatched troops to suppress. Countless leading citizens and common people were either slaughtered or imprisoned,

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ultimately planting the evil root of conflicts between the Taiwanese and the Chinese mainlanders. This is what history calls the 2.28 Incident. After investigating this tragedy, it is concluded that poor governance was the cause, that arresting cigarette smugglers was the trigger. This stone is erected so that the people can commemorate the past and posterity can avoid repeating the same mistakes. Historical Commission of the City of Taipei, February 28, 1998. Taipei’s Yen-p’ing North Road is a very familiar street for Lee Teng-hui. He must have walked it hundreds if not thousands of times in his life. The 2.28 Incident, the indelible symbol of Taiwanese tragedy and patriotism, had become part of his own suffering as well as the sufferings of millions of his fellow Taiwanese. But Lee Teng-hui would later find his solace in public service and in God. He would clarify his ambiguities, abandon his “whateverit-takes-to-survive” approach, and redeem his moral courage while paying back the debts owed the 2.28 Taiwanese patriots. Over the last three decades, Lee Teng-hui has consistently been in the vanguard of Taiwan’s transformation, helping to catalyze the island from a Chinese dictatorship to a Taiwanese democracy, from an agrarian, tradition-bound society to a modern, high tech-oriented, outward-looking nation. Moreover, he has become the most outspoken leader in Taiwan’s current quest for a national identity. Lee Teng-hui can now take comfort in what the American statesman Adlai E. Stevenson (1900–65) said, “Patriotism is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.”

CHAPTER 4

The Making of a Scholar

A

t the end of World War II, Taiwan was a much better-organized society than any other provinces governed by the Kuomintang (KMT) regime. Thanks to its high literacy rate, the island’s population was capable of absorbing information about models of modernity beyond the Asian world. But with the 2.28 Uprising and its bloody suppression, the Taiwanese found their lives in disarray. Their standard of living had slipped below that which prevailed under Japanese rule. By 1949, approximately 17 percent of Taiwan’s gross domestic product had been nationalized, and some 36,000 Taiwanese had lost their jobs in the public sector, as the Nationalist government heavily siphoned Taiwan’s resources to support its war against the Communists.1 Simply looking at school children’s uniforms provides one yardstick for measuring Taiwanese living conditions. Prewar pictures culled from surviving albums show that Taiwanese school children all wore shoes to school. In fact there were ordinances against going barefoot on city streets and in school yards. However, a decade after the Chinese took over Taiwan, the majority of commencement pictures show school children with bare feet. A few Taiwanese writers also depicted a far more sad and grim society in their reminiscences and travelogues.2 In the late 1940s and the1950s, the Taiwanese remained defiant and even scornful toward the Chinese “carpetbaggers” because, generally speaking, they were “better physical specimens,” having “superior education,” and enjoying “higher living standards than the mainland Chinese refugees,” according to Karl Lott Rankin, United States Charge d’Affaires in Taiwan.3 As the hostility and mistrust between the ruled and the rulers remained tense, General Ch’en Yi was replaced in May 1947 by an internationally known lawyer Wei Tao-min, who had previously served as mayor of Nanjing, secretary-general of the

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Executive Yuan, and ambassador to the United States.4 When Wei assumed the governorship on May 15, 1947, he immediately announced four policies: (1) martial law would be lifted; (2) there would be no more “clearing-village campaigns,” or ch’ing-hsiang, which had lasted nine months; (3) restrictions on communications would be lifted; and (4) currency reform would be implemented so as to slow down inflation. After making a fact-finding tour across the island, Wei formed a 14-member Provincial Committee to give advice regarding to the administration of the island. Half of the Provincial Committee consisted of Taiwanese, including the philanthropist Lin Hsien-t’ang, Dr. Tu Ch’ung-ming (the only Taiwanese ever to serve on the faculty of Taihoku Imperial University), and the aboriginal leader Nan Chih-hsing. In addition, Wei appointed several Taiwanese as heads and deputies of his administrative departments.5 But while Wei was trying to heal the wounds in Taiwan, the Nationalist’s military situation in China was deteriorating rapidly. By the end of 1948, when the Nationalists suffered their final crushing defeat at the Battle of Huai-Hai, Chiang Kai-shek was looking to Taiwan as a refuge from the Communists. Accordingly, he became very apprehensive about possible Communist subversion on the island and instructed his security apparatus to ferret out student plots and crush any underground seditious organizations. Informants were paid by the KMT secret police to collect information about alleged conspirators and Communist sympathizers. However, Taiwanese who openly spoke in favor of independence were also deemed traitors and were arrested. Meanwhile, National Taiwan University (Taita) was going through a painful transition. Following the 2.28 Massacre, professors as well as students either went into hiding or were simply too scared to resume their academic activities. President Lu Chih-hung found himself unable to restore the Taita administration to any level of normalcy. By June of 1948, when Professor Chuang Chang-kung was tapped as the new president, Taita’s faculty consisted of 50 mainland Chinese professors, eight Japanese professors, and two Taiwanese instructors. It was a time of uncertainty and frequent personnel turnover. For instance, the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Dr. Lin Mao-sheng, disappeared without a trace (presumably murdered by the military police) while the College of Law had five different deans within the year, and the government at times had to ask the remaining Japanese faculty to manage university affairs. In 1949, Fu Su-nien, a native of Shantung province and a professor at Beijing University, succeeded Chuang Chang-kung as Taita’s president. Fu made a clean sweep, shaking up the entire university administrative personnel and injecting a new spirit into Taita. He appointed an America-trained chemist, Dr. Ch’ien Su-liang, as the Provost of Academic Affairs and established a special temporary freshman class for both returning Taiwanese students


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from abroad as well as hundreds of young refugees from every province of mainland China. Between 1948 and 1951, an estimated two million Chinese refugees flocked to Taiwan, among them a number of eminent scholars and accomplished scientists who soon found new positions at Taita.6 It is not clear when exactly Lee Teng-hui returned to Taita, but it is certain that he was wary of the paid KMT informants on the Taita campus, thereby, going to great lengths to avoid the political spotlight. From time to time, the dormitories of Taita were raided by the secret police and a number of outspoken students—Chinese as well as Taiwanese—were arrested, some never to return to their classes. Lee Teng-hui somehow survived this ordeal, but because he was required to use the Chinese language to write his thesis for graduation, he continued to struggle academically. He compared his thesis endeavor to trying to reach the top of a tall mango tree with only a bamboo pole: because the bamboo pole (ti’e-ker in Taiwanese) was not long enough (his Chinese writing skills were still poor), he had to attach the pole to a chef ’s knife (ts’ai-te) (alluding to his rich research data) before he could reap any mangoes. (This is one of hundreds of colloquial Taiwanese idioms, with which Lee Teng-hui frequently peppers his speech.)7 As Lee Teng-hui was indeed able to gather ample materials for his thesis, “A Study of the Problems of Taiwan’s Agricultural Labor,” he earned, in the summer of 1949, a bachelor’s degree in agricultural economics. Better still, he had fallen in love and found solace in marriage. Lee Teng-hui’s wife, who was three years his junior, was named Tseng Wen-hui (Wen-hui means “literary grace” in Chinese). Tseng and Lee were neighbors and their grandfathers had been business partners. Tseng, the second daughter of a Sanchih squire, attended Sanchih Common School and graduated from the Taipei Third Girls’ Higher School, an envious education for any prewar Taiwanese girl. The wedding took place at a restaurant nearby the Taipei New Park on February 9, 1949. The 23-year old bride wore a Westernstyle white bridal gown and white gloves while the 26-year old Lee Teng-hui put on a fashionable black tuxedo with a bow tie. By this time, Taita had offered Lee Teng-hui a teaching assistantship and had also allotted him a “housing unit.” Located on Wen-chou Street not far from the Taita campus, it was a Japanese-style house with three comfortable rooms and pleasant surroundings.8 But since postwar inflation had reached 3,000 percent in the first half of 1949, the young couple was forced to live on a strict budget. At last, in June 1949, the government issued the New Taiwan (NT) currency, with an exchange rate of 40,000 old Taiwan dollars for one NT. As a teaching assistant, Lee Teng-hui was paid about NT$ 500 per month, but according to his wife, who managed household matters, it required at least NT$1,000 to cover all of their monthly expenses, even after prices had been stabilized.

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After the wedding, Tseng Wen-hui quit her bank job, but taught the art of flower arrangement (ikebana) to help family finances. The couple usually had traditional Taiwanese rice porridge for breakfast; afterward, Teng-hui bade goodbye to “Fumi” (Wen is pronounced “fumi” in Japanese), bringing his lunch box and riding his bicycle to Taita.9 At the Department of Agricultural Economics, there was a library that housed thousands of Japanese and English books as well as over one thousand Chinese books. Part of Lee’s job was to take care of these books and update the various periodicals to which the department subscribed. While Lee Teng-hui was settling into a quiet, academic life, a seismic shift in the power balance between the Nationalists and the Communists in mainland China was underway. The Chinese Communists were winning battle after battle, while the Nationalist forces were in steady retreat. Once again, the fate of the islanders was seriously impacted by the events outside the island that were totally beyond their control. As Chiang Kai-shek’s regime confronted the dire plight of total defeat, his military and security measures preempted the policies of Wei Tao-ming’s civilian government on the island. On May 10, 1948, the Nationalist government arbitrarily suspended the constitution and promulgated the so-called Provisional Amendments for the Period of Mobilization of the Suppression of Communist Rebellion. These “Provisional Amendments,” which gave the government unlimited authority to deal with emergencies, broadly defined, practically extended the garrison state from China to Taiwan. On January 5, 1949, as the Communists were preparing to cross the Yangtze River, Wei Tao-ming was suddenly relieved of his post. Chiang Kai-shek then appointed his confidant Ch’en Ch’eng (1897–1965) as the new governor of Taiwan, with the principal assignment of preparing for a massive evacuation of Nationalist Chinese—some 400,000 civilians and over 300,000 military personnel—from the mainland to the island.10 In the meantime, Chiang Kai-shek ordered his bankers and Shanghai financiers to remove $390 million in gold reserves, plus hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars worth in cash and platinum to Taiwan. A large number of tools, engines, and other machines in textile mills, flour mills, and other factories were stripped and then quickly shipped to Taiwan. In addition, hundreds of thousands of cultural treasures from Beijing’s National Palace Museum, together with public and private libraries and research collections, were also relocated to Taiwan. While these monies, machines, and talent would later prove to be helpful in the development of Taiwan’s economy and education, the sheer number of mainland refugees brought about mounting problems within the island’s society. Chinese refugees continued to flood into Taiwan: several thousands were withdrawn to Taiwan in the spring of 1950 from the Hainan and


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Chushan Islands; Nationalist loyalists who were stranded in Indo-China were also expatriated in 1953–54; 14,209 Chinese Communist prisoners of war in Korea were added to Taiwan’s population in January 1954; and a considerable number of civilians and soldiers on the Ta-ch’en islands off the Chekiang coast were removed to Taiwan a year later.11 Many of these refugees found shelters in schools, some staying in school facilities for as long as a decade. For the next five decades, these newcomers, their children, and their grandchildren— generally known as “wai-sheng-jen,” or the “mainlander Chinese”—would form a distinct group, maintaining an uneasy coexistence with “ben-sheng-jen,” or the native-born Taiwanese. In general, the mainlander Chinese found employment in the military, the government, education, and the KMT party, and continued to dream about recovering mainland China from the Communists. With the massive influx of this group of refugees, whose experiences were so different from those of Lee Teng-hui and of Lee’s fellow Taiwanese, Taiwan’s history of multiple identities entered its most challenging phase yet. Chiang Kai-shek ordered his government to move from Nanjing to Taipei in early December 1949. Chiang then converted the former Taiwan Governor’s Office (originally built by the Japanese as a luxurious clubhouse for high ranking officials) into a Presidential Office and used its balcony as a platform to preside over ceremonies and review troops. By this time, however, the United States had decided to write off Taiwan, as President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) announced on January 5, 1950: The United States has no desire to obtain special rights or privileges or to establish military bases on Formosa at this time. Nor does it have any intention of utilizing its armed forces to interfere in the present situation. The United States will not pursue a course which will lead to involvement in the civil conflict in China. Similarly, the United States Government will not provide military aid or advice to Chinese forces on Formosa.12 Even before the United States announced its intention to avoid involvement in the Chinese civil war, student activists from all over the island had gathered on the campus of Taita to express their displeasure of the Nationalist government. During the spring of 1949, they organized a “National Student League” to champion their causes and to rally for political freedom and social justice. It was an historical event, but Governor Ch’en Ch’eng, who also served as the commander of Taiwan’s garrison troops, became alarmed and sent soldiers to the Normal College—formerly, Taipei’s Higher School—on midnight of April 6 and arrested 30 student leaders. As students clashed with police the next day, Ch’en’s armed soldiers arrested 300 more students and

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ordered the Normal College closed for “reorganization.” At the same time, 25 additional students were apprehended by the secret police at Taita.13 During the unrest, Lee Teng-hui carefully stayed out of trouble. Following these college arrests, Governor Ch’en Ch’eng, on May 20, 1949, announced that the “Provisional Amendments” would be implemented in Taiwan, thus effectively reinstating martial law. Henceforth, all ports in Taiwan would be sealed off except for Keelung, Kaohsiung and Makung (in Pescadores), which would be open daily only between the hours of 1:00 AM and 5:00 PM. All persons coming into or going out of the island were required to apply for a permit from the Garrison Command and had to be inspected at the port. Public assembly, strikes by laborers or by students, parades, and petitions were prohibited. Citizens were prohibited from bearing arms. Moreover, perpetrators of the following crimes would be executed: (1) creating and spreading rumors; (2) inciting a mob; (3) interfering with the gold or other market exchange; (4) robbery; (5) striking against businesses or causing civic disorders; (6) instigating student strikes on campus; (7) causing damage to transportation or communications, or stealing communication or transportation equipment; (8) causing damage to public water, electricity, or gas supplies; (9) arson, causing floods, or endangering public safety; and (10) bearing arms or explosives without a government permit. Exactly three months after the promulgation of martial law, Chiang Ching-kuo, the elder son of Chiang Kai-shek, came to the port city of Kaohsiung and established a Political Action Committee to “try to coordinate the myriad intelligence and secret police operations that crowded on to [Taiwan].”14 At this juncture, Chiang Kai-shek felt that he needed to spin his web of intelligence wider and faster before he could safely retreat to Taiwan, and clearly none could be more loyal to this task than his very own son. These “Provisional Amendments,” which deprived the islanders of their liberty and basic human rights, were supposed to be only temporary, implemented for the sole purpose of suppressing the Communists. Unfortunately, the Communists in the mainland were never suppressed, and as a result the islanders were forced to live under martial law for nearly four decades, the longest such span in modern history. Even though two insignificant pro-KMT “opposition” parties—the Young China Party and the China Democratic Socialist Party—were permitted, Taiwan was, for all practical purposes, under a one-party dictatorship. It is ironic that Chiang Ching-kuo himself was the person who repealed the “Provisional Amendments,” nearly four decades later. Chiang Ching-kuo first rescinded martial law on July 15, 1987; however, Chiang died six months later (January 10, 1988) before he could follow through with the complicated and time-consuming procedure of completely repealing the “Provisional Amendments.” Hence, it was up to Chiang’s


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successor Lee Teng-hui, who had lived in the shadow of martial law for most of his adult life, to complete the task. On December 25, 1990—the Nationalist Constitutional Day—then-President Lee Teng-hui announced that, within five months, his government would officially abrogate the “Provisional Amendments” and restore full constitutional rights to the people. With this act, Lee took a giant step toward redeeming his past political disingenuousness, helping to rewrite the history of Taiwan and earning himself the nickname of “Mr. Democracy.”15 (The whole charged issue of Lee’s rescinding Taiwan’s martial law is discussed in detail in chapter 8.) To characterize Lee Teng-hui as a patient man is an understatement. During the decades-long era of martial law, Taiwan underwent tremendous changes, while Lee’s personal fortunes fluctuated wildly. On March 1, 1950, Chiang Kai-shek formally assumed leadership of the Nationalist government in its Taiwan refuge. A few days later, Chiang appointed Ch’en Ch’eng as premier, officially called President of the Executive Yuan by the Nationalists. Three months earlier, he had named Wu Kuo-chen (1904–84), the former mayor of three major Chinese cities—Hankow, Chungking and Shanghai— as governor of Taiwan; Chiang then appointed General Sun Li-jen (1900–90) as commander of the army. The appointments of Wu, a Princeton Ph.D., and Sun, a Virginia Military Institute graduate, were in part made to impress the United States and to appeal for further American aid.16 In the wake of both the Taiwanese uprising and the debacle in mainland China, and in the face of pressure from both the foreign media and the U.S. Congress, the Nationalist government began to take a series of measures to change its economic, social, and political policies. In April 1949, the refugee government began the first stage of a land reform program called the “37.5 Land Rent Reduction,” which set the maximum annual land rent at 37.5 percent of the value of major crops and reformed leases to give legal protection to the tenantsharecroppers. This initiative was then followed in June 1951 by a second stage of reform called “Releasing Public Lands to Tenant Farmers,” in which the government started selling some of its 181,490 chia (one chia equals 0.97 hectare or 2.4 acres) of public lands—including approximately 20 percent of Taiwan’s arable land—to landless farmers.17 The final stage of the land reform, called “Land-to-the-Tiller,” kicked off in January 1953 and allowed peasants to improve their standard of living by owning the land they were tilling. At the same time, the landlords who had lost their lands to the tillers were partially compensated by the government so that they could use this capital to invest in various industries. An estimated 300,000 farm families benefited from these series of land reforms, as farmers’ incomes improved, rice production increased, and agricultural exports expanded. The Nationalist government later claimed that

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land reform was the most important factor contributing to Taiwan’s subsequent economic breakthrough. Using agriculture as the base for industry and technology, Taiwan was to reap unprecedented economic fruits, enjoying an average annual growth of 15 percent between 1952 and 1978.18 In addition, the land reform wiped out the power and influence of Taiwan’s landed magnates, who generally manifested the moral and cultural values of Taiwan’s agrarian society. It also eliminated the laissez-faire private money-lending sector that used to contest with public banks for the control and influence of market pricing and government fiscal policy. Moreover, the farmers, fishermen, and laborers were now organized into government-sponsored associations, with KMT officials managing at every level of these associations. Several thousand Taiwanese gentry-merchant elites, including Lee Teng-hui’s father and father-in-law, were forced to give up large portions of their lands. Many naturally resented the Land-to-the-Tiller policy, calling it a political ploy in which the refugee government gave Taiwanese land to tillers to buy popular support. Among Taiwan’s landed magnates who now wished to separate from mainland China was the eminent Lin Hsien-t’ang, who broke off with the Nationalist regime and left Taiwan on September 23, 1949. Lin later died in Tokyo in 1956, the very same year Liao Wen-yi (1910–86, also known as Thomas Liao) and other elite Taiwanese organized the “Provisional Government of the Republic of Formosa, or Tai-wan kung-ho-kuo lin-shih cheng-fu,” in Japan. Son of a wealthy landlord in Yunlin prefecture, Liao earned a doctorate in engineering from Ohio State University and married an American woman. His self-described “Republic of Formosa” in exile existed until May 14, 1965 when Liao suddenly renounced his independence movement. Other “Formosans for Independence” organizations were also established in Canada and several major U.S. cities in the 1950s and the 1960s.19 But the fate of Lee Teng-hui, like that of his home island, encountered an unexpected break. On June 25, 1950, two-and-a-half months before Lee Teng-hui’s son was born (September 3), the well-equipped North Korean Communists struck across the 38th parallel. The United States, having already excluded Taiwan from the American security zone only six months earlier, was forced to reverse its position on Taiwan by proclaiming the neutralization of island and by placing the U.S. Seventh Fleet in the Taiwan Strait to prevent the Chinese Communists from invading Taiwan. On June 27, 1950, President Truman nevertheless made the following statement: I have ordered the Seventh Fleet to prevent any attack on Formosa. As a corollary of this action, I am calling upon the Chinese Government on Formosa to cease all air and sea operations against the mainland. The Seventh Fleet will see that this is done. The determination of the future


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status of Formosa must await the restoration of security in the Pacific, a peace settlement with Japan, or consideration by the United Nations.20 Thus, in the wake of the Korean War, Truman’s administration committed the United States to combating the forces of international communism wherever and whenever they threatened the status quo. But Truman’s words and deeds not only neutralized the Taiwan Strait, but also became the source of future interpretations regarding America’s China policy and Taiwan’s status in the international community. The American-enforced de facto separation of the Republic of China on Taiwan (ROC) from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on the mainland henceforth lent credit to a number of scholars who declared that the United States had adopted a “Two Chinas” policy. American fear and hostility toward the PRC became even more pronounced by the end of October, when Chinese Communist armies joined the North Korean forces. By January 1951, China’s overwhelming “volunteers,” estimated to total 2.3 million strong, had driven the United Nations forces back to the 38th parallel. As the United States inaugurated its new policy of “containment,” Taiwan all of a sudden became one of the world’s vital spots in the struggle against Communism. By this time, the Taiwan issue had also become internationalized. In the meantime, John Foster Dulles (1888–1959), the anti-Communist crusader and tough-minded U. S. Secretary of State, excluded both the ROC and the PRC from the postwar peace conference with Japan held in San Francisco, September 48, 1951, and attended by 48 nations. Subsequently, Dulles pressured the crusty Yoshida Shigeru (1878–1967), Prime Minister of Japan, into signing a separate peace treaty with Taipei’s ROC, instead of with Beijing’s PRC, on April 28, 1952, the very same day Japan officially regained its sovereignty. In both peace treaties, Japan renounced her “right, title, and claim” over Taiwan and the Pescadores, but the beneficiary of the renunciation was not specified, nor did the treaties provide for a transfer of sovereignty to the PRC. Peng Ming-min, an international law professor and a Taiwanese independence leader, writes: “Technically speaking, the international status of Formosa and its people was not defined. Even the United States-Nationalist [Chinese] Mutual Defense Treaty of December, 1954, avoided the issue.”21 Dean Rusk—Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs under the Truman administration and later Secretary of State under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lydon B. Johnson—manifested America’s “Two Chinas” policy as early as May 1951 when he called the Beijing regime “a Slavic Manchukuo on a larger scale,” and pledged to support Taiwan’s ROC because of “their historic demand for independence from foreign control.”22

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Against the backdrop of the military situation in the Korean peninsula and the increasing threats of Communist China, General MacArthur, the commander of the United Nations forces, made a one-day whirlwind visit to Taipei (July 31–August 1, 1950) to consult with Chiang Kai-shek on the possibility of creating a “second front” against the Chinese Communists. Even though Truman’s administration decided not to enlist the Nationalist troops to fight in Korea, it did establish a “military assistance advisory group” (MAAG) with Major General William C. Chase as the chief. Charged to help the Nationalists build up defenses on Taiwan, the MAAG grew from 33 military men in May 1951 to a total number of 2,347 by 1955, when every battalion of Chiang Kai-shek’s armed forces was found to have at least one American advisor. In the meantime, the U.S. government earmarked $1.5 billion in nonmilitary aid to Taiwan, averaging approximately $100 million per year until 1965. Half of the aid was grant and the other half was loan with a token of 0.75 percent annual interest and was paid off in full by 1994 under Lee Teng-hui’s presidency.23 Among the 14 odd programs that received the benefit of American financial support and technical advice was the Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction (JCRR). The JCRR was founded by U.S. pressure on Chiang Kai-shek to improve his administration and treatment of “ben-sheng-jen” after the 2.28 Incident or risk loss of U.S. support. Of the five JCRR commissioners, two were appointed by the president of the United States and three were selected by the ROC president. During the period of 1951–63, the budget of JCRR amounted to 24 percent of the total American aid to Taiwan. As a matter of fact, 59 percent of Taiwan’s investment in agriculture during this period came from the subsidies of JCRR.24 It was also under the JCRR auspices that Lee Teng-hui would find an opportunity to further his career. In order to devise and monitor various rural projects in Taiwan, the JCRR established the following departments: botanic production, hydraulic engineering, soil preservation, stock breeding, rural hygiene, production of food and fertilizer, agricultural economics, forestry, and agricultural extension. It also recruited a great number of young Taiwanese agricultural specialists to gather data and perform technical work. While holding a full-time job at Taita, Lee Teng-hui also monitored sugar production and sugar prices for the JCRR. At this point, the U.S. State Department offered up to 36 scholarships to Taiwanese scientists and technicians for advanced training in the United States. Lee Teng-hui took part in the selection process, and was chosen from nearly 1,000 candidates to receive a one-year scholarship. In March 1952, the 29-year-old Lee left his wife, his two-year-old son, and his two-month-old daughter and boarded an American plane at Taipei’s Sung-shan Airport destined for Ames, Iowa. (In September 1988, Chris Branstad, governor of Iowa,


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led a trade mission to Taiwan. Then-President Lee told the governor that he chose to attend the Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts “because of its reputation in agricultural economics and its world-renowned faculty in economic statistics and mathematics.”)25 When Lee arrived at Iowa State, the spring semester was more than half way through, thus, he had plenty of time to look for housing and to register. This was the first time he had set foot on American soil; he felt immensely excited as well as anxious. Chartered in 1858, Iowa State College—which became Iowa State University of Science and Technology in 1959—was the United States’ first land-grant college, as Iowa was the first state to accept the terms of the federal Morrill Act in 1862. It pioneered the development of agricultural curricula and was a leader in veterinary sciences, sustainable agriculture, cooperative extension service system, food production and safety, and resource preservation. While Lee Teng-hui was studying at Iowa State, the agricultural economics program was part of the college’s broader Department of Economics, which was noted for integrating theory, application, instruction, technology, and community outreach. Led by President Charles Edwin Friley from 1936 to 1953, Iowa State transformed itself from a regional agricultural and mechanical teaching college into a world class research center for agricultural sciences. Friley brought several top-notch agricultural scientists to Ames, including the Nobel-laureate economist Theodore W. Schultz (1902–98). Schultz popularized the idea of “human capital,” which treated educational spending as an investment and encouraged investing in human resources as a means toward economic progress. He was also known for “perceiving agriculture as an active contributor to a nation’s economic development, rather than simply a way to feed the work force.”26 Unfortunately, upon Lee’s arrival at Iowa State in 1952, the South Dakota native Schultz had already accepted a Charles L. Hutchinson Distinguished Service Professorship at the University of Chicago. Nevertheless, Lee claims that Schultz is one of the two scholars in the world who, although they did not “personally leaven” him, became in essence his most important teachers through their books. The other such scholar is Ohkawa Kazushi of Japan, whose theories on the role of agriculture in modern economic growth had a profound influence on Lee Teng-hui’s deficit-spending policy when Lee became President of Taiwan.27 During his stay at Ames, Teng-hui wrote to his wife “Fumi” in Japanese every week. He took classes at Iowa State’s summer session and registered for one fall and one spring semester, taking a total of seven courses, including accounting, economic statistics, and agricultural marketing. In 1988, he told an Iowa delegation that he “felt the experience he had at Iowa State was responsible, basically, for all he accomplished in his life.”28 Even though this statement was obviously calculated to make the Iowan delegates happy,

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nevertheless Lee Teng-hui genuinely believed that the skills and knowledge he acquired at Iowa State were instrumental in his later career. Moreover, after seeing cornucopian fields and comfortable living enjoyed by Iowan farmers, Lee wondered if he could do something to help improve the living conditions of Taiwanese farmers at home. It is to be noted that because of the terms of his scholarship, Lee was required to return home before he could complete his Master’s degree program there.29 While Lee Teng-hui was studying at Iowa State, the Nationalist government on Taiwan and Japan signed a belated peace treaty (as discussed earlier) and the Korean War wound down, creating a generally more secure atmosphere for Chiang Kai-shek’s refugee regime. At this juncture, Chiang remained hopeful that he could launch an offensive campaign to recover the mainland from the Communists. Between the summer of 1952 and the end of 1953, Chiang Kai-shek secretly recruited some 83 notable World War II Japanese veterans, known as “the White Corps,” to help him train his commanding officers. This small group of ultraconservative Japanese militarists set up a training facility, called “the Fuji Club,” at the foothills of the Mt. Yangming in Taipei and regularly gave lectures on military history, war strategy and battle tactics to their Chinese audience. Their trainees included, but not limited, to Chiang Kai-shek’s generals, admirals and air marshals in the general chief staff, as well as division commanders, army commanders, and army corps commanders in the Nationalist troops. The Japanese “White Corps” advisors continued to train Chiang’s leading military personnel throughout the1950s and 1960s and did not completely cease their advisory role until 1969.30 It needs to be noted that the reverberations of the Nationalists’ crushing defeats on the mainland caused the Chiang regime to unsheathe a doctrine calling for anticipatory, preemptive strikes against any enemies, potential or tangible. As a consequence, the regime used fear and cupidity, rather than the consent of the governed, to secure and protect its powers. The person Chiang Kai-shek chose to safeguard Taiwan’s homeland security was his own son Chiang Ching-kuo, who would, later in his career, not only convert Taiwan from an agrarian society into a thriving economic entity, and from “hard totalitarianism to soft totalitarianism” politically, but would also transform Lee Teng-hui from a mere technocrat into an influential statesman. Because Chiang Ching-kuo was such a crucial person in the development of Taiwan as well as in Lee Teng-hui’s political career—Lee called Chiang his “spiritual teacher and a great leader”—it is worthwhile to sketch a brief profile of the man.31 Born on April 27, 1910, in Feng-hua county of Chekiang province, Ching-kuo grew up mainly without his father. Ching-kuo spent his early childhood with his grandmother, Wang Ts’ai-yu, and his mother, Mao Fu-mei, who was four years of Chiang Kai-shek’s senior. Ching-kuo began his


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traditional Chinese education when he was barely six years old. In 1921, Chiang Kai-shek brought the “little Chiang” to Shanghai to stay with the “elder Chiang’s” teenaged mistress, Ch’en Chieh-ju, and enrolled him in a modern school where Ching-kuo began to learn English, mathematics, and science. In early 1925, Ching-kuo was admitted to Shanghai’s Pu-tung Middle School, but because of his participation in student strikes, he was expelled from school. He then studied foreign languages in Beijing and became acquainted with such notable Communists as Li Ta-chao (1888–1927) and Shao Li-tzu (1881–1967), the former being a Beijing University professor and cofounder of the Chinese Communist Party and the latter a Fudan University professor and editor of the influential Nation Daily and its supplement Awakening. But once again, because of his political activities against the warlords, he was jailed for two weeks. In October 1925, the 15-year-old Ching-kuo boarded a Vladivostok-bound cargo ship in Shanghai, then took the trans-Siberian railroad to Moscow. He was now a student at Sun Yat-sen University of the Toilers of China (Sunovka), an institution only recently established by the Soviets to train Chinese revolutionaries. He became a member of the Chinese Communist Youth Corps and also joined the Soviet Komsomol. But when Chiang Kai-shek decided to purge the Communists in April 1927, Chiang Ching-kuo was forced to denounce his own father, thus becoming the victim of international politics, and literally a political hostage of Joseph Stalin. Ching-kuo would endure a harsh life for the next ten years, until the Nationalists and Communists agreed to form yet another united front in early 1937, this time against the Japanese. Upon completing his studies at Moscow’s Sun Yat-sen University in April 1927, Chiang Ching-kuo was admitted to the Central Tolmatchev Military and Political Institute in Leningrad (St. Petersburg), where he acquired some of his political acumen. In May 1930, he graduated from the Red Army’s premier academy with flying colors. Nevertheless, between the winter of 1932 and the spring of 1937, he was exiled to various labor camps in the Ural region. It was during his exile that Ching-kuo married a 19-yearold Russian girl named Faina (Fang-liang, or “upright and good” in Chinese) in March 1935. The young family returned to Shanghai in April 1937; during this time, many of the KMT old guards viewed Ching-kuo as an apostate and did not feel comfortable working with him. However, having been reconciled with his father and after gradually regaining his father’s trust and confidence, Ching-kuo was appointed deputy director of the Kiangsi (Jiangxi) Provincial Peace Preservation Corps, headquartered in Nan-ch’ang. Near the end of 1939, Chiang Ching-kuo’s mother Mao Fu-mei was killed by a bomb during one of the many Japanese air raids in Chiang’s home district. Chiang Ching-kuo vowed never to forget the face of the enemy by erecting a

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memorial stele right at the spot where his mother was killed. The stele, which is still standing today, contains four large Chinese characters: “Yi-hsue-hsi-hsue— using blood to wash off blood.”32 In the ensuing war years against the Japanese and the Communists, the younger Chiang was given important political, military and diplomatic assignments, including joining a diplomatic mission to Moscow in June–July 1945, heading a postwar Special Commission in Manchuria, and controlling currency inflation and black marketeering with full police powers in Shanghai in 1948.33 After the debacle in mainland China, Chiang Kai-shek agonized and began pondering the next steps he should take. One of the immediate measures he took was to reform the KMT party, including reregistration of the old members, strict application of discipline, as well as recruiting new members from the Taiwanese population. Thus, before the Nationalists started their evacuation to Taiwan, Chiang Kai-shek had decided to delegate more power to his son, particularly with regard to identifying disloyal and corrupt members, and those who were suspected of Communist connections. The brothers of Ch’en Kuo-fu and Ch’en Li-fu, known as the CC clique, were excluded from the reorganization scheme because they were blamed for the party’s problems on the mainland.34 On August 20, 1949, a secretive “Political Action Committee” was set up in Taiwan so that the then-40-year-old Chiang Ching-kuo could personally scrutinize the loyalty and supervise the reregistration of all KMT members, which began in earnest in January 1951. On August 5, 1950, Chiang Kai-shek named his son one of the 16 members of the “KMT Central Reformation Committee.” (The only Taiwanese was Lien Chen-tung, father of Lien Chan, Lee Teng-hui’s future Vice President.) During its first meeting, the newly formed Committee adopted six guidelines and an “Organic Law” to revamp the KMT party and also selected a handful of men of unshakable loyalty to fill the slate of chiefs of the party agencies. In 1951, Chiang Kai-shek appointed his son Director of General Political Affairs in the Ministry of National Defense and authorized him to run a Bolshevik-style “Political Cadres Academy” at Peitou, in the suburbs of Taipei. Graduates of the Political Cadres Academy were then assigned to each military unit, watching the rank and file like hawks, under the theory that fear was the best way to toughen the army and prevent defection. Through his elaborate network of agents, most of whom were men he had personally selected and who therefore indebted to him, the younger Chiang soon had a file on everyone. October 31 was Chiang Kai-shek’s birthday and was always heavily celebrated as a national holiday on the island. But the elder Chiang’s birthday in 1952 was very special because, on this day, the younger Chiang announced the formation of the controversial “China Youth Anti-Communist National Salvation Corps” (hereafter the Youth Corps). Branded by critics as


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a “brain-washing” organization, the Youth Corps was to offer “guidance, counseling, and recreation” to Chinese youths, as well as to prepare for “the recovery of the China mainland . . . , for the preservation and propagation of Chinese cultural heritage, and for the building of a bright future . . .”35 From its inception, the Youth Corps wore a gaudy mask of nationalism as it regularly sponsored a series of programs that aimed at channeling the energies of the island’s youths into anti-Communist, patriotic activities. Even though some of the more liberal KMT administrators frowned upon this seemingly irregular organization, worrying that it was a facade for a Bolshevikstyle brainwashing campaign, Chiang Ching-kuo nevertheless found his own budget for the Youth Corps without having to go through the normal legislative process. It was through this vehicle that the little Chiang began his campaign to win the hearts and minds of the multitude of young Taiwanese and to build his own power base for the future. Chiang Ching-kuo was as decidedly ruthless as he was politically astute, a man as hard as a frozen lake, but warm enough that fish could swim underneath. And to his credit, he continued to live in austerity and did not give way to profligacy and corruption. He used the Youth Corps to identify talented Taiwanese youths, with the goal of ultimately inducing them to join the KMT. He also used the Youth Corps to help create a personality cult for his father. Taiwanese youths from high school to college were coerced to sing “patriotic songs,” most of which were aimed at extolling Chiang Kai-shek and perpetuating his myth. Historians will see clear messages in the verses. For instance, one such song hails Chiang Kai-shek as the “Savior of the Chinese Nation” with the following words: After 500 years, the Yellow River is finally clear; Thereby, the savior of the Chinese nation was born. He came to save the country and to save the people; The leader’s accomplishments and virtues are equal to those of the heavens. He first fought the warlords, then resisted the Japanese . . . Another song, which praises Chiang Kai-shek “the Great Leader,” goes like this: Leader, Leader, the Great Leader! You are the teacher of the great era, You are the helmsman of the great epoch. Let’s obey your leadership, let’s unite around you, In order to survive, in order to retain freedom, Everybody needs the leader, everybody needs the leader!

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In addition to directing the Youth Corps, Chiang Ching-kuo was also named the chief administrator of the Veterans Commission in 1957 (which was established three years earlier in 1954) and then the Vice Premier of the Republic of China in June 1959. By this time, Chiang Ching-kuo had gained effective control over the military, the intelligence apparatus, the party, and the student organizations. And by paternalism, he was able to train a select number of talented subordinates. The civilian governor of Taiwan Dr. Wu Kuo-chen had, since the spring of 1953, been forced into exile in America, and the army commander General Sun Li-jen had, since August 1955, been under house arrest on charge of sedition. Even General Ch’en Ch’eng, who served both as the Premier (from March 1950) and Vice President (March 1954–1965), did not enjoy the level of power held by Chiang Ching-kuo. Ch’en and other high-ranking Nationalist officials were usually asked to devote their energies to developing Taiwan’s economy, leaving the most crucial decision making powers to Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo.36 Thus, it is no coincidence that during the next four decades, until Chiang Ching-kuo’s death on January 10, 1988, a Bolshevik-style party-state effectively muzzled the media, restricted civic activities, and limited the citizens’ overseas travel. In addition, thousands of innocent Taiwanese and Chinese became the victims of the so-called White Terror, perpetrated by KMT secret police, whose hands were attuned to Chiang’s every pulse. The White Terror was very wide-ranging. Its victims included both Taiwanese and mainlander Chinese, both men and women, the elite and the humble, and even members of the government and the military. Its victims were the relatives, colleagues, classmates or acquaintances of the Communists; members of Marxist or Socialist clubs of various kinds; critics of the Nationalist government at large or Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo personally; political enemies of powerful KMT officials; and those who practiced civil disobedience. During the Reign of the White Terror, individuals existed in bondage to the dictatorship, their lives easily sacrificed at the whim of those in power. Granted there were a few real Communist spies; however, most of the victims of the White Terror were found guilty simply by association. Countless cases were actually groundless, or the result of mistakes or false accusations. For instance, the popular writer Po Yang, a mainlander Chinese, sarcastically translated the word “fellows” in a Popeye comic strip as “ch’uan-kuo chun-min t’ung-bao,” a favorite Chiang Kai-shek slogan that literally means “my fellow soldiers and countrymen.” Po Yang was arrested and, in 1968, convicted of espionage.37 People like Po Yang often disappeared for one or two years before their families were notified of their whereabouts. During the interrogations, torture was often used to elicit confessions and to manufacture “evidence.” Trials and sentencing were carried out by a kangaroo court


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without due process of law, with courts generally acquiescing to orders from above. For instance, newly released Taiwanese government documents reveal that even before the actual trial of Lei Chen—a mainlander Chinese who planned to form a new China Democratic Party in 1960—was to take place, Chiang Kai-shek had already personally demanded that his military court sentence Lei to “a jail term of no less than ten years.”38 Indeed, Lei did receive a sentence of exactly ten years from a court martial for alleged “involvement in a Communist plot to overthrow” Chiang Kai-shek’s regime. Jay Taylor notes that it was Chiang Ching-kuo who pressed for the arrest and the incarceration of Lei and that, in fact, Vice President Ch’en Ch’eng, who advocated tolerance, only learned of Lei’s arrest in the newspaper.39 Most executions were carried out without the knowledge of the public. The most common execution grounds were Liu-chang-li, An-kang, and the racetracks in the Taipei suburbs. In July 1952, barely four months after Lee Teng-hui left for Iowa State, a young Taiwanese visited Lee’s wife and told her that his brother, who was a good friend of Teng-hui at National Taiwan University, was slated to be executed within 24 hours. This frightened young man also said that the Nationalist Garrison Command had a list of all the names of Taita’s Marxist Study Club, to which Lee Teng-hui once belonged. He warned the Lee family to be extremely careful. From then on, Lee Teng-hui’s wife became suspicious that the letters her husband sent from the United States had been opened and read by the KMT secret police. Accordingly, she grew ever more cautious and chose not to mention the matter of the execution in her correspondence with her husband. There is a strong possibility that Lee Teng-hui was in fact blacklisted by the Garrison Command, because he was not able, on his return trip, to easily obtain an entry permit to Taiwan. After completing his studies at Iowa State, Lee was forced to go through a considerable amount of red tape, including detouring to the Philippines, before he was permitted to return home. Later, when his wife told him about the execution of his Marxist Study Club fellow member, Lee Teng-hui solemnly nodded his head, but did not say a word to his wife.40 With the Iowa State training on his resume, Lee was promoted from a teaching fellow to an instructor when he resumed his teaching career at National Taiwan University. He taught a variety of undergraduate courses from banking to marketing to plant pathology—including general courses, which he was not well versed in, and therefore had to study on his own. Beginning in 1957, he even taught a graduate seminar at Taita’s Department of Economics. Lee characterized some of these patch-work courses he taught as “having only holes but no pegs” (wu-kang bu-shun in Taiwanese). Nevertheless, according to Ch’en Hsi-huang (1935–), University of Georgia Ph.D. and a professor himself at Taita, students packed Lee’s classes to hear

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his lectures. Ch’en was a sophomore when he enrolled in Lee’s “Money and Banking” course, during which time Lee lectured on such topics as financial history, financial institutions, and monetary policy in theory and practice. Ch’en, later served as the chairman of Taita’s Department of Agricultural Economics, recalls that Instructor Lee regularly passed out long list of reference books for his students, but struggled with his Mandarin throughout the entire year as Lee frequently confused Japanese and Chinese word order.41 In order to remake the islanders in the image of “Chineseness,” the Chiang Kai-shek regime promulgated a new language ordinance that required that only Mandarin could be used for teaching and learning at every school level, from kindergarten to university. For the 30-year-old Lee Teng-hui, this was a painstaking endeavor, because it meant he could no longer speak Japanese or Taiwanese—the languages he was, and still is, most comfortable using—in his classroom. Lee Teng-hui naturally struggled with this new language and, like millions of his fellow Taiwanese, suffered a new bout of identity crisis. While Chiang’s policy of forcing Taiwanese to speak Mandarin helped to increase the islanders’ feeling of alienation from his regime, Lee Teng-hui dutifully took some Mandarin classes at nighttime so that he could improve his teaching skills. Also, in order to supplement his meager teaching salary, Lee had held, since the summer of 1953, a part-time job as a technician at the Department of Agriculture and Forestry of the Taiwan provincial government. However, a few months after the birth of his second daughter Annie (June 9, 1954), Lee quit his job at the Taiwan provincial government and, on the recommendation of Mr. Chu Chao-yang—an old Choshu-ryo friend back from the wartime days in Tokyo—took a high-paying job at the Provincial Taiwan Cooperative Bank as a research fellow. By the time Lee Teng-hui’s second daughter was born, Chiang Kai-shek’s government and Syngman Rhee’s South Korean regime had formed the Asian People’s Anti-Communist League (APACL), aiming to dam the spread of “the Red deluge.” The APACL gradually developed into a worldwide organization, conveniently providing a diplomatic conduit by which the Chiang regime could maintain relationships with major countries in the “Free World.” Finally, in 1966, the APACL was reorganized as the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) with a membership of 64 countries and territories. For the next two decades, the Chiang regime would devote a substantial budget to, and play an active role in, the WACL.42 Better still, on December 2, 1954, the United States—under the Eisenhower administration—and the Republic of China on Taiwan signed the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) in Washington, DC. The treaty called for the United States to defend Taiwan and the Pescadores, but reserved to the President of the United States the right to decide if the offshore islands—Quemoy and the Matsus, which


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were heavily bombarded by the Communists in early September 1954—were to be defended with American help. In the exchange of notes attached to the treaty, the United States also insisted that before the ROC took any military actions against the mainland, Taiwan was obligated to consult with the U.S. government. The MDT would become the corner stone of the U.S.–Taiwan relationship for the next 26 years, establishing the legal basis for a long-term, comprehensive cooperation between the two allies. While safeguarding the survival of a free Taiwan, the MDT actually worked to consolidate America’s dominant power and interests in the West Pacific and also served as a policy guide for the State Department to vigorously oppose Communist China’s seating in the United Nations.43 In the meantime, the Eisenhower administration continued to pursue a “Two Chinas” policy by directly negotiating with Communist Chinese representatives, first in Geneva in 1955 and later in Warsaw in 1958. In essence, the MDT did save the Chiang regime from Communist attack, but its exchange notes, which constituted legal binding force, also resulted in Chiang’s forces being tightly “leashed” to the island. This was so because, without prior American approval, the Nationalists could not unilaterally launch any offensive campaigns to “recover mainland China.” In other words, the U.S. security commitment toward Taiwan was limited only to supply defensive arms and to protect Taiwan from Communist attacks, but not to assist the Nationalists in recovering the mainland. As a matter of fact, the Eisenhower administration successfully persuaded Chiang Kai-shek to withdraw his troops from the small Tachen island group before the MDT was signed. Nevertheless, the Taiwanese public learned only about the treaty itself, not about the defensive nature of the exchange notes. The Chiang regime never disclosed this “catch” to the Taiwanese people, as it continued to insist that Taipei was only the temporary capital of China and that “overthrowing the Communist regime and recovering mainland China” was its most urgent and “top priority” goal. In fact, bulletin boards in every school, as well as on every street, constantly carried the slogan: “First year we prepare, second year we launch the attack, third year we eliminate the Communist bandits, and by the fifth year, we’ll succeed in retaking the mainland.” The problem was that five years quickly elapsed and, having failed to triumphantly return to the mainland, the Chiang regime had to find a new set of propaganda slogans. But while Taiwan had, for the first time since 1937, regained a sense of stability and security, and while Lee Teng-hui found himself leading a normal and quiet academic life, the “White Terror” continued unabated. In his “Taiwan, Island of Resignation and Despair,” Harvard scholar Mark Mancall documents the effects of political repression as he writes that “at one point

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toward the end of 1962, for instance, the magistrates and mayors of several important counties and cities on the island, including the capital, were either in jail or before the courts.”44 In fact, the KMT secret police had set up a tiny remote island for detaining and “reeducating” several thousands of political prisoners. Located in the Pacific Ocean 33 kilometers east of the coastal city of Taitung is a volcanic rock—which the Japanese called “Fire Burned Island.” The 16.2-square-kilometer island is surrounded by coral reefs and white beaches, but is also walled by steep cliffs, towering rocks and a thick carpet of emerald-green grass; hence the Chinese call it “Green Island.” Beginning in the spring of 1951, the Taiwan Garrison Command started sending political prisoners to the northeastern corner of Green Island for reeducation and rehabilitation or, as the KMT dubbed it: “thought reform.” The first group of inmates arrived at the island in May 1951. One surviving victim named Wang Nai-hsin recalls: “In the middle of the night we were awakened by a great racket [in a jail in Taiwan proper], and our names were called. We were ordered to get up and pack our bags. Then we were brought out into a plaza, where we were handcuffed to a partner and tied by the waist into groups of ten men. When it was almost dawn, we were brought to the docks in Keelung. Every man was given three moldy bread rolls, and then we were herded into armored landing craft in the harbor that was awaiting our arrival and ready to go.”45 From 1953 to 1954, some 100 female inmates, among them the accomplished dancer Tsai Jui-yue, were brought to Green Island. At the “thought reform” camp, the prisoners were required to read Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s tridemism doctrine (known as Three Peoples’ Principles) and Chiang Kai-shek’s Sayings and Instructions, as well as to study various books by Sung dynasty and Ming dynasty Neo-Confucian philosophers; afterward, they had to write book reports. They were also required to maintain the grounds and buildings, raise pigs and grow vegetables, and to gather wood at the top of the hills and collect rocks from the beaches for building castle-like bulwarks. As Wang Nai-hsin puts it, “So it was that we built the walls for our own imprisonment.”46 According to Li Hsuan-feng, a staff member at the Historical Research Commission of Taiwan Province, the longest time served on Green Island was 34 years. “When first imprisoned, this man was 26 years old. He didn’t leave until he was a white-haired 60-year-old.” In addition, 13 inmates died on the island, and no one came to collect their remains.47 But partly because an untold number of victims have died since their release or are impossible to track down, and partly because the KMT regime resorted to stonewalling and mendacity, the whole story of Green Island has not yet been told. Nevertheless, based upon personal interviews and published records, we know that the number of Green Island’s detainees once exceeded 2,000,


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sometimes with more than ten persons confined to one cell. So crowded were the cells that many inmates learned how to sleep while squatting. A few families of the survivors later reported that, even after the victims were released, they could only sleep while squatting in the corners of their own bedrooms. Among the more prominent prisoners were the intellectual and activist Lei Chen, the prolific writer Po Yang, and the future legislator Shih Ming-teh. Because the island was surrounded by the deep, tempestuous waters of the Pacific Ocean, and definitely because prison security was meticulously maintained by the KMT secret police, only one jail break occurred during Green Island’s 36 years of operation as a prison—and the attempt failed. (This is an even “better” record than that of France’s Devil’s Island or South Africa’s Robin Island.) Some of the more recalcitrant inmates were retried, found guilty, and executed, among them six military officers who were shot in May 1970. Also, a total of ten Taiwanese physicians, all trained under the Japanese system, were incarcerated on the island.48 The Chinese have a saying that “the one who ties the bell should also be the one who unties the bell.” Upon Chiang Kai-shek’s death in 1975, Chiang Ching-kuo, who tried to thaw things up a bit, granted a special amnesty to 3,600 inmates who were serving time, among them more than 200 political prisoners.49 By this time, international pressure, as well as Taiwan’s burgeoning economy and fledgling democratic movement, contributed to persuading the KMT regime to fluctuate between “soft totalitarianism” and “quasi-democracy.” Thus, the ideologue-turned-populist Chiang Ching-kuo, while remaining the inveterate Chinese to the core, discovered that it was to his benefit to begin identifying himself with the Taiwanese. But ultimately it would be up to Chiang’s successor, Lee Teng-hui, who felt the image of Green Island to be an incubus of the ruling party and resolved to rectify the “mistakes”of his predecessors. Subsequently, Lee kicked off a healing process for those who spent untold hellish days and nights on Green Island. On May 20, 1996, then-President Lee Teng-hui told a Newsweek reporter that “American people, Asian people, African people all need human rights. Some talk of Asian values. I say Asian people have rights just like in the United States.”50 In June 1998, Lee Teng-hui’s administration designated NT $60 billion for the redress of both the victims of the 2.28 Massacre and Green Island’s political prisoners—the families of those who were executed could be compensated up to NT $6 million. Lee Teng-hui then donated NT $20 million from the royalties of his book, Tai-wan ti tsu-chang (With the people always in my heart, 1999) to build a memorial monument on Green Island. Finally, on December 10, 1999, Lee Teng-hui personally visited the remote Green Island to mark the completion of the Green Island Human Rights Monument. In his opening speech,

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Lee solemnly declared: On the government’s behalf, let me convey to the Human Rights Education Foundation the highest of respects, and to the victims of repression, let me offer the deepest of apologies. . . . We are now as a nation seeking to observe basic human rights for the first time in the history of Chinese culture . . . Human rights are dependent on more than merely political and legal struggles. Rather, they involve independent thinking and respect for people as individuals. We’ve got to take our conception of human rights and make it an integral part of people’s basic moral fiber, so that it is fully manifested in everyday life.51 Lee then unveiled the list of the victims’ names, which were chiseled on the monument, as well as an inscription (composed by Po Yang), which reads: “In that era, how many mothers spent long nights crying for their children locked up on Green Island?” While nobody can ever tell how much blood, sweat and tears stained the ground there, Green Island bears witness to the human degradation of the Chiang regime. In their quest for a new identity, the Taiwanese can forgive, but cannot forget, the nearly half-a-century of the “White Terror,” even as they vow never to fall into the same trap. With the vast majority of twentyfirst-century islanders—whether they are mainlander Chinese, Hakka, Hoklo, or aborigines—choosing to identify themselves with “democracy, freedom, and human rights,” a new “state nationalism” (but not ethnic nationalism) is emerging on the island, with the latest generation now call themselves the “New Taiwanese.”52 Though this new identity might be just as fickle as those of Taiwan’s past, one thing is definitely certain: Taiwanese will no longer tremble when they hear the name “Green Island,” and no Taiwanese mother will be forced to cry because of her children’s beliefs. To this end, Lee Teng-hui, himself a victim of the White Terror, deserves a lot of credit.

CHAPTER 5

Lee Teng-hui’s Conversion to Christianity and Kuomintang

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hen a regime feels vulnerable in a protracted civil war, it wages war against its own people, often going beyond the norm of a free state in safeguarding its domestic security. That was precisely the case with the Nationalist government on Taiwan in the 1950s and 1960s. But when the people feel vulnerable and live in constant fear from the secret police, who can arrest and torture and even kill them with impunity, they seek hope, fellowship, and protection in religion. For centuries, the Taiwanese have practiced a rich blend of Buddhism, Taoism, and folk beliefs brought to the island by ethnic Chinese settlers.1 When the Taiwanese need to placate fears, they perform an exorcist ritual called shou-ching to remove evil spirits. When they have doubts or need a prognostication about the future, they solicit advice by either drawing bamboo slips (Chinese call ch’ien) from a wooden vase or by throwing the so-called divining blocks in front of their patron deity.2 During the last three centuries, Taiwan’s multilingual inhabitants confronted, resisted, and adapted to the many upheavals of their times, including occupations by the Dutch, the Manchu forces, the Japanese, and World War II. However, the islanders at large adhered to the same syncretic religious traditions. Generally speaking, the Nationalist government did not interfere with the Taiwanese religious practices—partly because both Chiang Kai-shek and his wife Soong Mei-ling were devout Methodists, and partly because unfettered religious freedom was good politics against the atheist, totalitarian Communism. Under the circumstances, hundreds of Christian missionaries, Chinese as well as foreign, proselytized freely and left an impressive imprint

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in Taiwan. Thus, Christian denominations of various kinds thrived under the Chiang regime. In fact, when Lee Teng-hui was searching for his own faith in the late 1950s, there were more than two dozen evangelical Christian congregations in Taipei, extending into nine Taita surrounding blocks and actively competing for converts. Many young people, instructors as well as students, were lured to the church not just for faith only, but also for being able to join an expanding social web organized by the congregations. In addition, there were many amenities, such as learning English, the university was incapable of providing. At this point in time, Lee Teng-hui not only was haunted by the horrors of World War II, the 2.28 Incident, and the White Terror, but also saddened by the deaths of his mother and grandfather, as well as the missing-in-action of his elder brother. He appreciated the fragility and brevity of human life. He suffered, he wandered, but could not understand why. He needed some kind of spiritual guidance or religious belief to live and make his life meaningful. As an associate professor at Taiwan’s most prestigious university, Lee did not dismiss traditional Taiwanese religious practices as mere superstition or nonsense. In fact, he never repudiated many of the doctrines, attitudes, and convictions of Taiwanese traditional religions. In an interview with Newsweek on May 20, 1996, Lee Teng-hui said, “I studied Zen. Buddhism and Christianity are different ways of thinking, but the goals are the same. Christianity has love and Buddhism has humility. At their highest points they are the same.”3 Nevertheless, Lee, for a long while, could not reconcile his ontological beliefs with the Christian concept of virgin birth and the doctrine of the incarnation and resurrection, all of which are biologically impossible and contrary to common sense. While Lee Teng-hui was grappled with his spiritual crisis, two significant things happened. First, beginning on August 23, 1958, the Chinese Communists launched a well-prepared and heavy shelling campaign against Quemoy and Matsu just off the shore of mainland China, aiming to blockade and take over these two small islands, while demoralizing and ultimately liberating Taiwan. Thanks to American military assistance rendered in accordance with the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty, the Nationalists fought back the Communist invasion, but the sense of insecurity lingered on among anxious Taiwanese.4 Second, Lee Teng-hui’s 56-year-old mother-in-law was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1959, creating an immediate crisis in the Lee family. It was during this time of deepening gloom that she embraced Christ as her lord. The death of his mother-in-law a year later, his wife’s grief, as well as his own fears slowly but clearly drew him closer and closer to Christian religion. The fulfilling marriage of Teng-hui and his wife Fumi was knitted together from shared dreams and experiences, common values, and mutual respect. In order to search for answers and to soothe the pains, Teng-hui and

Conversion to Christianity and Kuomintang

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his wife attended, mostly on Thursday and Friday evenings, hundreds of sermons in practically every Christian congregation in Taipei. They found the Christian sacraments pure and beautiful and inculcated the highest kind of morality. They also found Christ very different from Chinese deities, whether it be Ma-tsu, or Kuan-yin, or Kuan-kung. The outward circumstances of his life began to transfer the inner man, a tormented one by nature, as Teng-hui developed into conflicting impulses—double bonds and double binds between Eastern culture and Western belief. Then came a Shanghai preacher who told Lee Teng-hui that only through faith can he ease his suffering and find peace and that “the greatest part of Christianity is that you have faith in something you cannot see.” He then read to Teng-hui “Hebrews, 11:6” from New Testament, which states: “And without faith it is impossible to please him, for he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him.”5 This Shanghai evangelical minister had a great ability to elucidate the murky thoughts ordinary people sometimes have about the existence of a divine spark in daily life. When the Shanghai preacher related the universal Savior-God to the historical crucifixion, Teng-hui felt personally touched by the preacher’s message. He overwhelmed Teng-hui with Christian mysteries, prophecies, and miracles, as well as the awesome force of God in the deity’s proper relationship to the humans. He taught Teng-hui how to use prayers to seek safety and peace, and to dwell in a God-centered, God-endowed world. In April 1961, the 38-year-old Lee Teng-hui was baptized at Taipei’s No. 4 Congregational Church (near present-day National Taiwan Normal University on Ho-P’ing East Road) by the preacher from Shanghai. It was a milestone in Lee’s life. Though unlike the dramatic conversion of Saul to Paul, Lee Teng-hui had nevertheless totally forsaken the dogma of Karl Marx and embraced the religious tradition of Abraham, which believed in the return of the Messiah and angels. Lee’s conversion, however, had taken aback many of his friends and acquaintances. Some viewed this radical change as a spiritual rebirth of Lee Teng-hui, who during his journey of faith, has proven to be a devout and enthusiastic Christian. Others pointed out Lee’s pattern of changing beliefs and personality, judging him always ready to chase fashion and to seek expediency. Regardless of the critics’ views, faith became an integral part of Teng-hui’s life. His daily prayers and regular testimonials gave him strength, guidance, and comfort. He and his wife kept a prayer book and, later when serving as the president, often used prayers to help him make difficult decisions.6 The Christian Lee Teng-hui, however, continued to live in want and fear, seeking to improve his temporal life but fearing the White Terror. For one thing, he wanted a bigger home for his growing family. In 1962, Lee paid NT $100,000 (about US$2,500) for a ground floor condominium on Taipei’s

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Sung-kiang Road, where the couple and their three children and a nephew (the son of his deceased older brother, who later became a pharmacist) shared three bedrooms and one small bath.7 However, Lee’s fear deepened when his Taita colleague Professor Peng Ming-min was arrested by the Kuomintang secret police in 1964. Peng shared a similar background with Lee, both having Hakka ancestry, both growing up on the island under Japanese rule and thoroughly imbued with prewar Japanese ideology. Each suffered a great deal during World War II; Peng lost his left arm as a result of the American air raid in Nagasaki in late April 1945. After being repatriated to Taiwan, Peng resumed his college education at National Taiwan University. Upon his graduation in the summer of 1948, Peng joined Taita’s faculty in the Department of Political Science of the College of Law, subsequently rising through the ranks to become a professor and also chairman of the department. In the early 1960s, there were very few Taiwanese in Chiang Kai-shek’s government, but the political door was slightly opened for a select number of Taiwanese, such as Professor Peng, to walk through. After being named one of the “Ten Outstanding Young Men of Taiwan” by the Taiwan Junior Chamber of Commerce, Chiang Kai-shek personally interviewed the professor and subsequently appointed Peng a delegate to the United Nations. However, Peng chose not to walk through the door because he did not want to become an abject collaborator of the oppressive exogenous regime—this would ultimately separate him from his friend Lee Teng-hui. All it required was a little inspiration before Peng would break his silence against the KMT regime. In April 1964, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk visited Taiwan to reiterate America’s obligations to the security of Taiwan. However, Secretary Rusk failed to reaffirm American commitment to the Nationalists as the only legitimate government, thus signaling that Washington was prepared to consider a “two-China” option. Then the enigmatic Charles de Gaulle, a strong advocate of a “Quebec libre,” suddenly decided not to support Taiwan’s struggle for liberty any more. Following his government’s recognition of the People’s Republic of China, de Gaulle ordered the French embassy in Taipei closed. It was against the backdrop of these diplomatic developments that Professor Peng, together with two of his Taiwanese students—Mr. Hsieh Tsung-min and Mr. Wei Ting-chao—took bold action to challenge the Chiang Kai-shek regime. They imitated the “American Declaration of Independence” and drafted a manifesto called Tai-wan tzu-chiu yun-tung hsuan-yen (A Declaration of Formosan Self-salvation), in which they called for a freely elected government to replace the Chiang Kai-shek regime. However, on September 20, 1964, before they could even send out the 10,000 printed copies of the manifesto to the public, they were arrested by plainclothes police. After his arrest, Peng underwent a lengthy and frightful interrogation, including several 72-hour, sleepless sessions.8 On April 2, 1965, a court martial


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finally sentenced Peng to eight years’ imprisonment. Peng protested that the verdict was too severe and had been reached without due process of law, but the flustered Chiang Ching-kuo, then serving as Minister of Defense (since January 13, 1965), considered it a “light” sentence. Peng’s arrest and trial, nevertheless, not only created a political storm in Taiwan, but also drew the attention of Peng’s American friends, including Harvard professor John King Fairbanks, as well as John Cobb Cooper, Peng’s mentor at McGill University and a leading expert in air and outer space law. Biographer Jay Taylor confirms that Chiang Ching-kuo was indeed concerned about the “great deal of attention abroad” that Peng had drawn, therefore obtaining a “presidential clemency” for Peng.9 Consequently, after only serving seven months in a Taipei jail, Peng was set free on November 3, but was to be constantly under government surveillance. On January 2, 1970, Peng made a miraculous escape from the island; after which he lived in exile in Sweden and America until November 1, 1992 when the then-President Lee Teng-hui invited him to return to Taiwan. During the trial and the imprisonment of Peng Ming-min, Lee Teng-hui remained silent and went on his teaching job at Taita, as well as working at Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction (JCRR). Lee served first as a technician, then a project specialist in JCRR’s Division of Rural Economics under a Cantonese chief named Hsieh Shen-chung. Hsieh held a doctorate from University of Minnesota and was on the faculty of Taita’s Department of Agricultural Economics when he met Lee. It was during this time that Teng-hui began to publish his research papers in international agricultural journals with an English name, “T. H. Lee.”10 It was also during this time that the Rockefeller Foundation and Cornell University offered Lee a scholarship to further his study in agricultural economics in America. Better still, Taita also agreed not only to keep his job, but also pay his salary while he was studying abroad. Lee viewed this scholarship as a God-sent opportunity to improve his prospective career and left his young family in September 1965, first flying to Syracuse, and then taking a bus to Ithaca. Among Cornell’s many colleges and schools, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences was internationally renowned, which had also established exchange programs with such Asian countries as China, India, and the Philippines. During his first two years at Cornell, Teng-hui lived like a bachelor—as he did earlier at Iowa State—and took such courses as agricultural economics, agricultural finance, applied econometrics and quantitative analysis, economics of development, farm management and production economics, marketing and food distribution, and public policy analysis. He spent most of his time at his research study, Room #406, in the Agricultural Economics Building. But he also studied at Olin Library, which houses Cornell’s major research

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collections in the social sciences and humanities. For gathering materials for his term papers, he sometimes used Albert R. Mann Library that serves the College of Agricultural Life Sciences. In his spare time, he loved to browse through Cornell’s world-renowned collection of rare books, manuscripts, and Asian materials in Kroch Library. Already in his early forties, Lee Teng-hui was older than most of his fellow graduate students. Kenneth L. Robinson, a faculty member of the committee that supervised Lee’s doctoral research, recalled Lee as “very reserved, very able and very conscientious.”11 Even though his English proficiency was average, Lee possessed an excellent mind and worked really hard. In a Cornell Chronicle interview, Bernard F. Stanton, Cornell professor emeritus of agricultural economics, said that, “Lee’s great strength was in his intellectual capacity and his ideas. He was very serious, and he came to Cornell with specific ideas on what he wanted to accomplish with his thesis.”12 Daniel G. Sisler, another Cornell professor of agricultural economics, said of Lee, “He wouldn’t be out playing volleyball with other graduate students or down at a bar in Collegetown. He was very quiet, very studious and personally dedicated to his work and to Taiwan. I gave him an A⫹ in a course on research methods, and I don’t give out many A’s.”13 Another Cornell professor John Mellor, who was six years of Lee’s junior, was struck by Lee as “a very mature, thoughtful student with an absolutely first-rate analytical mind.”14 After two years of intensive study, Lee Teng-hui passed his comprehensive examinations. He was now an ABD (all but dissertation) and felt more relaxed in his final push for a doctorate. He thereby sent for his wife Fumi to join him at Ithaca. It was a difficult decision for her because she was worried about the care of her three teenaged children, the17-year-old son Hsien-wen, the 15-year-old daughter Anna, and the 13-year-old daughter Annie. But after consulting with friends and relatives, Fumi decided that she should come. The children would stay with her brother in Taipei so that they could continue with their education uninterrupted. Soon after Fumi’s arrival, the Lees rented a two-bedroom, wood-frame house, located at 521 East State Street in downtown Ithaca, in a section where many graduate and older students still live. Partly because of his limited command of English and partly because of the Asian tradition of revering one’s teachers, Lee was on the surface quiet, reserved, and polite to his American professors. But Lee Teng-hui, by nature, liked to talk. In fact, his talk flowed as rapidly as a mountain brook and often did so injudiciously among his fellow Asian classmates.15 During his Cornell days, Lee socialized with all kinds of Asian students in Ithaca. Among the Taiwanese who made acquaintance with the Lees were Mr. Huang Wen-hsiung (Peter), a Cornell graduate student and an architect named Ch’eng Tzu-ts’ai, who was married to Huang’s sister Cecilia.


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On April 24, 1970, Huang and Ch’eng attempted to kill Chiang Ching-kuo when Chiang, then Vice Premier of the Nationalist government, was conducting a state visit in the United States. The attempted assassination took place at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, and both Huang and Ch’eng were arrested on the spot. The abortive assassination attempt immediately piqued the interest of the American news media in Taiwanese grievances. As for Lee Teng-hui, he believed that he must have been blacklisted by the KMT secret police because of his acquaintance with several Taiwanese Communists in the1940s, his friendship with Peng Ming-min, and because of his injudicious remarks on political issues from time to time.16 But before we conclude our account of Lee Teng-hui’s study at Cornell and go on to detail his “White Terror” ordeal in 1969, it is imperative that we present a psychological profile of a typical Taiwanese student studying in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. It is important because, during this period, the major Taiwanese battlegrounds against the KMT regime were in Japan and North America rather than on the island of Taiwan. Records show that Americans generally were sympathetic to the Taiwanese struggle for independence; in fact, the U.S. government never deported any Taiwanese independence activists, in contrast to the Japanese government of Sato Eisaku (1964–72). In the 1960s, U.S. Congress passed annual resolutions to support Taiwan’s representation in the United Nations and several members of Congress, such as Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) and Representative James Leach (R-Iowa), openly spoke favorably of the Taiwan Independence Movement.17 Records also show that between 1950 and 1983, a total of 74,000 college graduates from Taiwan were enrolled in American colleges and universities; of this number only 10,033, or less than 13 percent, returned to Taiwan.18 Also, of the more than 87 percent student-immigrant Taiwanese in America, many joined and ultimately became stalwarts in the Taiwanese Independent Movement. (Some, such as Drs. Trong Chai, Parris Chang, Chang Fu-mei, and Chen Tung-shan, had returned to Taiwan since the 1980s, either actively involved in organizing and expanding the Democratic Progressive Party, or took positions under the Chen Shui-bian administration in 2001.) Prior to their American experience, nearly all of the Taiwanese students had gone through a carefully designed program of indoctrination, by which the KMT regime hoped to produce model citizens in accordance with its nationalist ideology, that is, who adhered to Chinese culture and to the teachings of Confucius, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, and Chiang Kai-shek. However, after exposure to American education and after learning more about Western traditions and of modern China, many of them underwent a painful process of what psychologists call “marginalization,” both intellectually and emotionally. Others exposed to liberal American professors, who more often than

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not criticized the KMT record on the mainland and attributed the debacle of 1949 to the corruption and ineffectual leadership of the Chiang regime. Many such young Taiwanese became converts to the independence movement. In addition, liberal American news media, with their blunt and even relentless remonstrations against U.S. officials, exerted enormous influence on the political views of the Taiwanese students. They compared the American democratic and open society with the Leninist-style political system of their native land, where strikes were not allowed, free speech was curtailed, the right of assembly restricted, and censorship of publications often practiced19. As awareness leads to pain, their knowledge of such restraints distressed the Taiwanese in America. Their anguish was increased by the fact that KMT diplomacy had been on the defensive in its battle against the Communists since the 1960s. Soon after Nixon became president in 1969, his administration took steps to improve relations with Beijing, hoping to find a solution to the Vietnam War and to reduce overall U.S. risks and costs in East Asia. Nixon’s socalled Guam Doctrine of 1969 implied diminished military support for Taiwan and conciliation with China. Within the Nixon administration, Secretary of State William P. Rogers and UN Ambassador George H. Bush wanted to retain a UN seat for Taiwan, but Henry A. Kissinger, Nixon’s national security advisor, was more interested in reaching rapprochement with Communist China and was ready to sacrifice Taiwan.20 In October 1971, while Kissinger was secretly negotiating with Zhou Enlai in Beijing, the United Nations General Assembly took up an Albania proposal (Resolution No. 2758), and voted 76 to 35, with 17 member countries abstaining to expel the Nationalists and admit the Communist regime as the sole legal government representing China. Understandably, the Nixon administration raised no rigorous objection to the United Nations decision, but the Taiwanese in America, like their brethren on the island, were severely shaken and felt dismayed. During this same year, more than half a dozen countries broke relations with Taipei and moved their embassies to Beijing. They included India, Iran, Belgium, Lebanon, Peru, Mexico, Ecuador, among others. But the heaviest blows came when Nixon announced his proposed visit to mainland China in July 1971 and when Japan recognized the PRC regime in Beijing and broke its long-standing ties with Taipei in September 1972. These series of diplomatic setbacks had transformed Taiwan from what the Taiwanese writer Wu Cho-liu called an “Asian orphan,” to becoming an “international orphan.”21 The majority of Taiwanese in America, groping in political confusion and cultural transition, added to their intellectual and emotional baggage many new and foreign concepts and values. In such a marginalization, they became more searing in their indictments of KMT’s brutality at home but impotence abroad. They also became culturally more


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Occidental and politically more American, while maintaining many elements of Taiwanese identification. These were people most likely to become infatuated with the Taiwanese independence movement. Among them, the more daring and radical, who saw the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy in1963 and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, decided to take the matters into their own hands. Thus, the Cornell students Huang Wen-hsiung and Ch’eng Tzu-ts’ai chose the roads of Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray when they attempted to assassinate Chiang Ching-kuo in April 1970. But the attempt on Chiang’s life was an effect of, as well as an outburst against the KMT repressive rule in Taiwan. It was a stern warning from the Taiwanese about their interests being ignored and sacrificed and their rights continually trodden underfoot by the KMT rulers. It is alleged that the KMT regime established a network of spies in American colleges and universities. According to a report published by Newsweek, there were as many as five agencies of the KMT government gathering intelligence in the United States. On several occasions Newsweek reported that KMT officials in Taiwan kept tabs on which American universities needed more informants and which students and professors needed to be watched. When the KMT got a negative report about a student or a professor, it usually issued a warning to the student. Further transgressions would prompt a visit by a security agent to the student’s family in Taiwan. Revoking passports, blacklisting, subtle threatening, and even imprisonment were used to deal with dissident Taiwanese in America.22 While Lee Teng-hui was apprehensive about being reported by KMT informants at Cornell, he daily watched television and read major American newspapers—he is a news junkie—which undoubtedly made an indelible impression on him. This period of 1965–68 was a time of social turbulence in the United States, with the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War protests. Although Lee was already in his forties, he greatly appreciated the passion, energy, and idealism of the antiwar and antiestablishment American youths. Despite that turbulence and dissent, the American democratic system prevailed. By contrast, the horrid stories of the Proletarian Great Cultural Revolution and the state-instigated persecution against the intellectuals by the Communist regime deepened Lee’s belief that the power structure of China was “imperialistic, totalitarian, and archaic.” This made Lee realize that Taiwan should never again subject to Chinese rule and that only full democracy could engender ultimately peaceful transform of power in the future Taiwan.23 Even though his three-year stint at Cornell was not necessarily a reliable predictor of his inner landscape—of his mental makeup, Lee later said that after he returned to his homeland, he was determined to make his contributions toward achieving full democracy for Taiwanese society.24

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But before Lee could help democratize Taiwan, he had to first complete his Ph.D. dissertation, and he did so with flying colors. Prior to Lee’s arrival at Cornell, he had already authored a large number of papers on Taiwan’s agriculture.25 In addition, he possessed many of the statistical series and economic data for the period 1911–60 in Taiwan, which were tailor made for a strong, quantitatively oriented dissertation. In fact, his dissertation, “Intersectoral Capital Flows in the Economic Development of Taiwan, 1895–1960,” was so thorough in analyzing the transfer of resources from a rapidly growing agricultural sector to industry that it won the American Agricultural Economics Association’s annual award for an outstanding doctoral dissertation in 1969, the first time such an award was even given to a Taiwanese.26 Lee’s definitive work on Taiwan’s economy was soon edited by Uma Lele, a fellow graduate student and later professor of economics at the University of Florida. In 1971, upon the recommendations of Professor John W. Mellor and the Agricultural Development Council, the Cornell University Press published Lee’s dissertation as a 201-page monograph.27 In June 1968, the 45-year-old Lee Teng-hui put on his Cornell doctoral cap and gown, and collected a sheaf of diploma and honors certificates at the commencement. This was a particularly happy moment for his wife who proudly called her husband, “Dr. Lee,” for the first time. Afterward, the couple flew to London and began their postgraduation vacationing in Europe. On their way home, they spent nearly a month in India, visiting a number of rural projects that were affiliated with Cornell and the New York Agricultural Development Council. When they returned to Taipei, Teng-hui was elated to see how much his three children had grown. The 18-year-old son, Hsien-wen, was then attending Taipei’s Chien-kuo High School, the 16-year-old daughter, Anna, was enrolled at Taipei’s First Girls’ School and the 14-year-old youngest daughter Annie, continued to maintain an impeccable record in junior high. Each of their three children received a book of stamp collections plus an album of masterpiece reproduction paintings from their parents.28 With a Ph.D. from one of the best universities in the United States, Lee Teng-hui was fully credentialed when he returned to his post at JCRR. He was promoted to senior project specialist in the Division of Rural Economics. In the meantime, Lee taught a course called “Theory of Economic Development” at Taita’s College of Law on a part-time basis and also gave three lectures every week on “Economic Development in Asia” at the Graduate School of East Asian Studies of National Cheng-chih University.29 If life is a journey, Lee’s path was now much smoother. However, the flowers on the road were not all blue and yellow as he was looking for. Although the pay at JCRR (US$ 200 monthly) was much higher compared to professors or government bureaucrats (ranging from US$ 30 to 50 monthly), Lee seemed


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to have difficulty rising to the leadership position there. Success at the JCRR generally depended, not necessarily upon merit, but upon cultivating good personal relationships with powerful KMT officials, who were predominantly mainlander Chinese. He was so frustrated that he actually asked Professor Mellor to help him find a research position in America.30 Worse still, he soon fell victim to the White Terror. First of all, Lee was denied an application to attend an international agricultural meeting in Thailand. Then, beginning in May 1969, there appeared mysterious strangers with white caps canvassing Lee’s Sung-kiang Road neighborhood. The snooping continued throughout Taita’s final examinations. As soon as school was out, a plainclothes secret police knocked the door of Lee’s condo one early June morning before daybreak. When Teng-hui opened the door, he was still in pajamas, but the man demanded that he get ready for “an interview” at the Garrison Command. (Since it was only “an interview” instead of “an arrest,” there was no need for a warrant from the court.) Before Lee left, he signed a number of checks for his wife and his son to cash, just in case he would be detained for a long time or, worse of all, sent to the notorious Green Island. As soon as Teng-hui stepped outside the door, four or five uniformed military police ushered him into a nearby jeep.31 Fear, helplessness, and anxiety penetrated through the minds of Teng-hui and Fumi. They were no longer in control of their own destiny, but at the whim of fate. The jeep that carried Teng-hui drove through the heart of Taipei and came to a massive stone building, the most dreaded Security Depot of the Garrison Command. His silent escort gestured him to get off the jeep; he was then greeted by a very polite, uniformed officer. After being searched from head to toe by a soldier, Teng-hui was led to a small, air-conditioned interrogation room. Soon five expressionless investigators came to the room and began demanding Teng-hui to “tell everything” he knew about Communist activities on the island, his relationship with his Taita colleague Peng Mingmin, and the Taiwan Independence organizations in America. While the investigators took turn to question him over and over again, nobody was making written record, nor was Teng-hui provided with a lawyer. However, Tenghui suspected that his interrogation was being recorded by hidden machines. Even though Teng-hui was not physically tortured, he was mentally and psychologically abused as one investigator threatened him: “Killing you at this moment is as easy as squeezing an ant to death.”32 After every two hours, the team of investigators was replaced by a new team while a military doctor monitored Teng-hui’s heart beats and blood pressure at the intervals. Also, throughout the interminable questioning process, Teng-hui was allowed to use the room’s toilet and to have meals. The first day of questioning lasted for nearly 17 hours and caused Fumi to spend “the longest day in her life.”33

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The interrogation lasted for more than a week, during which time, Teng-hui would be picked up by the same jeep every morning, spent 16–18 hours at the Garrison Command, and would not come home until midnight. His interrogators would repeatedly ask him the same questions, while Teng-hui would give them the same answers, insisting that he had no knowledge and no involvement with either the Communists or the Taiwan independence movement in America. At this juncture, what worried the paranoid KMT regime the most was a possible American plot to replace the Chiang regime with a less repressive government headed by Taiwanese. The KMT agents wanted to be able to identify all real or suspected political opponents. They wanted to know if there were any foreign financial groups and if there were American professors or government officials backing the Taiwanese independent movement. While Teng-hui dismissed such questions as “nonsensical,” the KMT regime was extremely fearful that Uncle Sam was despairing of Chiang’s capacity to govern, it might want to topple the Chiang regime, as it did to Syngman Rhee (1875–1965) of South Korea in 1960 and Ngo Diehm Diem (1901–63) of South Vietnam in 1963.34 During Teng-hui’s interrogation ordeal, Fumi consulted with Teng-hui’s bosom friend Dr. Ho Chi-min, who suggested that she ask Hsu Ch’ingchung, then the Minister of Interior, for help. Hsu was a Hakka Taiwanese and was also Teng-hui’s mentor both at Taita and JCRR. But to Fumi’s disappointment, Hsu refused to get involved with such a sensitive security matter. Nevertheless, Lee survived the ordeal. In fact, at the conclusion of his weeklong interrogation, a Garrison Command officer murmured to him in Taiwanese dialect to the effect: “We know everything about you. Any suspicions we may have on you have been cleared. However, only Chiang Ching-kuo dares to use your kind of person.”35 At that time, Teng-hui did not understand these anomalous remarks, but kept his thoughts to himself. Though Lee would not conceal this ordeal, he would tell only what happened and why, without the self-dramatizing chiaroscuro of victimhood. Three years later when Chiang invited him to join the cabinet as an agricultural expert, it suddenly dawned on him that this series of interrogations might be some sort of security clearance check for government appointment. Nevertheless, the ordeal had left a deep scar in Fumi’s mind as she had to live through a tunnel of nightmares, which often caused feelings of foreboding and paralysis.36 Fortunately, it was their Christian faith that helped the Lee family overcome such despair and anguish during these trying times. But Chinese have a saying, “if one can survive an ordeal, good fortune would usually fall on him.” As the future unfolds, this was indeed Lee’s good fortune in disguise. About a month after Lee had completed his “interview” with the KMT secret police, the 82-year-old Chiang Kai-shek sustained multiple injuries


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from a car accident in a Taipei suburb in July 1969, so serious that he never fully recovered his health. According to Eng Yuan, Chiang’s long-time bodyguard, in addition to his failing eyesight, the elderly Chiang began to have heart problems and his urine frequently contained blood.37 Under the circumstances, the elder Chiang could no longer regularly appear in public for meetings with his ministers and generals, nor could he perform all of the state ceremonies as dutifully as he once had. Consequently, he decided to delegate even more power to his son Ching-kuo, whose official title was the minister of defense, but whose power was the de facto ruler of Taiwan. After the death of General Ch’en Ch’eng in 1965, Yen Chia-kan (1905–92) was made Premier and concurrently Vice President of the Republic of China. Yen, a native of Wu county in Kiangsu province, graduated from Shanghai’s St. John’s College with a degree in chemistry. Right after World War II, the urbane and affable Yen came to Taiwan, subsequently serving as minister of economics, minister of finance, governor of Taiwan, and director of American aid, ultimately becoming a confidant of Chiang Kai-shek. During these years of public service, Yen had proven to be a man of integrity and an able administrator; however, he never felt really comfortable in handling the levers of power.38 Thus, it was the younger Chiang who visited his father almost every day, while Premier Yen rarely came to see the bedridden president. Whenever there was a crucial decision to be made, the congenial and soft Yen generally deferred to the younger Chiang. For all practical purposes, then, the younger Chiang had become Taiwan’s real CEO. He generally chose to keep unpleasant news from his father.39 Under the Nationalist constitution of 1947, there was the National Assembly (Kuo-min-ta-hui) that exercised the sovereignty of the people to elect the president and vice president. Originally, the National Assembly had 2,961 elected members, but only 1,576 came to Taiwan with Chiang Kaishek. In March 1960, the rubber-stamp National Assembly, which met once in every six years, circumvented an article of the constitution by passing an amendment that allowed Chiang Kai-shek to serve for a third-term as the President of the Republic of China. The constitution also established five yuan, or branches, of power—executive, legislative, control, judicial, and examination—to provide some kind of check and balance. The legislative body is the Legislative Yuan (Li-fa yuan), which could initiate legislation, interpellate ministers, and review the budget. Under the 1947 constitution, there were 773 original seats in the Legislative Yuan, but only 470 members fled to Taiwan with the Nationalist government. Even though the serving legislators had tenure for life, the number had dwindled to less than 300 by 1969. Moreover, evidence that the legislative branch had grown sclerotic had come to light. From 1969 on, native Taiwanese new members were elected to

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replenish the dwindling mainland Chinese membership and to rejuvenate the Legislative Yuan. But even after seven such supplementary elections, held once every three years, the Taiwanese members remained the minority in the Legislative Yuan, never exceeding 86 in number. Even though the constitution stipulates that the president appoint the head of the Executive Yuan (Hsing-cheng yuan), or the Premier, who then form the cabinet; in actuality, the Legislative branch failed to “check and balance” the power of the executive branch under the Nationalist government. It rarely turned down the nominees or proposed bills sent by the president.40 Provincial and municipal assemblies, including those representing Mongolia, Tibet, and overseas Chinese communities, elected the members of the Control Yuan (Chien-ch’a yuan) for a term of six years. In return, the members, totaling 67 in 1988 for example, elected their own head. The Control Yuan fashioned after traditional Chinese censorate and was charged with monitoring the efficiency of the civil service and impeaching corrupt and derelict officials. The Judicial Yuan (Ssu-fa yuan) was the highest judicial organ of the state. Its head and 17-member grand justices were appointed by the president with concurrence of the Control yuan and were charged to interpret the constitution and coordinate the court systems. The Examination Yuan (K’ao-shi yuan), functioning as another millennium-old Chinese civil service examination, was charged with recruiting public functionaries and with registering such data as their merits, promotions, and commendations. Its head and 19 commissioners were appointed by the president with concurrence of the Legislative yuan.41 At the local level, there was a Taiwan provincial government, located in central Taiwan at the hilly and isolated Wufeng, near Taichung. Established in August 1959, the Provincial Assembly had between 71 and 77 seats and its popularly elected members represented Taiwan’s social notables, most of whom were wealthy landlords, doctors, lawyers, and influential merchants and industrialists. Throughout its existence, the KMT always dominated the assembly, generally winning more than three-fourths of the seats. In addition, the KMT regime appointed the governor of Taiwan province as well as the mayors of Taipei and Kaohsiung municipalities. From 1949 to 1972, there were seven governors, all of whom mainlander Chinese. But after 1972, in his attempt to localize the KMT regime, Chiang Ching-kuo appointed four Taiwanese—Hsueh Tung-min (1972–78), Lin Yang-kang (1978–81), Lee Teng-hui (1981–84), and Chiu Chuang-huan (1984–90)—as governors, grooming them to become the most prominent Taiwanese political figures in the1980s. Before 1967, the mayor of Taipei, like the executives of other cities and counties, was popularly elected once every three years. In fact, in 1964, the Waseda-educated Taiwanese Kao Yu-shu (Henry), an “independent”


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candidate, defeated the KMT candidate Huang Ch’i-jui in Taipei’s mayoral election. Three years later, the KMT regime decided to elevate Taipei, which had a population of approximately 2 million, to a special municipality status. Even though Chiang Ching-kuo appointed Kao to continue serving as the mayor of Taipei until June 1972, Taipei municipality, together with Kaohsiung, which gained similar status in 1979, were brought under the direct administrative supervision of the Executive Yuan. Against the backdrop of this system, Chiang Ching-kuo appointed Lee Teng-hui to be the mayor of Taipei in 1978 and, three years later, governor of Taiwan in 1981. The Taiwan Provincial government had its own departments of civil affairs, finance, education, communication, public health, agriculture and forestry, and so on. As a matter of fact, with the exception of the ministries of national defense, foreign affairs, and the commissions of veteran affairs and overseas Chinese affairs, the provincial departments duplicated many of the functions of the central government. Generally speaking, the mainlander ruling class viewed the overlapping functions of the central government and the provincial government as a political necessity and a unification strategy, because the KMT continued to maintain its claim of sovereignty over all of China.42 But in his Declaration of Formosan Self-salvation (1964), Peng Ming-min criticized the waste and duplication of the governmental structure, and called for the abolition of the Taiwan Provincial government. Although Peng was arrested, the idea of dismantling the provincial government lingered on. Ironically, it fell to Lee Teng-hui, who was a beneficiary of this system, to abolish the provincial government in 1998, as part of his scheme to establish Taiwan as a sovereign state separate from China. In practice, however, the KMT regime remained paternalistic with all decisions coming from the top. It controlled government agencies at every level, with the chairman of the party (tsung-ts’ai) calling all the shots. Within the KMT party hierarchy, there were various functional committees and departments and the heads of these party committees and departments often also served as heads of the five yuan and ministers of the state, creating what Tien Hung-mao called a “party-state.” The party-state practiced not the rule of law but the rule by law, with leaders of the party and the government following “a path of inter-institutional circulation”—rotating perennially from government posts to party posts and vice versus.43 Even after the promulgation of the constitution on December 25, 1947, the Nationalist government lacked a genuinely democratic, consensus process. The decision structure was never developed within the boundaries of the constitution and there was no check and balance as practiced in a true democracy. The power lay with the leader of the KMT who had the force to back up his political ambitions. From1948 until his health failed in the1970s, Chiang Kai-shek was clearly the man with

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that force, serving as commander of the Nationalist troops, chairman of the party, and president of the state. Officially, Chiang Kai-shek retained the party chairmanship as well as the presidency of the state (he was reelected for a fifth term in May 1972). But for all practical purposes, his son Ching-kuo had inherited that force in the early 1970s and had since in his possession, “the final authority on all policy matters and major personnel appointments with few institutional constraints.”44 Chiang Ching-kuo believed that if the people had enough to eat and live well and if the economy continued to grow, benefiting all sectors of society, they would tolerate his authoritarian one-party rule. In truth, to a great extent, Taiwan’s economic growth, together with three decades of patriotic indoctrination, took away some of the sting of KMT’s repression. Chiang Ching-kuo’s priority task, then, was to transform Taiwan’s agrarian economy into an industrial economy, to continue economic growth and expand foreign trade, ultimately making Taiwan self-reliant. Thus, he needed Americaeducated economists, engineers and scientists to help him achieve his ambitions. As he went through various JCRR reports, he came across Lee Teng-hui’s name everywhere, whether it be Lee’s papers about “rice production cost, “utilization of agricultural products,” or his reports on “agricultural credit and farmers’ associations” and “farm family expenditure and food consumption.”45 In March 1970, one month before Chiang went on his nearly fatal trip to America, he summoned Lee Teng-hui and five other agricultural economists to present their respective agricultural reform proposals to the annual KMT congress. During Lee’s brief appearance at the meeting, he was poised and well prepared. He kept his report pithy and presented himself as a man who was thoroughly knowledgeable about Taiwan’s economic development in general and rural economic problems in particular. Chiang’s first impression of Lee was definitely favorable, but it was impossible to read much into Chiang’s frame of mind except that at this point in time Chiang was dead serious about appointing more well-trained, reliable, and loyal Taiwanese to serve his government. By this time, Lee Teng-hui’s scholarly reputation was well known among his many Chinese colleagues at both JCRR and National Taiwan University. Among them was Wang Tso-jung (1919– ), who was educated at Washington State University (M.A. 1949) and taught economics at Taita. Wang, a native of Hupeh province and a member of the KMT, had built a well-connected social network among KMT high officials. It was Wang who invited Lee Teng-hui and two other Taiwanese economists to visit and investigate the agricultural and industrial conditions in Japan and Korea. Consequently, Lee became a fast friend of Wang. Some months had passed since the tour to Japan, and one day Wang invited Lee to have dinner at his home. Among


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Wang Tso-jung’s guests was General Wang Sheng, a man who had worked with Chiang Ching-kuo since mainland days and who was known to be close to the younger Chiang. Born in Kiangsi province in 1917, Wang graduated from the Chinese Military Academy and the General Staff College. He had served as headmaster of the Political Cadres Academy and, from 1975 until 1983, in his position as director of the General Political Warfare Department in the Ministry of Defense, Wang was in charge of central intelligence in the Nationalist government. Taiwanese as well as mainlander Chinese generally loathed the furtive world in which General Wang lived. He was a man who could charm and chill in the same one-minute cycle. Soon after this dinner party, General Wang asked Lee if he wished to see Chiang Ching-kuo and Lee nodded his head.46 At their first ever face-to-face meeting, Chiang Ching-kuo asked Lee Teng-hui by what means could Taiwan’s agricultural economy be improved. Lee used the themes of his Cornell dissertation to answer Chiang’s many questions, pointing out that agricultural economics involved three interrelated components: economics, social welfare, and politics. He went on to say that industrialization of Taiwan could not have been achieved itself if there were no rise in agricultural productivity and the changes associated with it. Because more than half of the Taiwanese earned their living by agriculture, it would be good social welfare policy and also sound politics to help farmers increase their cash incomes. One way to do this, Lee told Chiang, was to dismantle the outmoded barter system of exchange between rice crops and chemical fertilizer, which required farmers to produce what the government wanted and to sell at a set price. Instead, Lee suggested, the government should allow the price to fluctuate with the market and to pay cash for farmer’s crops as an incentive. As farmers produced more rice, they would have more savings, and the increase in rural cash incomes would create a home market that was essential to industrial growth. Furthermore, agricultural exports would pay for much of the industrial machinery and materials that had to be bought abroad, while agricultural taxes would contribute capital that the government could invest. Clearly, Chiang was very impressed with Lee’s suggestions as he told Lee at departure that the government needed his kind of knowledge and expertise.47 Up to this point, Lee’s life had already gone through several twists and turns, but one can now conclude that the essential trajectory of Lee Teng-hui’s rise to power was decided at this particular meeting. Beginning in 1968 when Lee Huan (1917– ), a native of Hankow City and another loyal subordinate of Chiang Ching-kuo since mainland days, became the secretary-general of the KMT, party membership drives among the Taiwanese population intensified throughout the island. Party branches and

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cells were broadened to include every town and village, all business enterprises and government offices, and every military unit and school. A corollary of the party’s growth was that Taiwanese party members were appointed to leadership positions at middle and low levels. Furthermore, the KMT’s Tenth Party Congress in March 1969 urged its members to use workshops and propaganda campaigns to recruit and train new Taiwanese members.48 It was against the backdrop of Chiang Ching-kuo’s Taiwanization campaign that Wang Tso-jung, a senior KMT member and a Taita faculty member, decided to recruit Lee Teng-hui. In the early summer of 1970, Wang brought the necessary papers to Lee Teng-hui, urging Lee to join the KMT. All Lee needed to do was writing a brief autobiography, filling out an application form, and preparing for three copies of 2⬙ by 2⬙ black-and-white photos. In contrast to his conversion to Christianity, Lee did not hesitate. His survival instincts told him that once he became a KMT member, the secret police from the Garrison Command would not bother him any longer. Moreover, based upon his recent interview with Chiang Ching-kuo, there might be great opportunities awaiting him. The ceremony to join the KMT took place at the KMT Central Committee headquarters in Taipei in July 1970 with Professor Wang and his wife serving as the witnesses when Lee, together with several others, took their oaths in front of a party executive. After bowing to the portraits of both Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek in a small auditorium, Lee and his fellow “new comrades” were told to recite the following 12 party guidelines:49 1. Loyalty and valor are the foundation of patriotism, 2. Filial piety is the foundation of a harmonious family, 3. Humanity and love are the foundation of personal conduct, 4. Trust and righteousness are the foundation of business dealings, 5. Peace is the guide to approach the world, 6. Decorum is the guide to manage daily affairs, 7. Obedience is the foundation of responsibility, 8. Frugality is the foundation of service, 9. Neatness and cleanliness are the foundation of a strong body, 10. Helping others is the foundation of happiness, 11. Knowledge is the foundation to improve the world, 12. Perseverance is the foundation of success. Afterward, the KMT executive congratulated Lee Teng-hui and handed him his blue membership booklet. There are six little pages between the booklet’s covers, containing the portraits of Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek, as well as Sun’s testimonial will at his death bed in Beijing on March 12, 1925.


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Lee had to learn to recite Sun’s will, which urged every KMT member to carry on Sun’s unfinished work in unifying China. Lee’s photo was attached on a page that also recorded the date and place of his admittance to the party, as well as his cell code and membership number. Finally, on the last page of the booklet, there was the red mark of a big seal that read: The Seal of the Kuomintang Central Committee.50 Lee Teng-hui never expressed any misgivings or personal vulnerabilities about joining the KMT. In fact, he had just taken the critical prerequisite step in his political journey, expecting to be rewarded with some highly visible post in the Chiang Ching-kuo administration. In an interview with the Japanese writer Kamisaka Fuyuko in 2000, Lee told her that, “the most dangerous place is often also the safest place.” Lee then unctuously added, “I desired to accomplish something meaningful. Had I not chosen to join the Kuomintang, I’d not have had any opportunities to take part in important projects, and there is no way I could have accomplished what I set my mind to do. . . . Had I not made that decision [in 1970], I’d not have been able to work from within the Kuomintang system.”51 Anti-KMT antagonists, however, called Lee a “venal man,” a “two-faced climber,” and derided his rationale as self-serving. They often compared Lee to his Taita colleague Peng Ming-min, who stood firm on principles and who would rather go to jail and into exile than serve as an abject procurer for the Chiang regime. This comparison might not be completely fair to Lee Teng-hui. Certainly, Lee was following the American adage, “if you cannot beat them, join them.” Furthermore, history is in larger hands and no one could have foreseen that Lee would become the president of the Republic of China less than 16 years later. In his retirement years, General Wang Sheng, the man who brought Lee to see Ching Ching-kuo in the first place, could only lament that Lee Tenghui was a Judas who had betrayed the KMT. On January 14, 2003, in a Chinese Lunar New Year dinner party hosted by the then KMT chairman Lien Chan, Wang openly accused Lee Teng-hui of ruining the KMT. The elderly retired intelligence chief even shouted to the news reporters that “this man (Lee Teng-hui) is a true monster of conceit. If I had the power today, I’d really want to smack him.”52 However, General Wang Sheng’s bombastic contempt for Lee was expressed 15 years too late because Chiang Ching-Kuo had died in January 1988 and in any case Chiang needed highly qualified Taiwanese like Lee at the time. A handful of former KMT high officials, like Wang Sheng and Lee Huan, who were Chiang Ching-kuo’s right-hand men, undoubtedly wanted to continue to live in “the good old days.” Unfortunately, they were running roughshod over the views of the majority of the Taiwanese at the turn of the twenty-first century. It should be remembered that Lee Teng-hui was one of

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the several highly educated Taiwanese who were recruited to the KMT for both political expediency and economic necessity under the circumstances. During his trip to the United States, the younger Chiang had heard sharp criticisms from liberal American politicians and the media about the hazards of whitewashing the human rights violations of his vulnerable island-nation. And after his subsequent visit to South Vietnam, Chiang sensed that the Nixon administration was deserting South Vietnam, and that America’s support for Taiwan was no longer unequivocal. Chiang also understood Lord Palmerston’s political motto: a nation can have no permanent allies, only permanent interests. If Taiwan were not America’s child and if Washington could feign irrelevance, then the survival of Chiang’s regime required a broad base of Taiwanese popular support. Thus, upon his return to the island in the spring of 1970, Chiang Ching-kuo launched what was dubbed the Taiwanization of the KMT regime. Well-trained Taiwanese specialists like Lee Teng-hui would naturally be on the shortlist of names whom Chiang would want to bring to his fold. Chiang was looking for talented Taiwanese who also possessed traits of loyalty, forbearance, attention to details and discretion, traits that Chiang Ching-kuo relished to have for his cabinet members. Based upon the secret police file on Lee and on Chiang’s own personal interview with Lee, this Cornell-educated Taiwanese economist seemed to fit the profile perfectly. On June 1, 1972, President Chiang Kai-shek made his son Ching-kuo the Premier, and the next day, the younger Chiang appointed Lee Teng-hui a minister without portfolio in the cabinet, with major responsibilities in overseeing Taiwan’s agricultural economy. From then on, Lee Teng-hui’s political fortune was to be guided by stars and there was nothing any mainlander Chinese could do about it.

CHAPTER 6

First Taste of Power

O

n June 2, 1972 when the cabinet position appointment of Lee Teng-hui’s was announced, Lee was attending an international conference in Wellington, New Zealand. But before he was a “rookie” minister, he was required to attend an orientation in a Kuomintang (KMT) cadres school where Lee learned about government regulations, protocol, office management, and so on, as well as listening to various briefings on the “state of the Republic of China.” Soon after the orientation, Lee resigned his full-time job with the JCRR, serving from then on only as a consultant, so that he could continue to use its office and research resources. However, he decided to retain his adjunct professorship at National Taiwan University. Thus, before the summer was out, Chiang Kai-shek swore in the 49-year old Lee as the youngest minister of state without portfolio. But while 1972 was a turning point in Lee Teng-hui’s life, in the same year Taiwan suffered a series of diplomatic setbacks that severely demoralized the islanders. Inspired by the PRC’s admittance to the United Nations in October 1971 and Richard Nixon’s visit to China in February 1972, the new Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei (1918–93, elected on July 7, 1972) traveled to Beijing to normalize the relations between the two countries. On September 29, Tokyo and Beijing signed a joint communique, which recognized the People’s Republic of China as “the sole legal government of China,” and specified Japan’s “full understanding that Taiwan constituted an inalienable part” of the sovereign territory of China. By doing so, Japan, the former colonial master of Taiwan, had conceded far too much to the Beijing regime when compared to what the new protector of the island, the United States had conceded. In the joint communique signed by Zhou Enlai and Nixon in Shanghai, the United States did acknowledge that “all Chinese on either side

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of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China.” and that it would “progressively reduce its forces and military installations on Taiwan as the tension in the area diminished.”1 However, the United States also reaffirmed “its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question” by the Chinese themselves. Furthermore, in his Memoirs, Nixon noticed: Taiwan was the touchstone for both sides. We felt that we should not and could not abandon the Taiwanese; we were committed to Taiwan’s right to exist as an independent nation. The Chinese were equally determined to use the communique to assert their unequivocal claim to the island. . . . We knew that no agreement concerning Taiwan could be reached at this time. While both sides could agree that Taiwan was a part of China—a position supported by both the Peking and Taiwan governments—we would have to oppose the use of military force by Peking to bring Taiwan under Communist rule.2 By the end of 1972, a total of 33 countries had established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China while concurrently breaking diplomatic relations with the Republic of China. Worse still, the U.S. government replaced its ambassador to Taipei, Walter MacConaughy, with a senior career diplomat, and also began withdrawing military forces and installations from Taiwan. Although the Mutual Defense Treaty between Taiwan and the United States would not be abrogated until 1979, American troop levels fell from 9,000 in 1972 to under 2,000 in 1976. At this juncture, Chiang Kai-shek’s feckless government seemed to have lost control of its destiny to a new world reality. The islanders by and large became skittish in spite of the regime’s catchy propaganda slogan, which called on people to “maintain self-respect and dignity while remaining fearless during changing times [chuang-ching tse-chung, ch’u-pen pu-ching].” In spite of the fact that the regime maintained some 500,000 active combat personnel plus a 2.2 million reserve force, the public had grown increasingly more dissatisfied with the ruling KMT’s frozen political process, which also took a toll on the recruitment of new good men to the military service. Moreover, thousands of well educated Taiwanese who had completed their graduate training in America, Japan, and elsewhere decided not to return to their home island because they did not wish to “cast pearls before the swine.” In the meantime, the Taiwanese began a boycott campaign against Japanese goods, mostly refusing to buy Japanese industrial machines. But the boycott, although short-lived, ultimately hurt Taiwanese agricultural exports, because Japan bought a great volume of sugar, rice, banana, pineapples, and other processed food products from its formal colonial island.3


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In the wake of these series of diplomatic disasters and confidence crises, a handful of college professors and political activists came out of their secure perches and openly criticized KMT’s Leninist one-party rule. Their dissents were conveyed through publications and street demonstrations, as well as by taking part in election campaigns for seats in local governments and the Legislative Yuan. In response, the KMT authorities found various means to silence the dissident intellectuals, and to thwart the schemes of the opposition. For instance, intelligence chief General Wang Sheng pressured Taita’s president to dismiss altogether 14 “radical” instructors and professors in the Department of Philosophy and elsewhere. In addition, the KMT applied stringent censorship to shut down any antigovernment publications. Such repressive measures, ultimately backfired, helping to make several leading dissidents—including Huang Hsin-chieh, K’ang Ning-hsiang, Hsu Shih-hsien— household names in Taiwan.4 In the midst of this torrent of numbing number of diplomatic setbacks, psychological shocks, and new domestic challenges, Lee Teng-hui willingly and eagerly started his political career with the KMT regime. At the beginning, Lee, who did not have a substantial resume in government service, was not sure what he could accomplish. Of the 12 new ministerial posts, those that dealt with defense, finance, economic affairs, foreign affairs, and education were considered the most important and were all reserved for experienced mainlander Chinese. Some of them actually ignored Lee, considering him as mere “window dressing” to placate Taiwanese constituents. Other senior KMT officials even suspected that Lee’s loyalty to the party was tenuous, to say the least. At the outset, thereby, the bland Lee acted like a real KMT apparatchik who ensured his political survival by saying yes at all the right times. But because there was no ministry of agriculture in the government, Lee was gradually given responsibility for managing the island’s agricultural affairs. In fact, Lee did not have to wait long before he could raise his profile, define his agenda, and push forward with several agricultural proposals, particularly involving the farmer’s livelihood.5 The pragmatic Chiang Ching-kuo realized that the problems of yesterday were not necessarily the problems of today. In order to rejuvenate Taiwanese confidence and to win the support of the general population, his government had to concentrate on growing Taiwan’s economy. For one thing, the Vietnam War necessitated a continuing procurement orders from the U.S. military that provided a stimulating infusion to the Taiwanese economy. That was clearly a welcoming situation. But as the Nixon administration was deserting South Vietnam, Premier Chiang Ching-kuo had learned a few harsh lessons in the fickle ways of Washington. In the process of finessing his dilemma, he resolved to consolidate the foundations of the island’s self-reliant economy

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that were laid in the 1950s and 1960s. Thus, the name of the game was producing inexpensive consumer goods and processing imported raw materials for export. By the early 1970s, the resource-poor, labor-abundant island began to expand both light and heavy industries as Taiwan’s economy took off. Sound government policies therefore were crucial in achieving a successful transformation, from an agrarian economy into an industrial economy. He believed that improvement of life in the rural areas would bring about social stability in Taiwan as a whole, notwithstanding the protest of a small number of urban dissidents. In September 1972, he endorsed Lee Teng-hui’s proposal by allowing the payment of farm-tax in money, instead of in kind as previously practiced.6 But Lee continued to lobby hard for dismantling the outmoded barter system of exchange between rice and chemical fertilizers. Soon he drew up a carefully crafted proposal and, having successfully disarming the powerful opposition, including President Chiang Kai-shek, the government finally permitted farmers to use cash to purchase fertilizer, beginning in January 1973. However, the issue of the usage of land remained the major hurdle of the entire agricultural reform package, in particular, what kind of legislation should the government adopt so that during the economic transformation there would be no unmanageable side effects? Because Lee Teng-hui was fluent in Japanese and because he was an expert on Japanese agricultural economy, he was soon dispatched to Japan to study postwar Japanese land policy. Lee spent several months analyzing the Japanese “Agricultural Land Bill” (passed by the Japanese Diet on July 15, 1952) and its impact on postwar Japanese economy. In addition, Lee studied the agricultural policy under the administration of Ikeda Hayato (1899–1965) between 1960 and 1964 when Japan’s high-speed economic growth astounded the world. Lee found that farm families had to swallow one bitter dose of medicine after another because the rapid economic growth also converted a substantial acreage of farm lands into industrial usage. As the total Japanese agricultural land shrank, two things happened: (1) the price of land skyrocketed, (2) millions of farmers were forced to give up farming as a livelihood. In spite of the fact that the total Japanese GNP was on the rise, whenever there was a severe economic contraction, some one million Japanese workers in the public and private sectors would lose their jobs. In short, Japan’s “economic miracles”of the 1960s had certainly benefitted many of its conglomerates with inflated business profits, but they had also impoverished the farmers whose wages actually shrank in real terms. Thus, Lee Teng-hui was determined to avoid repeating the same mistakes when he returned home to make his proposals.7 Lee came to the conclusion that balancing the growth of industry and protecting the farming interests should be the twin-priority in any


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future economic policies of Taiwan. He kept in mind the teaching of the Nobel-laureate economist Theodore W. Schultz, who perceived agriculture as an active contributor to a nation’s economic development and that sound agricultural policy could only be made when other noneconomic factors, such as social welfare, redistribution of population and job training, were also taken into consideration. In 1973, Lee concentrated on preparing and guiding the passage of the “Agricultural Development Act.” During this process, many of Taiwan’s industrial complexes, through savvy insiders, petitioned the government to allow them to purchase farm land for industrial development. In order to take advantage of cheaper labor costs in rural areas, the Taiwan Plastic Cooperation, for example, had already mustered a huge sum of cash, preparing to purchase some 4,000 chia (one chia equals 0.97 hectare or 2.4 U.S. acres) of land at the market price of about NT$40,000 (about US$1,000) per chia. But Lee vehemently opposed this idea, citing what had happened to Japan’s rural population and agricultural economy in the 1960s. Armed with documents and statistics, he argued that if the conglomerates were allowed to purchase farm lands, more than 100,000 chia of land would be bought off and enclosed as industrial zones and that at least half a million farmers would be forced to give up their traditional small and medium-sized businesses. Moreover, these lands could be easily become the objects of speculation and create inflation. Also, since Taiwan’s industrial economy was still in its infant stage, the cities could not in any way absorb the surplus population of the countryside. And without unemployment social welfare system as a safety net, there would be an ensuing messy social problem. In short, the agricultural issue had to be treated as a population issue, as well as a social and political issue. Lee recalls that, during cabinet deliberations—usually held on every Thursday—he was the lone minister to oppose amending the law, which would have made it possible for the profit-seeking conglomerates to purchase farm lands. Obviously, Lee made a believer out of Premier Chiang Ching-kuo, who lived off Lee’s intellectual capital on land usage and rural economy; consequently, the drive to amend the farm law soon lost its steam and died out.8 However, Lee Teng-hui was not just a noisy critic of unrestricted industrialization, but also a major contributor to the balanced growth of Taiwan’s economy. He believed in progress and realized that industrialization and urbanization were inevitable trends, yet wanted to make sure that during the processes of industrial growth and the redistribution of population, preemptive measures were taken to alleviate any side effects that might be created by these profound economic and social changes. Lee suggested bringing in capital to modernize agricultural economy through mechanization and by training farm workers for transition into new forms of employment in the

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countryside. Here, Lee proved to be a man who not only understood economic theory, but also knew how to put his theory to work in the real world. During his six-year tenure as state minister, while sharing in overlapping arrangements and jurisdictions with other ministers in overseeing Taiwan’s economic growth, the inveterate agricultural expert Lee also published over 100 papers, presenting his views on Taiwan’s agricultural development for public discourse. Indeed, Lee was instrumental in effecting the government’s so-called occupational training program in rural areas.9 In conjunction with this program, Lee pushed to build more schools, paved more roads, set up new public health facilities and clinics, provide electricity and telephone, and facilitate running water throughout Taiwan’s large and small villages. His other significant contributions included warehousing agricultural products and improving irrigation systems and flood control. Thus, with such an “agricultural infrastructure” in place, Taiwan’s trained agrarian work force could continue to engage in such small businesses—usually with fewer than five workers—as handicrafts, woven textiles, repair shops, assembly electrical device, growing flowers for cash, and so on. Rural workers could also use motorcycles and automobiles to minimize the gap in demographic shift between the cities and the countryside.10 Many of Lee’s ideas and suggestions were ultimately included in the “Agricultural Development Act,” which passed the Legislative Yuan in September 1973 and Premier Chiang Ching-kuo endorsed it with a flourish. Lee also helped to set up an “Agricultural Research Development Fund” in September 1974, a “Milk Development Fund” in March 1975, a “Hog-raising Association” in August 1975. In addition, his proposal on fisheries production and management was written into law in March 1977 and his suggestion to reduce taxes on rice production became a new government policy by November 1977.11 Because of his unique agricultural expertise, the Chiang government also used Lee to cultivate good relationships with underdeveloped countries in Africa, Latin America, and the Asia Pacific area that still maintained diplomatic ties with Taiwan. In 1974, for example, Lee visited the Republic of South Africa, the Central African Republic, Ivory Coast, and other friendly African nations. He went to several farming communities, gave speeches on agricultural economy, and advised the “Taiwanese Agricultural Specialist Corps,” who were stationed in these African countries, how to train the natives, to best utilize the soil, and to improve rice production. In Central Africa, Lee made a special effort to inspect vegetables grown on the Western Duma Experimental Farm, one of the numerous outstanding achievements of Taiwan’s Agricultural Corps in the Third World countries. In June 1975, the Chiang government appointed Lee Teng-hui the minister plenipotentiary to attend the100th anniversary of the founding of the Kingdom of Tonga, located about 240 kilometers southeast of Fiji.12


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Near the end of 1974, a Taiwanese soldier named Li Kuang-hui (his aboriginal name was Suliyung and his Japanese name Nakamura Teruo) was discovered in the jungle of Indonesia 30 years after World War II had ended. While the public was curious about Li Kuang-hui’s survival and showered him with sympathy, the KMT government treated this unwanted man with benign neglect. Soon after Li Kuang-hui returned to Taiwan on January 8, 1975, an anxious Chiang Ching-kuo summoned Lee Teng-hui to his office, to inquire whether Li Kuang-hui was his own older brother. Teng-hui quickly said, they were not related in any way. Premier Chiang was apparently worried that the reemergence of this man might rekindle Taiwanese romantic memories of Japanese rule. Moreover, Li Kuang-hui’s presence could complicate the already shaky Taiwan–Japanese relationship, since a Taiwanese organization called the “Formosan Club of Japan” had just formed a committee, on March 15, 1975, to demand compensation by the Japanese government for the money the Taiwanese had deposited in the Japanese Military Savings Bureau during the wartime. In addition, the committee wanted Japan to pay pension for the dependents of the former Japanese soldiers of Taiwanese birth. The estimated 31,000 Taiwanese draftees and their dependents asked for a sum of $250 million for compensation. It then set up 29 registration offices throughout the island. On the first day of the registration, more than 10,000 people showed up with their military savings books. Subsequently, several Taiwanese veterans filed a class-action suit in a Tokyo district court demanding compensation. These series of actions put Lee Teng-hui in an awkward situation, because on the one hand, he and his brother both served in the Japanese military, but on the other hand, he was a KMT cabinet member. Although the Tokyo Higher Court ultimately rejected the case, the Japanese Diet in 1988 passed a consolation law, under which 2 million yen— approximately US$21,900—was allocated for each Taiwanese veteran who had suffered severe injuries during World War II, and for each family that had lost a solider in the war. On March 31, 1995, compensations were sent to the families of 29,645 identifiable Taiwanese soldiers, but Lee Teng-hui decided to forfeit his and his brother’s claims.13 At this point in time, Lee Teng-hui knew very well that in order to define and advance his agenda, he needed unequivocal support from Premier Chiang Ching-kuo, who had over the course of nearly a quarter-century become the most powerful and feared ruler of Taiwan. Unlike governments in Western democracies, the Nationalist government did not separate the KMT party from the state and its cabinet was generally confined to developing and implementing policy proposals only, while the policymaking authority rested with the Office of the President and the KMT Central Standing Committee. By the 1970s, Premier Chiang Ching-kuo had the ear of the then bedridden

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president, and in fact controlled the party machine. Thus, so long as Chiang approved the policy proposals, they would usually be made into laws. Consequently, whether Lee Teng-hui’s policy proposals would be approved or rejected would largely depend upon the personal decision of Chiang Chingkuo. Here, Lee’s career became attached to Chiang Ching-kuo’s. Both Chiang and Lee left the Taiwanese a paradoxical legacy. Both were previously disciples of Karl Marx, who taught the supposed perfidy of capitalism and the bourgeois class. But both were also pragmatic and flexible leaders, possessing creative political imagination who managed to turn adverse circumstances into successes. As they stepped into the limelight, both styled themselves the champions of the common people. Accordingly, when they pondered economic issues, they did not merely apply logic to make the best possible policies for the nation, but also employed empathy, trying to distribute per capita income (about $700 in 1975, but increasing to $5,000 in 1987) more equitably, including raising the standards of living of the agricultural classes. In the end, it was Chiang and Lee who spearheaded the so-called Taiwan Miracle, which would soon become the dominant economic model for success in the developing world. In 1973, Taiwan’s economic growth rate hit 11.9 percent when Chiang Ching-kuo launched his ambitious Ten Major Development Projects at a total cost of NT$239.428 billion (more than US $5 billion). Designed to improve economic infrastructure and to enhance industrial growth, the Ten Projects included: (1) the Chiang Kai-shek International Airport in Taoyuan, which became operational on February 26, 1979; (2) the 373.4-kilometer SunYat-sen Memorial Freeway from Keelung to Fengshan, which was completed in October 1978; (3) the Taichung Harbor was upgraded from a fishing facility to an international cargo center, completed in June 1982; (4) electrification and double-tracking of the Western Trunk Line Railroad from Keelung to Kaohsiung, and completed in July 1979; (5) construction of a petrochemical complex in Kaohsiung, which evolved into the China Petroleum Corporation; (6) construction of the giant Kaohsiung Shipyard; (7) automation of an integrated steel mill in Kaohsiung; (8) construction of a nuclear power plant at the northern tip of the island, which began to generate electricity in mid-1977; (9) upgrading the Port of Suao, which was completed in June 1979; and (10) building the 88.3-kilometer Suao-Hualien North Link Railroad on east coast, which became operational on February 1, 1980. One important reason for the North Link Railroad and upgrades to Suao Harbor was defensive-other ports are on western side of Taiwan, near the People’s Republic of China and could more easily be attacked or blocked by the Chinese forces. These projects were financed partly by Taiwan’s accumulated foreign exchange reserves, valued at $624 million in 1970 and rising


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Table 6.1 Employment pattern in Taiwan, 1953–83 (in thousands of persons & percentage versus the labor force) 1953 Professionals & technicians Administrators & managers Supervisors & clerks Service people Sale people Agriculture & forest workers Production workers TOTAL

79 8 176 180 295 1628 596 2962

(2.67) (0.27) (5.94) (6.08) (9.96) (54.96) (20.12) (100)

1963 149 13 272 232 324 1755 848 3593

(4.15) (0.36) (7.57) (6.46) (9.02) (48.84) (23.60) (100)

1973 266 33 561 363 647 1612 1848 5330

(4.99) (0.62) (10.53) (6.81) (12.14) (30.24) (34.67) (100)

1983 412 62 953 577 933 1295 2860 7092

(5.83) (0.88) (13.48) (7.88) (13.19) (18.31) (40.44) (100)

to 3.5 billion by December 1976, and partly by the United States Export–Import Bank, which by 1975, had loaned Taiwan over $1.2 billion, with an additional $700 million in guarantees.14 While the ten industrial projects were being constructed, Taiwan went through a significant demographic, economic and ecological transformation. In 1965, the agricultural sector constituted 46.5 percent of Taiwan’s economy, while industry and technology represented only 22.3 percent, and services, sales and clerking totaled 31.2 percent. Fifteen years later, in 1980, agriculture and forestry were reduced to only 19.5 percent of the island’s economy, while technology and industry increased to 42.4 percent and the combined service sector shot up to 38.0 percent.15 A statistical study made by Wen Ch’ung-yi clearly reflects such a remarkable transformation (see table 6.1).16 One of the major factors of Taiwan’s economic success was its foreign trade, with Taiwan heavily dependent on Japan and the United States for both imports and exports. By 1974, the two nations accounted for over half of the island’s total trade. Nearly one-third of Taiwan’s imports came from Japan and over one-third of its exports went to the United States. During this year, Taiwan’s trade with the United States exceeded $3.5 billion and its two way trade with Japan approximated $3 billion.17 Although a new U.S. overture to Communist China in 1977 involved drawing down its combat units and military personnel on Taiwan to only 1,100, it sold Taiwan 17 World War II warships (15 destroyers and 2 submarines) and also provided $150–$250 million in credits to Taiwan to build F-5 fighters to counter the MIG fighters of Communist China. In 1974, in conjunction with the Northrop Corporation, Taiwan began to build its own F-5E fighter jet airplanes.18 In addition, Washington found other ways to help Taiwan by strengthening economic ties between the two countries. For example, it authorized the Taiwan government to open four new consulates in the United States, for a total of 14, in order to facilitate two-way trade that increased from $1.8 billion in 1972

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to $4.8 billion in 1976. The president of the United States Export-Import Bank arrived in Taiwan to announce that his bank expected to approve $350 to $400 million in credits during the next several months. An American trade center was established in Taipei in 1973; direct American private investment in Taiwan exceeded $400 million in 1975 and, by May 1976, eight American banks maintained branches on the island.19 Over the next decade, Taiwan’s foreign trade continued to grow until it reached a total amount of $88 billion dollars, or thirteenth largest in the world, in 1987. Its trade surplus with the United States constituted nearly 16 percent of Taiwan’s domestic growth product. Between 1952 and 1986, Taiwan’s economic growth exceeded 8 percent annually. But another indication of the successful Taiwan experience was school children’s nutrition and physical development. In the 1950s and 1960s, American aid, including dry milk, butter, soy beans, and flour, were critically essential in supplementing the islanders’ vitamin-deficient food. By the 1970s, because of improving economic conditions in general and higher agricultural production in particular, the food shortage had ended and well-fed children steadily gained both in height and weight. A corollary to the improvement in school children’s physical conditions was the popularization of education at every level. During the period of 1952–85, the total number of schools tripled while student enrollment rose by more than 350 percent. In 1985, Taiwan had 2,474 primary schools providing basic education for some 2.3 million pupils. In September 1968, the government extended the period of compulsory education from six years to nine years and, by 1985, there were 1.7 million high school students. In 1952, Taiwan had only one comprehensive university, three colleges, and four technical junior colleges. By 1972, the numbers had increased to 9 universities, 14 colleges, and 76 specialized junior colleges. Total college students jumped from 10,024 in 1952 to 248,137 in 1972. By 1985, there were over 412,000 students enrolled in 105 colleges and universities. Moreover, postgraduate training had markedly improved in both quality and quantity. In 1952, Taiwan’s Ministry of Education granted only 13 master’s degrees; by 1972, there were 228 doctoral candidates as well as 2,693 graduate students working for their master’s degrees.20 The goal of training advanced academic workers was extended to social sciences, law, medicine, education, and humanities, but it was the rapid industrialization and technological development that demanded the greatest number of highly trained professional specialists. In fact, Taiwan’s graduate schools could not produce enough scientists, agricultural and food-processing experts, mechanical, electrical, civil, and chemical engineers, and managers, in transportation, communication, and business, to meet the demands of rapid industrialization and business expansion. As a consequence, the government


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regularly sent cabinet ministers to the United States to recruit well-trained Taiwanese to come home to serve their motherland. But government statistics show that, of the 67,868 Taiwanese students who studied abroad between 1952 and 1981, only 8,363, or 12.3 percent, chose to return to Taiwan.21 Clearly, there was a serious “brain drain” problem. The island’s rapid expansion of education and economic growth marked a growing sophistication in Taiwan’s society. However, its transformation from an agrarian society to an industrial society inevitably entailed all sorts of problems and growing pains. Behind the sanitized government statistics was an informal sector of Taiwan’s economic life called “curb” market where illegal financing companies flourished. With a lax enforcement of laws, unsavory businessmen created schemes to skim profits and evade taxes, to pay off gangsters for protection, as well as to purchase political influence and offices. Thus, bribery, murky businesses, kickbacks, and corruption, particularly in the bidding scheme for public works, became rampant in Taiwanese economic practices. One report estimated that the underground economy of Taiwan might be as large as half of the government reported GNP. Illicit practices included smuggling, private moneylenders and black market currency exchanges, falsified book keeping, inadequate accounting standards, underground credit clubs, and so on.22 Such illegal business dealings resulted in colossal economic inefficiencies. Furthermore, as Taiwanese society was awash with money, other social ills, such as invasion of foreign culture, organized crimes, and sex-related entertainment of all kinds became rampant. Hollywood movies, hippie lifestyles and other undesirable aspects of American and Japanese cultures in particular exerted great influence among young Taiwanese. In the entertainment sector, waiters, waitresses, and young workers were attracted by the easy money. According to KMT government statistics, there were about 300,000 registered prostitutes in 1975, representing 1.6 percent of the population of Taiwan. The crime rate also increased rapidly, especially among young people. In the waning months of 1975, 21 people, mostly in their twenties, were executed. Some of the executions were even shown on TV to warn the public.23 In addition to the above-mentioned social ills, there were other industryinduced problems. During the course of economic development, Taiwan needed additional capital, mostly from the United States and Japan. Likewise, its government used tax incentives, cheap land and labor, and other means to attract direct foreign investment, including prohibiting its workers from organizing independent labor unions. In 1960, only four private Japanese firms directly invested in Taiwan, but the figure increased to 51 projects by 1970 with a total investment of $28.5 million. Ten years later, there were a total of 89 Japanese enterprises in Taiwan with invested capital of $86.1 million.

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Although technology transfer from the more advanced countries often entailed foreign capital investment, many of these enterprises were engaged in chemical production and factory smokestacks. Because Taiwan did not have strict control of pollution at the time, it virtually became a “pollution heaven” for “dirty” foreign companies. Waste water, odious smells, dust, and leakage of hydrochloric acid gas inevitably contributed to polluting Taiwan’s air and water.24 Critics such as Jane Kaufman, Jack F. Williams, and Linda Gail Arrigo have questioned Taiwan’s self-proclaimed miraculous socioeconomic conditions. The picture of Taiwan’s agriculture painted by Jack F. Williams, for example, was not as lyrical or rosy as Lee Teng-hui wanted us to believe. According to Williams, Taiwan’s farmers could not earn a decent living from farming, because their farms were too small—averaging only a little over one tenth of a chia or 0.3 acre—and there, agriculture had stagnated in the early 1970s. Farmers were faced with declining food self-sufficiency and there was an agricultural trade imbalance, resulting in rising food costs for the population. But worst of all, the physical environment and agricultural resources— land, soil and water—of rural Taiwan were severely damaged in the 1970s. Air pollution, particularly ozone, injured plant species and damaged vegetation. Other photochemical oxidants, sulfur dioxides, fluorides, and ethylene, led to reductions in crop yields.25 Such was the environment in which Lee Teng-hui served six years as the state minister, three and a half years as the mayor of Taipei, and two and a half years as the governor of Taiwan. During this period, Lee Teng-hui honed his political skills, as well as radiating responsibility, diligence and patience beyond all cleverness and guile. He often accompanied Chiang Ching-kuo in the latter’s inspection tours of Taiwan’s urban construction and countryside. Furthermore, Lee’s appointment to high government posts also showed his political malleability and relevance to Chiang’s so-called Taiwanization scheme—using Taiwanese in order to control Taiwanese. Chiang saw and felt in Lee a calm and reliable personality, who was unconstrained by ethnicity, occupation, or rank. Indeed, Lee turned out to be a man of destiny, because the death of the elderly Chiang Kai-shek, on April 5, 1975, started a chain of political reshuffling and Lee became one of its beneficiaries. Yen Chia-kan took the oath of office as President, but Chiang Ching-kuo was selected the Chairman of the KMT Central Standing Committee. Less than three years later, on March 21, 1978, the rubber-stamp 1,200-odd members of the National Assembly elected Chiang Ching-kuo to succeed Yen Chia-kan as the President. A few weeks later on a Sunday afternoon, Sun Yun-hsuen, who was to serve as Premier from 1978 to 1984, called Lee Teng-hui, asking him if he would be willing to lead the municipality of Taipei. Within minutes,


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Lee replied that he would take any position assigned him by the new President. Thus, without going through any public hearings or popular elections that are generally required in a democratic society, the 55-year-old Lee Teng-hui became the Mayor of Taipei on June 9, 1978. Almost immediately, Lee Tenghui placed an order for every available Japanese book on urban planning and city government so that he could get a jump-start as mayor.26 Upon assuming the mayoral office, Lee resigned his adjunct professorship at Taita and also moved his home from Jen-ai Road to the Taipei mayor’s mansion. On the day he took the oath, he invited his elementary school teacher P’an Ying-kuei and his Taita Professor Wang Yi-t’ao to attend his inauguration. He closed all of his personal bank accounts, relinquishing his household financial affairs to the management of his wife. In his office, he placed four big Chinese words—Sincerity, Rectitude, Incorruptibility, Proficiency—in picture frames and hung them on the wall.27 The Taipei City government had a secretariat, eight departments, five commissions, more than a dozen bureaus, and a civil worker training center, and was also the legal owner of the Bank of Taipei. In addition, there was an administrative office supervising the 16 districts and their 400-odd hamlets. Most of the bureau chiefs, departmental directors, as well as various commissioners in the municipality were appointed directly from the KMT Central Standing Committee; in fact, there was a KMT organization imbedded with the city government, which looked over the shoulder of the mayor. Nevertheless, the new mayor did manage to place a handful of his own confidants on the staff. Among them were two America-educated young Taiwanese, one named Huang Kunhui, a native of Yunlin county and a University of North Dakota Ph.D., and the other Huang Ta-chou, a native of Tainan county and a Cornell Ph.D. Huang Kun-hui, who remained Lee’s loyal subordinate for the next 27 years, was appointed the Director of Taipei’s Bureau of Education to deal with the ever-increasing school-age population in Taipei. Huang Ta-chou, who was Lee’s student at Taita, served as the executive secretary in the civil worker training center and was responsible for reeducating and retooling municipal bureaucrats, including training them how to use computers and the new technology. As the mayor of Taiwan’s largest city, Lee Teng-hui was charged to enforce municipal statutes and regulations, to safeguard municipal properties and businesses, to implement resolutions passed by the municipal council, and when the council was in session, to submit to the council an oral or written report on the city government’s proposals, administrative policies, and major activities. Most important of all, the mayor was required to submit to the council an annual administrative budget for the next fiscal year, listing details of expected revenues and projected expenditures. Fortunately for Mayor Lee,

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Taipei had, in the 1970s, a solid tax base—land taxes, property taxes, mortgage taxes and recreation taxes—plus all sorts of special taxes, temporary taxes and surtaxes. Consequently, the mayor’s proposed budgets to increase expenditures never failed to sail through the KMT-dominated council, generally with more than two-thirds of the votes. Under the circumstances, the mayor had leeway in terms of prioritizing and financing his projects so as to meet the rapid change of the Taipei municipality. Accordingly, Mayor Lee strove to integrate economy with humanity by placing a premium on improving public safety and by promoting cultural life for his Taipei citizens. By the 1970s, Taipei shone like a jewel and had become the center of Taiwan’s modern cultural transformation. Many material signs of the new era appeared first in Taipei, changes in city life had become conspicuous. The nouveau riche who had risen during the last two decades were much in evidence. High-rise buildings covered many sections of the city, and luxurious apartments could be seen everywhere. Standards of living had risen—bars, dancing halls, movie theaters, bowling alleys, restaurants of all sorts, and other manifestations of popular culture also appeared. This was the age of modern boys and modern girls who strolled in the glitter of the Hsi-men-ting (West Gate Quarters), the equivalent of the Time Square of New York City, or the Ginza of Tokyo. Taipei also became the center of Taiwan’s higher education that spread the new culture of modern Taiwan. Enrollments in the top national universities—National Taiwan, National Taiwan Normal, and National Cheng-chih—plus private and technical colleges also increased substantially. But the tempo of the change was uneven. Nearly half of the Taipei buildings remained blemished while hundreds of thousands of Taipei families lived in cramped conditions with foul-smelling and undrinkable water running from taps. Many Taiwanese had come to Taipei from rural central and southern Taiwan, bringing with them the social reflexes of the countryside. Soldiers traveled to and from Taipei to their stations. Walking barefoot, spitting, littering, cutting the line while waiting for bus or theater tickets, and other “uncivilized habits” still could be seen here and there. Because of the convenience of railroads and highways, agricultural markets became nationwide. Fresh vegetables and farm produce harvested in Pingtung’s farms, fish and shrimp from the Kaohsiung and Suao harbors, or pork freshly cut in Tainan and other southern towns could be brought to Taipei’s markets overnight. Labor was abundant and cheap, but vast slums and squatter housing also grew up along the Tamsui River’s littoral and elsewhere in the low income districts. Thus, among the mayor’s priorities was urban planning and building an infrastructure to accommodate the ever increasing population and to alleviate the notoriously chaotic traffic of Taipei. Such projects included the


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construction of a freeway bridge-ramp at the confluence of Chien-kuo South Road and Chien-kuo North Road, dredging a flood prevention channel by the Tamsui River, constructing the Fei-tsui Water Reservoir to meet the increasing water consumption, strictly enforcing fire codes in skyscrapers, enacting new zoning laws against chemical and steel mills in residential areas. On the other hand, the new mayor introduced the concept of roof gardens, sending experts to inspect the roofs of those who expressed interest to tell them what they could safely do without causing problems to the building. This helped make Taipei a more livable city. In addition, installing more utility poles for electricity, building new clinics, nursing homes, sewage lines, garbage dumps, and incinerators were also among the mayor’s urgent urban projects.28 The routine of the mayor included making himself available to city councilmen (who were elected by the citizens) and meeting with news reporters, attending regular KMT meetings, holding weekly conferences with municipality officials, as well as engaging with ward heads once every two weeks. Lee Teng-hui reveals that, in order to effectively deal with the municipal elected representatives, he kept separate file, in which contained the personality, constituency, political base, as well as drinking habits of each and every one of the city councilmen and ward heads. In addition, he visited schools, dedicated city’s new projects, receiving foreign dignitaries, and occasionally traveling abroad to establish “sister city” relationships with major cities that remained friendly to Taiwan. In order to promote Taipei’s cultural life, the mayor regularly hosted such programs as Taipei’s arts festivals and concerts performed by the Taipei Century Symphony Orchestra. According to the orchestra conductor Mr. Ch’en T’un-chu, the mayor appropriated an annual budget of NT$5 million to promote music programs and often personally attended his group’s rehearsal at their Kai-feng Street office. All told, the Taipei Century Symphony Orchestra gave 26 performances and attracted audiences over 60,000 during Lee’s first year in office.29 With such a busy working schedule, the energetic Lee often had to stay late into night hours to finish his paperwork before going home. Ultimately, Lee was forced to give up his painting and sketching hobby; nevertheless, he did find time to play golf on weekends. But worsening traffic jams remained a constant headache for the mayor. To help solve this difficult problem, Lee built more parking lots and also retained the service of a Fukienese native by the name of Li Cheng-kuang, who was by training a traffic cop. Beginning in 1978, Li Cheng-kuang would use the Taiwan Police Broadcast Station to announce the conditions of every busy street in Taipei, alerting the drivers to avoid the traffic jams during rush hours. In the meantime, the city government published a set of restrictive traffic laws and began to vigorously enforce the laws by imposing heavy fines

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and by utilizing computers to track traffic violators. Within a month, the fees collected from traffic violations increased from NT$35 million dollars monthly to a sum of 48 million. By the third month, it went up to NT$57 million dollars. Traffic cop Li ultimately won the mayor’s confidence and was later hired as Lee Teng-hui’s body guard.30 As the mayor of Taipei, Lee Teng-hui worked really hard and enjoyed watching the growth of his city. But as a father, Lee could no longer spend as much time, as he used to, with his family. Nevertheless, all of his three children had gone to college, blossomed in their own fields of study, and all had found and married their soul mates. These were indeed the happy days when there were flowers, laughter, and love everywhere in Lee Teng-hui’s immediate family. Better still, near the end of 1981, Lee was promoted to become the governor of Taiwan. All of a sudden, however, the family doctor told Lee that his son’s frequent nose bleeding was caused by cancer. After only a brief hospitalization and a last-minute baptism, Hsien-wen died on March 21, 1982. In addition to his parents and sisters, Hsien-wen was survived by a young widow and a baby daughter K’un-yi, who was born on August 6, 1981. There is no question that Hsien-wen’s death was Lee Teng-hui’s cruelest loss and that it would take years and years before the father’s pain could ease. Lee and his son were very close; the elder Lee bought his son his first fishing pole, helped Hsien-wen collect stamps, taught him how to play baseball and golf, introduced him to such authors as Goethe, Lu Hsun, Soseki, Dostoyevsky, and so on. The prominent Taiwanese pastor Eng Hsiu-kung, who officiated Hsien-wen’s wedding in his Chi-nan church in 1979, also conducted the funeral service for Lee Teng-hui’s only son. During the service, Eng cited the following passage from the New Testament to comfort Lee Teng-hui: “Jesus said, ‘Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.’ ” (John, 12: 23–27) Pastor Eng claims that this passage not only helped to lift Lee Teng-hui’s spirit whenever he felt gloomy and depressed, it might have also become the inspiration of a man who was searching for meaningful life.31 As the mayor of Taipei, Lee Teng-hui was not supposed to get involved with Taiwan’s foreign affairs. Nevertheless, whatever happened to Taiwan’s international status always created ripple effect on the well-being of the people of Taiwan and the security of the island nation. As Jimmy Carter was worried about the growing Soviet threat and his own reelection, he was eager to play the so-called China card by seeking a diplomatic breakthrough with the Communist regime in Beijing. By mid-December 1978, Carter hastily instructed the State Department to inform Chiang Ching-kuo 12 hours


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before he announced the recognition of the People’s Republic of China “as the sole legal government of China,” as well as to find new ways to “peacefully resolve the dispute between the Chinese on the mainland and Taiwan.”32 Approximately two hours after the midnight on December 16, 1978 (Taipei time), U.S. ambassador to Taiwan, Leonard Unger, accompanied by Taiwan’s Deputy Foreign Minister Frederick F. Chien and James C.Y. Soong, President Chiang Ching-kuo’s English secretary, rushed to see Chiang in Chiang’s Ta-chih residence. It was pitch dark and Chiang had to be waked up. Unger informed Chiang of Washington’s intention to establish diplomatic relations with Beijing while simultaneously severing its diplomatic ties as well as the Mutual Defense Treaty with Taipei on January 1, 1979. Carter’s nationally televised announcement on the evening of December 15 (Washington time) shocked the islanders. The Taiwan dollar immediately plunged in value and the Taipei stock market plummeted by nearly 10 percent.33 In its official statement—an anticipated, predrafted, stashed away document, the Taiwan government said that the Carter administration has not only “seriously damaged the rights and interests of the people of Taiwan,” but also broken the repeated “assurances to maintain diplomatic relations with the Republic of China.” It went on to remind the Americans and the world that the PRC was a regime of “terror” and “totalitarian dictatorship” and that Carter administration’s decision was a “great setback to human freedom and democratic institutions.” Finally, it vowed never to negotiate with the Communist Chinese regime, nor to give up Taiwan’s “sacred task of recovering the mainland and delivering the compatriots there.”34 The Taiwanese felt betrayed and shaken. In Taipei, angry crowds threw stones and eggs at the American embassy. At this juncture, Lee Teng-hui, only six months into his mayoral term, likewise felt very nervous as he ordered the Taipei police to repel the rioters. Ten days later, on December 27, when Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher arrived in Taipei for a postmortem arrangement, a group of Taiwanese protestors greeted him at the airport gate with eggs, paint, tomatoes, and rocks. They even broke his car windows and punched him in the face. But before Christopher’s arrival, Mayor Lee Tenghui had already received order, believed to have come from General Wang Sheng, to dispatch hundreds of Taipei police to protect the Foreign Ministry Office on Po-ai Road where a crowd of 20,000 was expected to gather and denounce Jimmy Carter and Warren Christopher.35 After closely monitoring the rowdy and capricious street scenes for 48 hours, Lee sighed a great relief that there were no deaths and no serious injuries during Christopher’s visit to his city. Carter’s decision to recognize the PRC met with a wide range of reaction in the United States. While Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho), Chairman of the

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Senate Foreign Relations Committee, described it as a “gutsy, courageous decision,” the senior George Bush, then Chairman of the Republican National Committee, condemned Carter’s initiative as having “not only diminished American credibility in the world, but also darkened the prospects for peace.”36 The U.S. Congress was out on recess and could not react as a group. But when the Congress came back, it quickly worked on legislation aiming to repair some of the damage and to soften the adverse impact of the “Carter Shock” on Taiwan. It spent two months, generally in a bipartisan fashion, to improve the poorly written and highly inadequate draft, called the Taiwan Omnibus Bill, submitted by the White House. The result was the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), passed by a lopsided majority, 90 to 6 in the Senate and 345 to 55 in the House of Representatives.37 Despite Carter’s repeated threats to veto the act, so as not to offend Beijing, he signed the TRA into law on April 10, 1979. The act defines, governs, and overseas U.S. future relations with Taiwan, and commits the United States to the security of the 20 million Taiwanese. Political Scientist John F. Copper believes that the TRA restores Taiwan’s sovereignty because it treats Taiwan as “a nation-state.” Section 4 (b) (1) of the TRA provides: “Whenever the laws of the United States refer or relate to foreign countries, nations, states, governments, or similar entities, such terms shall include and such laws shall apply with respect to Taiwan.” Section 4 (b) (7) further stipulates that the capacity of Taiwan to sue and be sued in U.S. courts should not be abrogated, infringed, modified, denied, or otherwise affected by the absence of diplomatic relations or recognition. In the view of Copper and many other scholars, the TRA not only guarantees the legal status of Taiwan in U.S. domestic law, it also mirrors a “one China, one Taiwan” policy because it does not “regard Taiwan as a part of China—unless the population there wanted unification.”38 On the day Carter signed the TRA into law, the U.S. government established the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) at Rosslyn, Virginia (just across the Potomac River) to function as America’s “unofficial” agency for “the continuation of commercial, cultural and other relations” between the peoples of the two countries. It was staffed with career diplomats, governed by a three-person Board of Trustees appointed by the Secretary of State, and financed by government funds as a line-item in the State Department budget, thereby subjecting it to Congressional notification, review, approval requirements and procedures. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance appointed David Dean—an old China hand and an American political attache in Taipei in the mid-1960s—to be the first chairman of AIT, who was also the managing director of this new office. In June, the State Department sent Charles T. Cross to head the AIT office in Taiwan, which had a staff of more than 60. Both Dean and Cross were career diplomats and were accorded the same authority and subject to the similar scrutiny as other


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U.S. foreign service personnel. Indeed, Section 12 (a) of the TRA states that “the Secretary of State shall transmit to the Congress the text of any agreement between AIT and the Taiwan authorities as though it were subject to the Case Act.”39 In the meantime, a quasi-official agency called the Coordination Council for North American Affairs (CCNAA) was established to replace the embassy of the Republic of China. To keep ROC’s ambassadorial residence called “Twin Oaks” from the PRC, it was sold to a pro-Taiwan organization, which many years later sold it back to CCNAA at a large profit. But ever since 1979, the CCNAA representative can no longer live at Twin Oaks, though it can be used to entertain guests. Under section 6 of TRA, 25 bilateral and at least 55 multilateral existing agreements between the United Sates and Taiwan were to continue in force. In addition, the two countries have negotiated and concluded 38 new agreements since January 1, 1979, including such matters as air transportation, nuclear energy, trade, maritime affairs, educational and cultural programs, science and technology, as well as reciprocal privileges, exemptions and immunities of American and Taiwanese personnel.40 To facilitate U.S.-Taiwan diplomatic relations and to implement such a variety of agreements, CCNAA set up branch offices in such major cities as New York, Los Angles, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Houston, Atlanta, Seattle, Honolulu, and so on. These branch offices were staffed with economic, scientific, cultural, and information attaches, who were all accorded with customary diplomatic immunities and privileges by the U.S. government. The Taiwan Relations Act contains provisions that express concern for human rights and for political democratization, thereby, in a direct way, forcing the KMT to loosen its repressive and tight grip on Taiwan. Certainly, rapid economic growth, an affluent Taiwanese society, a rising college-educated population, and a series of demonstrations staged by the increasingly emboldened opposition activists all contributed to the political liberalization of Taiwan in the 1980s. In addition, Chiang Ching-kuo’s apprehension of being assassinated, plus constant pressures from his American friends, who by the way also supported Corazon Aquino of the Philippines and the Korean dissidents, caused him to take a new approach toward the development of political pluralism in an affluent Taiwanese society.41 However, according to Ch’en Li-fu, the KMT’s diehard conservative elder statesman, it was Chiang Chingkuo’s failing health that allowed the Taiwanese opposition to “run wild without regard to law,” while Chiang “did nothing to check its power.” Ch’en maintained that Chiang was then ill and could not “make right decisions at the right time.” Chiang’s eyes and feet were severely afflicted by complications of diabetes, and “his poor health made him indecisive in handling the problem of the Taiwan Independence Movement.”42

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By this time Chiang Ching-kuo’s poor health had indeed forced him to shorten the weekly cabinet meeting—always held on Thursday following the weekly KMT Central Standing Committee meeting on Wednesday—from the normal two to three hours to only 30 minutes. But the reason why he became more tolerant of the opposition party was because, by nature, Chiang Ching-kuo was a pragmatic, polished politician. Certainly, he was conscious of the charges that he bore some responsibility for Taiwan’s horrible fate during the White Terror and that he ran a big deficit on his merit account. Accordingly, he needed to perform some sort of merit-gaining act to redeem himself. Moreover, he understood very well that the trend of Asia, with the exception of Communist block countries, was democracy that entails the consent of the ruled and the legitimating function of electoral institutions. In order to maintain political stability and social harmony, as well as to win American approval, he needed guile and tact to finesse the opposition and dissenters, instead of the sheer toughness and force as had been practiced in the past. Using the Taiwanese for the governance of the majority Taiwanese was hence the policy he adopted—a political scheme practiced by many minority rulers throughout Chinese history. This is why he appointed several notable and willing Taiwanese to high positions, including Hsu Ching-chung as Vice Premier, KaoYu-shu (Henry) as Minister of Communications, Chang Feng-hsu as Minister of the Interior, and Lee Teng-hui as Governor of Taiwan. And so long as the opposition did not pose any real threat to his regime, he was perfectly willing to introduce some flexibility in electoral institutions, permitting the opposition to compete for limited seats in the national representative bodies. Political opposition in Taiwan’s early phase of democratization was spearheaded by “tang-wai,” or “outside party.” The tang-wai political movement generally drew its inspiration from the 2.28 Massacre of 1947, undoubtedly encouraged by the American system of government, and, to a great extent, supported by overseas Taiwanese. During the Reign of White Terror, the KMT locked up, harassed and denigrated some of the brightest Taiwanese, forcing the public into silent passivity. But the Taiwanese who lived overseas—in Japan, North America, Brazil, and Europe—formed various political organizations and, in 1970, merged under the banner of World United Formosans for Independence (WUFI), headquartered in Kearney, New Jersey. Since then, anti-KMT activities conducted by overseas Taiwanese became more effectively coordinated as their voice for an independent Taiwan also became louder. Their publications and money easily found conduits to the island and provided invaluable support for the tang-wai opposition. Consequently, by the1970s, dissent inside Taiwan had grown stronger, more visible, and more frequent than when it was during the1960s. In responding to such agitation,


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the KMT in 1972 opened up a few seats in the National Assembly and the Legislative Yuan for election. Among the elected tang-wai legislators were Huang Hsin-chieh and K’ang Ning-hsiang who enjoyed considerable political support among their Taipei constituents. Huang, one of the founding fathers of Taiwan’s tang-wai movement, came from a well-to-do Taipei family, while K’ang was formerly a gas station attendant and councilman of Taipei municipality. Several young college graduates, such as Chang Chun-hung and Hsu Hsin-liang, who represented a new breed of intellectual—political personalities, also came on the scene.43 In 1975, Huang, K’ang and Chang joined forces and published the Taiwan Political Review (Tai-wan cheng-lun), providing a vociferous forum for an independent nation of Taiwan. With Chang serving as the journal’s chief editor, its articles promoted the concepts of democracy, freedom, and self reliance, but also attempted to stimulate the indigenous Taiwanese consciousness. However, after only five issues, KMT censorship closed the journal. While continuing to push for an overall institutional opening to non-KMT Taiwanese at all levels—local, county, provincial, as well as national, the tangwai opposition was also engaged in what amounted to an effective grass root campaign throughout Taiwan. The upshot was that in the 1977 island-wide election, tang-wai candidates won 21 of the 77 seats in the Taiwan Provincial Assembly and 4 of the 20 magistrate and mayoral races. During this particular election, the voters in Taoyuan county became convinced that their tang-wai candidate Hsu Hsin-liang, a Hakka and a KMT turncoat, lost the election because the KMT practiced its usual irregularities in voting and in counting the ballots. On the night of November 19, 1977, some 10,000 angry citizens attacked and burned the police station in Chungli city. There were casualties, but when the troops—most of whom were Taiwanese recruits—were dispatched to the scene, they refused to fire into the crowd.44 The success of the tang-wai opposition in general and the Chungli Incident in particular was like the baying of sheep, which immediately alarmed the shepherd. Likewise, President Chiang Ching-kuo decided to cancel the scheduled 1978 election for “supplemental seats” in the National Assembly and the Legislative Yuan, citing Carter’s decision to sever relations with Taiwan as the reason.45 In the meantime, the KMT applied dubious means, such as telephone taps and paid informers, to stifle an independent voice and to belittle those who had challenged the party-state and the KMT hierarchy. However, the tenacious tang-wai opposition, armed with the new found mandate from the public, persevered and continued their struggle. For example, K’ang Ning-hsiang teamed up with Chang Ch’un-nan and published The Eighties (Pa-shih nien-tai), promoting political reforms and challenging KMT’s one-party rule. And in August, 1979, about 14 months after

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Lee Teng-hui had become the mayor of Taipei, the first issue of the Formosa (Mei-li-tao) came off the press. With the birth of Formosa, the tang-wai opposition movement had undergone both a qualitative change as well as a quantitative change. As a student of Marx’s dialectical materialism, Lee Teng-hui sensed that a political storm was on the horizon, but as the mayor of Taipei, he concentrated on upgrading his city and generally kept quiet on political issues unless he was consulted by his KMT bosses. Formosa was a monthly journal, with Huang Hsin-chieh as its publisher and Hsu Hsin-liang as the executive director. The first issue sold for more than 100,000 copies, a record in Taiwan’s publishing history, so popular that it decided to set up “service offices” in 11 major cities while sponsoring various “tea parties” and “public issues” meetings. The tang-wai opposition leaders then utilized the journal as well as its sponsored public meetings to demand a bracing set of reforms: (1) reelect all members in the National Assembly and the Legislative Yuan, both of which were hitherto dominated by the mainlander Chinese; (2) popular election of the mayors of Taipei and Kaohsiung, as well as the governor of Taiwan; (3) legalize opposition political parties; (4) end martial law; (5) self-determination for Taiwan’s people, and so on. Though tang-wai’s demands were not aimed at Lee Teng-hui personally, he was the one who would have lost the most had there been popular elections for the mayor of Taipei and the governor of Taiwan during this time. Subsequently, Formosa editorial staff decided to organize a huge rally in Kaohsiung on December 10, chosen for its symbolism as the United Nationsapproved Human Rights Day. But the rally and parade were carried out without government permit, thus, risking a violation of the exiting martial law. It so happened that during the rally, the demonstrators clashed with police and a group of KMT supporters at the traffic circle on Chung-shan Road and Chung-cheng Road. All told, the melee resulted in more than 100 light injuries and some property damages, but it had also become a casus belli for the KMT to react. Realizing that the opposition was no longer in a discordant singing key, the KMT government arrested several dozens of Formosa’s staff and rally sponsors in the early morning of December 11. During the next few days, over 200 tang-wai activists, most of whom were either overtly or covertly engaged in the Taiwan independence movement, were also apprehended on charge of endangering public security. The so-called Formosa Eight included Huang Hsin-chieh, Shih Ming-teh, Chang Chun-hung, Lin Yih-shyong, Yao Chia-wen, Lu Hsiu-lien (Annette), Huang Chu (also female), and Lin Hunghsuan (notice that K’ang Ning-hsiang, generally considered a moderate reformer, was not among them). Recently released government documents show that right after the Formosa Incident, Defense Minister Kao Kuei-yuan


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appropriated some NT$8 million to construct two special jails—one at Taipei’s suburb Hsin-tien and the other in Tainan—for the purpose of incarcerating these political troublemakers.46 Worse still, before the military tribunal could start its farcical kangaroo court proceedings, Lin Yih-shyong’s mother and two of his three daughters were killed in Lin’s residence. Lin’s third daughter survived, but was severely wounded. Because the murders were committed in broad daylight on February 28, 1980—the 33rd anniversary of the 2.28 Massacre—Taiwan’s public suspected that there was a well plotted political act. While the KMT government denied any complicity, tang-wai supporters wondered how anyone could randomly break into Lin’s home, which was under constant government surveillance even though Lin himself was in prison. (As of 2005, the murders remain officially unsolved.) While the public was shocked and remained disbelieved by the multiple murders, the government went on with the trial of the “Formosa Eight.” After only six days of testimony by selected government witnesses, the military court, on March 24, 1980, found all of them guilty of instigating the riots, and sentenced them to serve from 12 years to life in prison. In particular, Shih Ming-teh, formerly a military academy student, was sent to the hellish Green Island for political reeducation. Beginning on April 1, 1985, Shih started a hunger strike, and upon learning such an act, Defense Minister Kao instructed the warden to take every measure “to keep Shih alive.”47 In the meantime, within a six-month span, a total of 51 tang-wai supporters and sympathizers, including the prominent Presbyterian pastor Kao Chun-ming of Tainan city, were tried in civilian court and received lesser terms of punishment.48 The Formosa dissidents shared similar Taiwanese heritage with Lee Tenghui, but chose different means to challenge the mainlander Chinese domination in Taiwan’s politics. They and their lawyers, including Chen Shui-bian (future President of Taiwan), Hsieh Chang-ting (Frank) (future Mayor of Kaohsiung city and premier of Taiwan), and Yu Ch’ing (future Magistrate of Taipei county), would later become the founding members of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). But they were also destined to pay a very high price for their courage and determination in the struggle for freedom and democracy. On the other side of the political spectrum, those Taiwanese who chose to collaborate with the Chiang regime at the time reaped even more political fruits. Ironically, the more Chiang Ching-kuo tried to curtail the tang-wai movement, the more he was forced to promote Taiwanese collaborators, including Lee Teng-hui, so that the minority mainland-born rulers could placate the growing disenchantment of the majority Taiwanese. Thus, Chiang Ching-kuo’s Taiwanization or localization scheme—that is, appointing more Taiwanese to responsible government and party positions—was the end

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result of the tang-wai’s long, persistent, and bitter struggle. It should not be viewed as a gift by Chiang Ching-kuo or because Chiang was in poor health. As astute as Lee Teng-hui was, he was well aware that his political fortune was built upon the sacrifices of the hundreds of tang-wai activists, whom he secretly admired but openly denounced. That is why Lee tried his best to alleviate the pains of the tang-wai families soon after he had gained control of the KMT government. But it would take a few more years before Lee could truly follow the teachings of John Calvin and John Knox and started redeeming his political sins so that he could elect to receive the grace of God. In 1984, Taiwanese Presbyterians were preparing to celebrate the forthcoming 120th anniversary of the establishment of their first church (in 1865) on the island of Taiwan. During that time, Dr. Huang Chang-chien, Dean of the Tainan Seminary, who was also a graduate of the Taipei Higher School and Kyoto University, invited Lee Teng-hui to officially switch his religious affiliation to the Presbyterian church. Prior to this time, Lee belonged to an interdenominational congregation. Whether it was because Lee had long admired Dr. Huang’s erudition and commitment to religious education, or because there was an ulterior political motive on the part of Lee Teng-hui, Lee happily accepted Huang’s invitation and became a Presbyterian.49 Nevertheless, he remained a reprobate, at least in the eyes of his fellow Taiwanese Presbyterians, since the 200,000 strong Taiwanese Presbyterians, affiliated with some 700 churches throughout the island and overseas, had consistently and openly demanded “the right of self-determination of their own fate.” As a matter of fact, on August 16, 1977, Taiwanese Presbyterians issued a “Human Rights Declaration,” appealing to every freedom-loving country to recognize Taiwan as “a new and independent sovereign state.”50 In the months following the arrest and the trial of the Formosa Eight and the brutal murders of Lin Yih-shyong’s mother and daughters, the KMT government faced a string of sharp criticisms and embarrassments. But only a few months later, there was another political assassination and a new shocker. Ch’en Wen-cheng, a Taiwanese professor of statistics at the Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, while visiting his relatives in the summer of 1981, was picked up by the KMT secret police on July 1 and brought to the Garrison Command for interrogation. After a 13-hour ordeal in the diabolical Garrison Command, Ch’en’s battered body was found on the pavement beneath the fire escape of the National Taiwan University Research Library. Ch’en, a permanent resident of the United States, allegedly raised funds for the then banned Formosa Weekly as well as openly supported the tang-wai opposition movement. Many Taiwanese around the world were outraged at the violent death of the 31-year-old professor, again suspecting that there was a KMT involvement in the murder. Ch’en’s death also aroused the concern of


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the U.S. Congress, whose House Foreign Affairs Sub-Committee scheduled a series of hearing between July and October, 1981. Afterward, Congressman Jim Leach said: “Without question, agents of the Taiwan government have engaged in harassment, intimidation, and monitoring of Taiwanese Americans.”51 Leach called on the U.S. government to investigate Professor Ch’en’s death and to determine whether KMT spies were violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Nevertheless, the Reagan administration continued to sell arms to Taiwan, as well as authorizing the coproduction and sales of F-5E jet fighters, though it rejected Taiwan’s request for more advanced fighter aircraft.52 Professor Ch’en’s murder, like those of previous political murders, was never solved. Amid the outbreaks of panicky fear and condemnation, President Chiang Ching-kuo applied his “divide and rule” tactic by promoting more willing Taiwanese collaborators to high positions on fast track. By doing so, he expected not only to calm the public, but also to cause fragmentation and internal conflict among the tang-wai opposition. Once again, Lee Teng-hui became a major beneficiary of this “buy-off Taiwanese” political scheme.53 Thus, it was no coincidence that the KMT 14th Congress soon held its fourth Central Committee session and “elected” Lee to be a member of the Central Standing Committee, despite the fact that Lee had only been a member of the KMT for only eight years. And in November 1981, Chiang Ching-kuo also appointed the first Taiwanese native Ch’en Shou-shan to head the notorious Garrison Command. The promotions of Lee Teng-hui and General Ch’en and other Taiwanese were indeed unprecedented in KMT’s established practice. Clearly, Chiang Ching-kuo wanted to use prominent Taiwanese like Lee Teng-hui as a “feeler,” or a “conduit,” between the Chinesedominated KMT and the increasingly uneasy and defiant populace. It was Chiang who authorized Lee to talk to the leading Presbyterians and to try to win over the more “moderate” tang-wai elements. In fact, Lee later took credit for the release of the influential Presbyterian pastor Kao Chun-ming. Moreover, Lee time and again visited and attempted to console Lin Yihshyong for the loss of his mother and daughters.54 It seems fair to conclude that by the time Lee was appointed governor of Taiwan near the end of 1981, he was no longer merely an agricultural expert, or a city government manager, but had become a slick politician and an important conduit through which the ruling KMT regime could pass its conciliatory messages to the tang-wai opposition.


CHAPTER 7

Governor and Vice President, 1981–87

T

he tang-wai non-KMT (or nonparty, actually, of course, they were very partisan) candidates were hoping to turn Taiwanese outrage into ballots in the November 1981 elections. However, the elections were primarily local and since the opposition leaders were incarcerated, the KMT, with all its resources and its firm control of local election machines, easily won 77 percent of the 189 seats in the various councils. However, 19 of the 31 nonparty candidates won, including relatives of the victims of the Formosa Incident. For example, Huang Tien-fu (who was the brother of Huang Hsinchieh), Chou Ch’ing-yu, the wife of Yao Chia-wen, and Hsu Jung-shu, the wife of Chang Chun-hung, were all elected. In particular, Chou Ch’ing-yu, who ran for a “supplemental” seat in the National Assembly from Taipei, received the highest number of votes. In addition, the nonparty candidates captured 4 of the 19 magistrate offices.1 In short, even though there was no groundswell of support for the tang-wai movement, the most impressive gain was the entrenchment of democratic vocabulary and ideals in a society that had a long tradition of authoritarian rule by mainlander Chinese. Nevertheless, since democratization was taking place at a glacial pace, it was possible that the nonparty movement could be easily nipped at its bud. These fears were not groundless. For one thing, there was divisiveness, antagonism and self-incrimination within the tang-wai leadership. Generally speaking, the younger nonparty elements favored immediate, radical changes in the Legislative Yuan, Taiwan’s highest law-making body. They also wanted to form a viable opposition party, take the issue overseas, and put the political status quo on a faster track to change. As a consequence, the young Turks condemned

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the moderates for being torpid; in particular, they execrated the tang-wai faction led by K’ang Ning-hsiang, who insisted that the opposition should utilize parliamentary and electoral means to compete with the KMT. Tang-wai moderates argued from the premise that democratic reform, once started, would be irreversible. Based upon this conviction, moderates wanted to anchor gradual democratization in the idiom of the postcolonial island. In the meantime, the KMT ruling elites constantly threw roadblocks and utilized divide-and-rule tactic to thwart the opposition movement. This was the political environment in which Lee Teng-hui assumed the governorship of Taiwan near the end of 1981. The Taiwan Provincial Government (TPG) was established in May 1947 in Taipei to replace the colonial Office of the Governor-general under Japanese occupation. The TPG was charged with handling the general administrative affairs of the province, promulgating provincial laws and regulations, and repealing or suspending actions by organizations under its jurisdiction or by county governments, if these actions were against the law, improper, or beyond their authority, and so on.2 It had jurisdiction over 16 counties and 5 cities and generated the statistics as of 1950, which is shown in table 7.1. By 1951, all chief executives and representative bodies in the counties and cities were directly elected by the people. During the next three decades, average 74.4 percent of eligible voters cast their votes during elections for chief executives and 77.8 percent for county representatives. In 1957, the TPG was moved to Chung-hsing hsin-ts’un, or the Revival New Village, located at Wufeng in Nantou county. Two years later (August 1959), the Taiwan Provincial Assembly was established and an average of 74.2 percent of the Taiwanese voters took part in the election of their assemblymen during the next 30 years. When Lee Teng-hui was serving the TPG governor, there were 77 seats in the Assembly with 59 seats (77 percent) occupied by the KMT and only 18 seats (33 percent) belonged to the Non-KMT tang-wai groups. Among the 18 tang-wai seats, 8 of them were affiliated with the Campaign Assistance Committee, the forerunner of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).3 The speaker of the Provincial Assembly was Kao Yu-jen, a native of Tainan and also one of the 31 members of the KMT Central Standing Committee. Accordingly, both Governor Lee and Speaker Kao were required to attend the weekly meeting of the KMT Central Standing Committee, which was held every Wednesday morning in Taipei. Furthermore, both the governor and the speaker must hold regular meetings, as well as impromptu caucuses, at the KMT provincial headquarters, which was located right across the street from the Assembly hall. Because the KMT members in the Assembly were required to follow party directives in voting and in interpellation sessions, Governor Lee could always count on the backing of his party to move his agenda forward and to get his proposed bills passed. In addition, the

Governor and Vice President

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Table 7.1 Vital statistics of Taiwan Provincial Government Name Taipei County Ilan County Taoyuan County Hsinchu County Miaoli County Changhua County Taichung County Nantou County Yunlin County Chiayi County Tainan County Kaohsiung County Pingtung County Taitung County Hualien County Penghu County Keelung City Taipei City Taichung City Tainan City Kaohsiung City Total

Size (sq kilometers)

Population

Taxable production ($NT)

Taxes ($NT)

2,257.4873 2,137.4615 1,267.2430 1,482.4654 1,820.3149 2,051.6164 1,061.4649 4,106.4360 1,290.8351 1,951.3945 2,003.5876 2,832.5175 2,775.6003 3,515.2526 4,628.5714 126.8641 132.3010 66.9872 163.4256 175.6454 113.7496

548,426 246,941 334,081 326,060 327,448 435,495 664,887 280,571 491,403 494,123 588,642 428,124 423,553 107,929 163,428 74,126 125,518 455,133 177,795 201,692 212,328

60,108,003 24,466,797 30,514,555 33,424,320 26,230,115 46,755,182 60,100,752 25,942,263 46,405,895 51,620,718 38,712,029 25,003,612 45,047,365 12,394,649 20,372,349 4,390,613 24,365,374 112,604,750 26,473,341 26,138,539 38,790,144

3,804,909 1,853,378 1,827,964 2,442,438 2,189,878 3,306,299 4,735,571 1,786,968 3,543,504 3,178,844 4,643,378 2,579,595 2,967,687 335,528 1,328,014 324,782 1,740,827 5,474,235 1,895,779 1,653,826 6,412,454

35,961.2125 7,117,701

779,861,365

54,024,012

Source: Taiwan Provincial Government.

vast majority of the local magistrates and mayors, whom the new governor had to command and manage, were also KMT members. Thus, like that of the Taipei city government, the KMT dominated every aspect of the TPG and the new governor was really looking forward to facing his new challenges. The site of the TPG is nestled in the mountains of Taiwan’s central highlands and dotted with hundreds of ever-green palm trees. To its north is the city of Taichung, Taiwan’s third largest city as well as an important cultural and economic center of the island nation. To its south is the 119-kilometer Ta-tu River that flows out of the Central Range high mountains and meanders westward to the ocean. West of the Revival New Village are flat-topped tablelands leading to the alluvial coastal plains of Nantou, Changhua, and Taichung counties. East of the Revival New Village are gentle mountain slopes woven with the forest-clad hills and longitudinal valleys. Though summers are long, the Revival New Village’s humidity is much lower than

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either Taipei or Taichung. Thus, the location, climate, beauty, and serenity were ideal for the provincial site where Lee Teng-hui was to spend the next two-and-a-half years of his life, from December 1981 to May 1984. The provincial government provided Lee Teng-hui with a cook, a gardener, and a bodyguard. In addition, the governor had a helicopter and a fleet of cars to facilitate his frequent travel around the island. Because Governor Lee’s wife Fumi was preoccupied with their son’s illness and spent most of her time in Taipei, the governor asked his former student Huang Ta-chou, who came to the provincial government from Taipei city government, to also move into the governor’s mansion.4 Only after they had buried their son in March 1982 could Fumi spend more time with the governor at the Revival New Village. The vast majority of the TPG bureaucrats were natives of Taichung and Nantou counties. Lee, however, did bring along a number of his own people from Taipei city government, including Huang Ta-chou, who served as the governor’s deputy secretary-general, and the traffic cop Li Cheng-kuang, who became Lee’s body guard. Lee Teng-hui also practiced his brand of “nepotism” by appointing a handful of his Taita students to provincial government posts. For example, he made his former student Yu Yu-hsien, a Hakka Taiwanese and a Purdue University Ph.D., the chief of the department of agriculture and forestry. One of Governor Lee’s ambitions was to close the so-called urban–rural divide, both human and material. And as he openly announced his plan to train an army of 80,000 agricultural specialists so that he could realize his ambition, he also brought to TPG a number of his other Taita students and JCRR subordinates, including Ch’en Hsin-you, who held a doctorate from Ohio State University. Most of them were assigned to work in the department of agriculture and forestry.5 Under the provincial administration, there were 16 departments and bureaus—including civil affairs, finance, education, communication, public health, agriculture and forestry, tobacco and liquor monopoly, accounting, information, and so on. In addition, the TPG managed 149 administrative units (such as Historical Research Commission, Car Accident Judging Committee, Anti-corruption Commission), 36 health-care organizations, and more than 150 provincial high schools. Governor Lee’s major sources of revenues came from the monopolistic sale of tobacco and alcoholic beverages, sale taxes, and business license fees. Though the TPG contained 90 percent of Taiwan’s population and 90 percent of Taiwan’s land, its revenues constituted less than 18 percent of the entire island-nation while its expenditures represented approximately only 16 percent of the country. Income taxes, customs duties, commodity taxes, and other major sources of revenue generally went to the central government.6


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While appraising Governor’s Lee performances, it is imperative that we have a snapshot of Taiwan’s society at this time. When Lee was the governor of Taiwan, the 2-million odd farming population constituted roughly 15 percent of the Taiwanese society. Being an agricultural economist, the new governor set forth agricultural reform as his top priority, in particular, taking measures to protect farmers’ income. First of all, Lee proposed to lower the price of fertilizers, guarantee the minimum price of rice, as well as to purchase any surplus rice when there was more supply than demand. He then encouraged the farmers to diversify their production by planting such cash crops as flowers and fruits. And in order to improve general living conditions of rural Taiwan, the governor also started to recruit his highly touted army of 80,000 agricultural workers. Intending to engage in 18 specific projects, Governor Lee’s army was charged to: educate and train older agricultural workers; recruit children from farming families to study agricultural sciences and fisheries in junior colleges; provide internships for high school and college graduates in rural areas; set up a two-year farm management training program; sponsor various short-term workshops for young farmers; establish low-interest coop loans; facilitate markets for agricultural products; build and repair more houses; teach farmers how to grade and pack their products and how to reduce transportation costs; expand both domestic and international markets for agricultural goods; and hold regular seminars to promote the sale of agricultural goods.7 Clearly, Governor Lee was trying to apply the book knowledge he has learned from Iowa State and Cornell to the practical use in his own country. However, his record as governor fell short of his expectations. For one thing, the size of Taiwanese farms continued to shrink as parents divided their property among their offspring. For another, some segments of agriculture had been mechanized, so farming required less labor and rural inhabitants found jobs somewhere else—only one-third of the farmers’ income came from farming. Children of the farmers found jobs in the cities and sent money home to help their parents. And as imported food stuff—such as corn, wheat, soybeans—became abundant and affordable, Taiwanese diets began to change: people consumed less and less rice, thus causing the price of rice to fall.8 Consequently, despite the governor’s good intentions and well thought out plan, the results on his agricultural reform were mixed. By the time Lee Teng-hui assumed the governorship of Taiwan in 1981, the number of industrial workers had increased to 2.5 million, constituting nearly 40 percent of the island’s total work force, and heavily concentrated in the textile and electronic industries. The vast majority of workers lived in cramped, multistory concrete apartments with little open space and a generally

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undesirable environment. Wages remained low and working conditions substandard. For example, in 1980, the wage for electronics workers in Taiwan averaged US$0.90 per hour as against US$18.09 in the United States, $1.54 in Mexico, $1.26 in Hong Kong, and $1.10 in South Korea.9 Because laborers lacked political clout, most labor-management disputes favored the latter. Taiwanese laborers worked long hours, averaging 51 hours per week in 1981. Since most of the labor did not require advanced skills and because there were more workers than jobs available, the unskilled workers could be replaced easily. Up to this point, labor unions on the island were not well organized. Several factors contributed to the lack of union solidarity. For one thing, because Taiwan was still under martial law, strikes, protests, and open rallies and street parades were not allowed. For another, the KMT government wanted to attract foreign capital, particularly from Japan and the United States, and did its utmost to discourage labor unrest. Also, the paternalistic Taiwanese society and traditional Confucian education tended to discourage workers from confronting or challenging their superiors. Taiwan’s factory buildings were often draped with huge banners exhorting their workers to “Obey the Leader,” “Resist the Communists, Save the Nation,” “Be Strong in Times of Adversity,” and “Promote Team Spirit.” Finally, it was because more than half of the workers were young females, ages 17–25, who were usually meek and obedient. A typical Taiwanese female factory worker lived in a company-provided dormitory, saved between 30 to 40 percent of her wages for either night school tuition, or sending home to her parents, or in preparation for marriage.10 Thus, from Governor Lee’s point of view, less labor trouble meant easier governance for him, even though he time and again pledged to raise workers’ wages. Compared to the farmers and industrial workers, the middle class fared much better. This class included technicians, managerial personnel, government employees, and public school teachers. Rich people in Taiwan might have power, but powerful people were not necessarily wealthy. For example, among the 31 members of the KMT Central Standing Committee, few were capitalists. Among government employees and public school teachers, the lower ranks were primarily Taiwanese, while the minority mainlander Chinese occupied the highest ranks. There was a substantial salary gap in the pay scale as the top ranks usually received four times as much pay as those of the low ranks. Generally speaking, the mainlander Chinese civil servants tended to be elderly and also politically well-connected. Under the circumstances, Governor Lee had his hands tied when he attempted to bring in new blood to replace the old. The echelon above the middle class was the professional group that included doctors, architects, lawyers, accountants, pharmacists, and engineers. During


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the economic boom, Taiwanese society experienced a rise in the number of professionals. However, the quality of this class was not commensurate with the quantity: the training and expertise of Taiwanese professionals simply had not yet met the standard of the developed countries. In addition, regulations in the practice of these professionals were rather lax, particularly in the areas of licensing and fee collections. Bogus professionals were abundant, for example, some “doctors” did not even have diplomas or certificates from medical schools. Business managing, accounting firms, and book-keeping were still not systemized, frequently creating sensational scandals. The wellintentioned, professor-turned-governor Lee Teng-hui thereby could not do very much to ameliorate the situation. On the very top of Taiwan’s social echelon were the rich and famous. One type of the nouveau riche were landowners who became wealthy because the value of their real estate had skyrocketed during the economic boom. And, without legislative regulations, these people did not have to pay taxes on capital gains, nor inheritance taxes. The other type of tycoons were refugees from mainland China, such as the owners of Yu-long Motors, Far East Textiles, Pacific Construction Corp, and so on, who brought capital with them when fleeing the Communists in 1949–50. The third type of the nouveau riche was the handful of self-made, native-born Taiwanese industrialists, such as Lin T’ing-sheng (in consumer-oriented light industry), Tsai Wan-lin (in insurance and banking), Wang Yung-ch’ing (in plastics), and Chang Jung-fa (in shipping). Unlike corporation-oriented enterprises in the West, big Taiwanese companies tended to be family-owned and family-managed. Such big familycentered businesses generally monopolized both the production and marketing of their trademark products, creating zaibatsu-like cartels. After accumulating huge amount of capital, these families built political connections by having their children or relatives run for public offices.11 It is interesting to note that in front of the exaggeration-prone media, Lee Teng-hui’s words often exuded sympathy for the peasants and industrial workers. But his record as the governor (and for that matter as president later) indicates that he also cultivated strong ties with the rich and famous, working hand in glove with big businesses.12 Abraham Lincoln said, “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” Lee became governor without having to go through Western-style election campaigns, but he was not exactly a shrouded governor. The touchstone of Lee’s character is his willingness to do anything to forward his own career. He now had political power to exert, and was able to offer rewards to those who supported him and threats to his detractors, elected officials or citizens. While generally considerate in his treatment of big businesses, the governor was notably high-handed and brawling

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in his dealing with graffiti, squatters, and dissenters who obstructed his public work projects. For example, in every political campaign in Taiwan, candidates tended to post colorful slogans and propaganda sheets everywhere, whether it was utility poles, street walls, or public buildings and bus stations. They naturally became eyesores and nuisances. Thus, when Lee Teng-hui became governor, he ordered that such campaign posters be completely removed within three days upon the conclusion of every campaign. Registered campaign workers and petty local officials who failed to comply with such ordinance were treated harshly.13 The KMT government remained paternalistic and practiced not the rule of law but rule by law. As governor of Taiwan, Lee had to carry out orders from the top and, in so doing, had to deal with straight-out dissenters from time to time. Take the construction of the Chi-te Reservoir for example, Lee pioneered a new kind of authoritarianism and used high-handed tactics to complete the project. The reservoir was located at the source of the 124-kilometer Ta-chia River, covering a drainage of 1,236 squares kilometers. It had been estimated that when and if the reservoir was completed, it could supply running water for the entire population of the Taichung County, as well as facilitating the economic development of central Taiwan. Construction of the reservoir had started in 1970, but because of the vehement opposition of hundreds of orchard farmers along the Ta-chia River, the project had been thwarted. When Lee Teng-hui assumed the governorship, 13 years had elapsed and the orchard farmers, many of whom were mainland Chinese veterans, had grown even more obstinate and refused to sell their orchards to the government. But the determined governor, eager to prove himself, had the central government approve his new proposal, which called for the expropriation of all the orchards around the reservoir. He then offered a fair price to buy off 74 square ch’ing of land (one chi’ing is equivalent of 15.15 acres) by midJanuary of 1984. Anticipating violent protest from the grumbling orchard farmers, the governor, on January 19, mobilized more than 600 police to inspect, block, and patrol every road and every village in the mountainous area when some 270 workers dismantled orchards, cleared debris, and surveyed and graded the land. Afterward, more workers were brought to dredge and repair the silted water channels and to reinforce the foundation of the reservoir by planting trees around the entire reservoir. In his spiel, Lee Tenghui often cited the completion of the Chi-teh Reservoir as a glowing example of his success as governor.14 It is noteworthy that one month later, in February 1984, Chiang Ching-kuo nominated Lee to be his vice president. The other glowing example of success that Governor Lee loved to cite was the cleanup and dredging of the Er-ch’ung channel along the Tamsui River. The 159-kilometer Tamsui River winds through the 300 square kilometers


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Taipei basin, home to some 5.8 million people. During the island’s three decades of rapid urbanization and unchecked industrial growth, the river had been severely polluted by humans, factories, landfills, and pig farms, all of which dumped tons of untreated wastes into the river each day. (In the 1980s, there were an estimated quarter of a million pigs being raised along the banks of the Tamsui River.) Heavy industrial pollutors included chemical, dyeing, food processing, and electronic plants and paper mills.15 Such large quantities of waste quickly attracted rodents, flies, and mosquitoes, ultimately raising public health and environmental problems. Furthermore, during Taiwan’s typhoon season in summer and autumn, the torrential rains and strong wind blew the garbage upstream, to the mouth of drinking water plants. Clearly, the cleanup job of the Tamsui River was overdue by the time Lee became governor. The basin was administratively divided into Taipei city and Taipei county. And, when Lee was the mayor of Taipei, he had reinforced dikes, water gates, and high concrete walls to harness the river. But by the 1970s, there were more heavy-duty industrial pollutors as well as more squatters huddling along the south bank of Tamsui River’s littoral, both giving off more raw sewage and garbage than the public facilities could handle. Public opinion generally supported government policies to clean up the river’s pollution and to solve its flooding problems. On the other hand, the polluters— pig farmers, and factories, government-run businesses and government-owned trucks—used their personal influences and political clout to stymie any cleanup efforts. Because the Taipei county was under the charge of Taiwan Provincial Government, the vile-smelling Tamsui River and its recurrent flooding along the100-kilometer Er-ch’ung lower shoreline had become the governor’s responsibility. Lee personally negotiated with the property owners, who either did not want to give up their land, or else asked astronomical prices for it. Once again, Lee used paternalism to persuade pig farmers to sell their land, applied guile to deal with factory owners, and ultimately called in police to force the squatters to leave the area. According to Lee’s cook, a Mrs. Chang, when the Er-ch’ung problems were finally resolved, Lee was so overjoyed that he uncharacteristically sang Taiwanese folk songs at the dinner table.16 In 1987, Taiwan established an Environmental Protection Administration. Thereafter, the central government, then also headed by Lee Teng-hui, appropriated multibillion dollars to clean up the Tamsui River. Unfortunately, by the turn of the twenty-first century, the Tamsui River continued to flood during the typhoon season and its smell and color indicated that the river remained heavily polluted.17 The contemplative Lee Teng-hui was sensitive about being identified only as an agriculturalist who knew very little about arts and music and cultural

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life. In order to cultivate the aura of a well-rounded statesman, Governor Lee sponsored a series of cultural events. Critics might view these as merely frills or were purposely designed for self-promotion. Nevertheless, a great number of Taiwanese did appreciate his attempts to revive indigenous Taiwanese traditions. For example, in order to enliven the cultural life of farmers, miners, fishermen, and salt rakers, the governor twice asked the Taiwanese opera diva Yang Li-hua to organize a troupe of actors and actresses to tour the island, visiting even the most remote corners and isolated communities. Because opera incorporated crude humor with deep sorrow and was a popular Taiwanese pastime, as well as an expression of the vitality and the life of the islanders since time immemorial, Yang Li-hua was able to bring laughter and tears to millions of lower echelon Taiwanese.18 Promoting culture in rural Taiwan was also reflected in the publication of a music book, titled, Fifty Years of Folk Songs (ke-yao wu-shih-nien). In October 1983, Lee Teng-hui summoned an accomplished television producer by the name of You Kuo-chien to the governor’s office in the Revival New Village, asking You to collect and compile all of the popular Taiwanese folk songs into one single volume. Mr. You complied with Lee’s request and the result was the publication of this indigenous Taiwanese music collection, which included popular songs such as “The White Peony,” “Longing for Spring Wind,” “The Raining Night Flower,” “Sky Dark Dark,” “Hope You Come Home Early,” “Repairing Broken Net,” among many others. Over the decades, these ballads and folk songs penetrated the spirit and the soul of the Taiwanese people. Lee Teng-hui penned commentary for the book and, when the symphony orchestra played these songs on television, it became a hit program.19 But there were tough times for the governor as well. In August 1983, Governor Lee, accompanied by his wife, led a goodwill mission to the United States. They visited San Francisco and Atlanta, among other American cities. While Americans enthusiastically welcomed the governor from Taiwan, his Taiwanese compatriots gave him a bad time, calling him a “Taiwanese traitor,” “a KMT running dog,” “a mainland Chinese collaborator,” among other epithets. These ribald appellations made the governor recall the years when he was studying at Cornell. They also reminded him of the rising anti-KMT sentiment among his fellow Taiwanese who sojourned overseas. Under the circumstances, Lee resisted acts of alienation and spiteful words between the pro-KMT and anti-KMT groups in the United States. And even in the midst of the trying conditions, he was not supposed to reveal his inner doubts, fears and duplicities that might be detected by the KMT secret police. But somehow Murphy’s Law applied. During Lee’s official visit to the United States, the auditorium of the Provincial Feng-yuan High School in central Taiwan suddenly collapsed, killing 27 students and injuring 87 others. The governor


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was forced to cut short of his American tour and hurried home to receive criticisms and assume responsibilities. Among the people who had hoped to assail Lee were the tang-wai elected representatives in the TPG Assembly, who remained the most effective restraint on the KMT one-party government and, indeed, frequently utilized the interpellation sessions to prepare the terrain for Taiwan’s popular elections. The Assembly had broad legislative powers that enabled it to counter and check those of the TPG governor. For example, it had the power to approve the administrative budget and screen the provincial accounts and reports; to decide on the disposal of provincial property; review the proposals of the TPG; drill the TPG officials during interpellation sessions; submit proposals for administrative reforms; consider petitions from the people and pass regulations concerning the rights and obligations of the people; and approve the bylaws of provincial public enterprises.20 Because the KMT controlled 59 out of the 77 seats in the Assembly, as well as all of the workings of the TPG, the governor’s proposed bills and budgets were normally expected to pass the Assembly. It was during this time that Lee began to have contact with what Taiwanese call the “black and gold” politicians. Of the 59 KMT assemblymen, a substantial number came from mafia (Taiwanese called it “black societies”) and business (gold) background. Some of these “black and gold” figures later became staunch supporters of Lee Teng-hui, who in turn rewarded them politically and used them strategically to broaden his own power base. Nevertheless, the tang-wai assemblymen, several of whom were eloquent speakers and shrewd politicians in their own right, could and did apply sophistry and parliamentary prerogative to embarrass the KMT in general and the governor in particular. Criticisms of the governor generally ranged from Taiwan’s deteriorating environment, unfair election practices, to political and business corruption, incompetent police forces, arrogant tax officials, and the lack of freedom and democracy on the island. As governor, Lee Teng-hui was always wary about facing the assemblymen during the interpellation sessions. At the outset, his wife and a handful of confidants provided advice and practical ways to calm his nervousness. Gradually, the reserved and formal governor could and often did switch on the charm when he needed to court the support of the assemblymen or to confront his critics. Ultimately, what really helped Lee Teng-hui in dealing with the assemblymen was the powerful KMT apparatus, plus the various kinds of “pork” that the governor could use to either reward or punish county governments. By this time, the Taiwan independence issue had the KMT leaders increasingly fretful and Governor Lee naturally became a lightening rod to deflect criticisms. Whenever the tang-wai assemblymen asked him if he would support

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the idea of an independent, sovereign Taiwan, the governor, in his partisan tendentious way, would unequivocally and firmly say “no.” Governor Lee pointed out that “China had never rejected Taiwan and Taiwan could never forget China.” In fact, he would insist that his ancestors emigrated from China, that he was a Chinese ethnically and culturally, and that Taiwan was an “integral” part of China. Whether such remarks were open, real, and genuine from the mouth of Lee Teng-hui, perhaps only God and Lee’s conscience could tell. On the other hand, if one puts himself in the governor’s place, one would realize that Lee Teng-hui had responsibility to his party and was answerable to his boss Chiang Ching-kuo and that he could not say otherwise under the circumstances. Moreover, the time was not yet ripe for him to publicly sympathize with an independent Taiwan. Consequently, in order to survive politically, he had to play his cards close to his vest and dutifully follow established KMT policy. In fact, Taiwan’s political rumor mill had it that President Chiang Ching-kuo was so pleased with Governor Lee’s denunciation of the concept of an independent Taiwan that he decided to choose Lee as his successor.21 But the rumor should not be taken as evidence, because on the issue of Taiwan independence, Lee Teng-hui and Lin Yang-kang, minister of the interior and also Lee’s No. 1 rival, expressed the same views. On October 14, 1983, in a Legislative Yuan interpellation, Lin denounced the idea of an independent Taiwan as a “fantasy.” Minister Lin said that, “if we proclaim independence, we would lose the support of the overseas Chinese overnight, and would furnish the Chinese Communists with an excuse to invade us as a ‘rebel group.’ ” Lin went on to ridicule “those who call for the independence of Taiwan think they can get the recognition of the 150-odd countries in the world, are just day-dreaming.”22 For several months since the fall of 1983, politically sensitive people in Taiwan and elsewhere had been talking about Chiang Ching-kuo’s choice of a new vice president. By early February 1984, conjecture over who would be chosen intensified. The incumbent vice president Hsieh Tung-min since 1978, although he was a Taiwanese by birth, was then considered too old. Hsieh had been speaker of the Taiwan Provincial Assembly and governor of Taiwan and had worked closely with Chiang Ching-kuo for many years. A native of Changhua county, Hsieh had spent most of his youth in mainland China, hence was nicknamed “half-mountain”––meaning half Taiwanese and half Chinese. The other possible candidate for vice president was the incumbent Premier Sun Yun-hsuen. A mainlander Chinese technocrat, Sun had wide administrative experiences and a clean reputation. But according to a handful KMT insiders, such as newspaper magnate Yu Chi-chung and KMT Secretary-general Lee Huan, President Chiang had by this time made up his mind that in order to alleviate social tension and to ease political conflict,


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the KMT had no choice but to continue pursuing “indigenization,” or “Taiwanization.” Thus, his vice president ought to be a Taiwanese.23 The other potential Taiwanese candidate with impressive credentials was Lin Yang-kang, a native of Nantou county. Lin, who was also a former mayor of Taipei and former governor of Taiwan, then served as ROC minister of the interior. He was an outspoken politician, which was considered a liability rather than an asset in a paternalistic political culture. Lin earned a Bachelor’s Degree at Taita, could speak Japanese, but had little or no exposure to Western cultures. Nor was Lin a Christian, like either Chiang Ching-kuo or Lee Teng-hui. Generally speaking, religion was not a paramount factor in Taiwanese politics. In this case, however, Lee’s affiliation with Taiwan’s Presbyterians, many of whom had been critical of the KMT regime, had unexpectedly become his political asset. In addition to Hsieh, Sun and Lin, there were a few other prospective Taiwanese and Chinese, but none was as qualified as Lee Teng-hui in terms of ethnicity, education, physique, administrative experience, religious affiliation, and international exposure. As busy as his mayor and gubernatorial duties kept him, Lee Teng-hui managed to produce stupendous amounts of scholarly work, publishing, for example, a three-volume book on Taiwan’s agricultural economy in 1983. Such act of burnishing his image, plus Lee’s several other meritorious performances as the mayor of Taipei and governor of Taiwan, deeply impressed Chiang Ching-kuo, who was known to personally admire erudite scholars with simple living. Furthermore, it was conjectured that because Lee Teng-hui lost his only son to cancer, Chiang Ching-kuo figured that Lee could no longer build a dynasty of his own in the future. Chiang himself had declared, on December 25, 1985, during an interview with the Time weekly magazine that none of his family would succeed him as president. At any rate, in early February 1984, Chiang Ching-kuo summoned Lee Teng-hui to the presidential office, inviting Lee to be his running mate as vice president. That same afternoon, President Chiang informed Premier Sun Yun-hsuen that Sun would not be elevated to the vice presidential post. It is interesting to note that Sun was struck by a cerebral hemorrhage a few days later, on February 24, 1984. After Chiang Ching-kuo had made his choice known, the official nomination as well as the election were only matters of formality. Upon securing the approval of the KMT Central Standing Committee, Chiang Ching-kuo, on February 15, officially announced that Governor Lee Teng-hui would be his new vice president. The KMT-dominated National Assembly subsequently went through the motion by electing Chiang and Lee to be president and vice president on March 22. Less than two months later, on May 20, the 61-year-old Lee Teng-hui took the oath to become the seventh vice president of the Republic of China on Taiwan.

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In actuality, Lee was the fourth vice president of ROC, but the KMT government lists him as the seventh vice president (see note 45). Lee’s family then moved from Wufeng’s Revival New Village to a renovated house in the old U.S. embassy compound in Taipei, which was designated as the official residence of ROC vice president. Lee’s wife, his children and grandchildren were elated that they were once again living in Taipei. Lee Teng-hui and his family would live in this house for the next 16 years—4 years as vice president and 12 years as president—until May 2000 when he retired. According to the Constitution of the Republic of China, the vice president was to assist the president in foreign relations and at state functions. Though an important and honorary position, and also only one heartbeat away from being the president, the vice president lacked real power. The real power of the newly revamped government continued to lie with President Chiang Ching-kuo, who had the reputation of being a fully engaged, hands-on chief executive. By this time, however, President Chiang was suffering from prostate and heart problems, poor eyesight, and phlebitis, as well as other diabetesinduced diseases. In fact, the debilitating diseases sometimes confined him to a wheelchair and forced him to use a waist protector. Scheduled meetings with his staff and KMT officials became less frequent and the duration of the meetings grew shorter and shorter. Lee Teng-hui recalls that during his tenure as the vice president, he and President Chiang had a total of 156 man-to-man talks, each lasting from 20 minutes to one hour. At first he saw President Chiang once every week, but later only once or twice a month.24 Under the circumstances, Chiang Ching-kuo gradually gave more active responsibilities to his subordinates, including his new vice president, particularly in attending ceremonies in foreign countries. Thus, the new vice president became an increasingly visible high official representing Taiwan in international arena. For example, on September 14, 1984, Lee was the chief of a Taiwan felicitation delegation at Pretoria, attending the inauguration of P.W. Botha as the president of the Republic of South Africa. Lee spent a total of five days in South Africa, visiting his Taiwanese compatriots in Johannesburg, receiving a “Good Hope Cross” medal from Botha, and signing a number of bilateral agreements between the two countries. This trip had both form and substance as Lee Teng-hui helped to strengthen the cooperation in trade, fishing, agriculture, railroad, hydroelectrical technology, and so on between the world’s two “diplomatic orphans.”25 Five months later (on February 24, 1985), Lee led another delegation to visit Uruguay and Paraguay. His visits to Montevideo and Asuncion further solidified the relationships between Taiwan and these two small and impoverished South American countries. On his way home, Lee made a brief stop in San Francisco and was warmly welcomed by then-Mayor Diane Fenstein,


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as well as representatives of the Chinese community in the Bay Area. At this time, San Francisco was having budget problems and Fenstein asked if there were anything Taiwan could do to help. Lee said that he would contact the head of Evergreen Shipping Mr.Chang Jung-fa and asked him to ship through San Francisco, rather than, as Evergreen had previously done, Oakland. Chang did comply with Lee’s request. However, Lee failed to obtain an appointment with California Governor George Deukmejian, who only six weeks earlier, had hosted a dinner party to welcome the visit of Premier Zhao Ziyang of the People’s Republic of China. Lee also spent three days in Tokyo and Yokohama and met with more than 40 members of the Japanese Diet and several pro-Taiwan Japanese scholars. Once again, leading Japanese government officials, who did not wish to derail Tokyo-Beijing’s new found “friendship,” stayed away from Lee’s reception.26 In September 1985, Vice President Lee, once again representing President Chiang Ching-kuo, paid visits to Costa Rica, Panama, and Guatemala, the three tiny Central American countries noted for their anti-Communist stance and their friendly relations with Taiwan. During these visits, Lee donated food and economic aid to the citizenry and also discussed the ways and means to expand Taiwan’s economic assistance programs in their respective countries.27 Of all the presidents and vice presidents of the Republic of China, Lee became the most traveled head of state. Lee, the Taiwan-born economist-turned-politician, was then in training to also become a skilled world-class diplomat. However, he stayed out of the loop in one of the unhappy diplomatic episodes involving his government and the United States. In October, 1984, Henry Liu (Liu Yi-liang, pseudonym Chiang Nan), a Chinese American journalist, was assassinated in Daly City, a suburb of San Francisco. Liu had previously been involved in KMT espionage and was the author of a Chinese-language biography critical of Chiang Ching-kuo. It was alleged that, upon the order of Chiang Ching-kuo’s second son Chiang Hsiao-wu (Alex), the KMT intelligence apparatus recruited three members of Taiwan’s notorious Bamboo Gang to carry out the crime. This brutal act not only shocked millions of Taiwanese, dismayed American-educated KMT leaders like Lee Teng-hui and Frederick F. Chien, but also complicated the U.S.–Taiwan relations. An editorial in the New York Times called the murder “a blatant act of terrorism” by the long arm of a “police state” which was ruled by “one family, one party and one cause . . .” America’s most influential paper went on to criticize KMT’s “aging leaders who cling to views hardened since their flight from the mainland in 1949 and have ruled with martial law ever since.”28 Subsequently, the U.S. House Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs, chaired by Stephen J. Solarz (D-New York), held hearings on the death of Henry Liu, and threatening to discontinue the sale of arms to Taiwan.

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Judging from the strident commentary of liberal congressmen and media, one would predict that U.S.–Taiwan relationship would soon veer perilously off course. But according to Jay Taylor, the KMT government “paid no price in its relations with the United States as a result of the murder of Henry Liu,” because, as the saga unfolded, Taiwan sought to assuage the anger of the Reagan administration. Among other measures, Chiang Ching-kuo contributed one million U.S. dollars to Oliver North’s Contra secret Swiss account.29 Thus, in the eyes of Ronald Reagan’s aides, such as Oliver North and Michael Deaver—the latter reportedly had once been retained on a $5,000 per month basis by Taiwan government—Chiang Ching-kuo was just another nice, gardenvariety dictator who should be left unmolested. President Reagan personally did not trust Communists and generally showed sympathy and support for Taiwan. With an understanding that Chiang Ching-kuo would take drastic measures to curtail the KMT culture of extremism and violence, the Reagan administration continued to annually transfer U.S. weapons to Taiwan valued at approximately US$700 million. And despite its continuing normalization with the People’s Republic of China, including exchange visits of the head of state, the United States provided new military technology to upgrade Taiwan’s capability to defend herself. For instance, Assistant Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who headed the East Asia and Pacific Bureau at the State Department, facilitated a joint venture between General Dynamics and Taiwan to manufacture a stripped-down version of F-16 jet fighters.30 While the KMT publicly denied any high-level involvement in Liu Yi-liang’s murder, Lee Teng-hui once again became an ideal native Taiwanese, particularly in the eyes of the Americans and Japanese, to help the repressive regime whitewash its stains. Thus, it was no surprise that Lee formally held the third highest rank in KMT’s Central Standing Committee, below only Chiang Chiang-kuo and Hsieh Tung-ming. However, one had to wade deep into the KMT machinations to discover that the entrenched political dominance of the mainlander elites continued to occupy the core of the power, which included Office of President’s secretary-general, the premier, the chief of general staff in the military, the KMT secretary-general, the National Security Council, as well as the president of the Legislative Yuan. As usual, the circumspect Lee Teng-hui stayed away from the fray of factional strife within the KMT. At the same time, he strove to discharge his assignments in flying colors, showing his trademark of discipline, dexterity, and humility. By the virtue of being the vice president, Lee Teng-hui was entitled to several constitutional prerogatives. For instance, he frequently represented President Chiang in making unheralded inspection trips to the off-shore islands of Penghu, Quemoy and Matsu—an established practice of both Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo. During such tours, the


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vice president met with the garrison commanders, talked to top generals and lowly foot soldiers, and inspected military installations. Also, on Chinese national holidays, such as the Mid-Autumn Festival and the Lunar New Year, Lee customarily represented the head of state in visiting the troops, dining with them and thanking them for their sacrifices and service. And increasingly, Vice President Lee also reviewed graduating cadets at the military academies on behalf of the president. These inspection tours and ceremonial activities provided opportunities for Lee to learn the command structure, as well as the personnel and operation of Taiwan’s military. Such knowledge and his broadening personal relationships with the top brass turned out to be the most critical asset when he was unexpectedly called to assume the presidency in early 1988. But Lee also took on more palatable ceremonial roles, such as planting trees on the Chinese Arbor Day on March 12, the day KMT founder Sun Yat-sen died, officiating Confucius’s birthday ceremony on September 28, a day also designated as Teacher’s Day, as well as delivering speeches at the island-wide track and field games on October 25, the day Japan officially ended her colonial rule of Taiwan. In domestic politics, Lee Teng-hui’s role as a bridge between the ruling party and the opposition was also becoming more demanding. Unfazed by a mild setback in the 1983 election, in which the non-KMT candidates got only 30 percent of the votes altogether, a handful of elected officials from the tang-wai opposition organized a “Public Policy Study Society (PPSS)”—to avoid being branded as a political party. At the same time, Taiwan’s Editors and Writers Association provided needed weapons of propaganda as well as a forum for dissident voice. While continuing to play the role of the opposition, the PPSS generally tried to avoid direct confrontation with the KMT authorities. Such timid tactics not only exposed the weaknesses of the PPSS, but also alienated those who did not hold offices and many a younger tang-wai members, who held divergent views and objectives. Partly due to the fledgling nature of the tangwai opposition and partly because of the KMT’s monopoly of local resources, non-KMT candidates were at a disadvantage in elections. For example, during the 1985 local government election, held on November 16, the motley opposition—also known as the “Campaign Assistance Committee”—captured only one magistrate’s office, 11 seats in the Taiwan Provincial Assembly, 11 seats in the Taipei Municipal Assembly, and three in the Kaohsiung Municipal Assembly. During this campaign, a rising young Taiwanese lawyer named Chen Shui-bian, ran unsuccessfully on the tang-wai ticket for the magistrate’s office in Tainan county. Tragically, one day after the election result was promulgated, Chen’s wife, Wu Shu-ch’en—the future First Lady of the Republic of China— was struck by a stripped-down version of a rural truck. Wu was paralyzed from shoulders down, and been confined to a wheel chair ever since.31

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In the meantime, in May1986, several members of the U.S. Congress, such as Geraldine Ferraro (D-New York), Jim Leach (R-Iowa), Claiborne Pell (D-Rhode Island), Robert G. Torricelli (D-New Jersey), Stephen J. Solarz, among others, formed a “Taiwan Democratization Steering Committee.” The committee stressed the fact that native Taiwanese, who were 85 percent of the island’s 18.5 million inhabitants, could vote only for “supplemental” seats in the national legislature, whose majority consisted of lifetime members elected on the mainland in 1947–48. It not only called for the lifting of martial law in Taiwan, but also warned the KMT government that, without democratic reforms, the alternative would be violence or worse. On the other side of the aisle, conservative senators, such as Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina), Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona) and Jeremiah Denton (R-Alabama), remained staunch supporters of the Chiang regime. Denton, a former POW in North Vietnam for seven years who later served as Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism, particularly defended the use of martial law in Taiwan. He even called the “Formosan Association for Public Affairs” (FAPA) and the “World United Formosans for Independence” (WUFI) organized terrorist groups.32 Nevertheless, an increasing number of prominent Americans gradually came out in support of Taiwanese struggle for democracy and human rights. They included former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Dr. Richard M. Cyert, Professor Morris H. Degroot, Professor Richard Kagan, Mr. Don Luce, the Reverend Roger Rumpf, Dr. Douglas A. Samuelson, Professor James Seymour, and many more.33 As political violence and anti-KMT sentiment, both at home and abroad, gradually led public opinion to favor the tang-wai opposition, its need to form a political party seemed imperative. Finally, in September 1986, 135 tang-wai leaders announced the formation of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), openly defying KMT’s long standing ban on organizing political parties. Immediately, the DPP began preparing for the year-end election for the open, “supplemental” seats in both the Legislative Yuan and the National Assembly. It organized rallies, street demonstrations, and wildcat strikes, encouraging civil disobedience, and other confrontational activities right in the prying eyes of the KMT authorities. Specifically, the DPP confronted the ruling party on the sensitive issues of (1) constitutional reform, (2) lifting martial law, (3) ascertaining the unique identity of Taiwan, and (4) self-determination. In the midst of both internal challenge and external pressure, the ailing Chiang Ching-kuo gave the signal for political liberalization. At a meeting with his advisers, with all but two arguing strongly against it. Ma Soo-lay, former KMT secretary-general, was the most vocal opponent. But after Chiang Ching-kuo had spoken, they all had to fall in line, however reluctantly. Once Chiang gave the signal, the KMT apparatus no longer


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dared to use repressive measures against the DPP.34 On October 7, 1986, Chiang Ching-kuo told Katherine Graham of the Washington Post that his government would soon propose lifting the 38-year-old martial law, officially known as the Emergency Decrees.35 Though Chiang’s announcement was not totally unexpected, the political history of Taiwan was about to enter a new chapter. When these events were happening fast and thick, Vice President Lee Teng-hui kept the conduit open for political dialogue, frequently conveying President Chiang Ching-kuo’s messages to the tang-wai leaders. As in the past, Lee regularly toured the island north and south, as well as from the coastal plains in the west to the mountain region in the east, spreading the will of the government, publicizing the government policies, improving the social ethos, and functioning as a bridge between the Taiwanese people and the KMT regime. As he strove to promote the harmonious atmosphere of the society, Lee, in August 1984, was able to arrange for the release of the Formosa Magazine political prisoners, including the Presbyterian pastor Kao Chun-ming and the tang-wai assemblyman Lin Yih-shyong. On June 26, 1984, in his first public speech as vice president, Lee urged the press to “lead the nation in the right direction by reporting the stories of good people and good deeds, by correcting the abnormal political atmosphere, spreading the virtues of integrity . . . , and promoting solidarity and social harmony.”36 Thus, Lee Teng-hui’s role was not to silence the voice of the opposition, but to find ways and means to lessen and divert the firepower of the DPP. By adroitly incorporating dissidents into the government-controlled system, he wanted to ensure that they would not interrupt social stability and economic development. By granting contracts and special privileges, and by helping to protect special interests, Lee hoped to muddle the purity of the tang-wai movement and to weaken the dissidents’ lofty ideals.37 It would be unfair to credit just one person or one force for Taiwan’s democratic changes and political liberalization. Surely there was a “push–pull” mechanism at work here. Certainly, the KMT and most of the mainlander Chinese insist that Chiang Ching-kuo was the one who took the initiative and who deserved the credit. They argue that Chiang Ching-kuo could have resisted strongly, but instead he chose to make concessions. Others would give Lee Teng-hui some credit for the unique conduit role he played and for following through Chiang Ching-kuo’s scheme of political reform. Taiwanese independence leaders, on the other hand, generally believe that Chiang’s and Lee’s reform schemes, while broadening the opposition representation in the legislative bodies, were designed to preserve continuity of KMT control. They also believe that Taiwanese nationalism and the people’s quest for democracy was a growing movement, which commanded the support of both

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the educated elites and working class alike. They argue that nobody, not even Chiang Ching-kuo or Lee Teng-hui, could have stopped such a movement. Since continuing and consistent American pressure, from both the government and the people, have significantly contributed to Taiwan’s political changes, the United States also deserves some credit for Taiwan’s democratization. Under the circumstances, the DPP based its strategy on the likelihood of popular support and American pressure, whereas pragmatic KMT leaders, such as Chiang Ching-kuo, Lee Teng-hui, and Tsiang Yien-si (University of Minnesota Ph.D. and KMT secretary-general) learned how to shrewdly read public opinion when the wives and lawyers of those incarcerated won the highest votes in recent elections. They also closely followed the sea changes in world politics—Corazon Acquino replaced the corrupt Fernando Marcos in the Philippines, Alabama Governor George Wallace abandoned his racist stance in order to win black votes, Latin American military regimes weakened or in some cases, totally collapsed, and South Africa became an international pariah because of its Apartheid policy. These KMT decision makers finally accepted the idea that the spear can heal even as it wounds. Under the circumstances, they found it necessary to keep pace with the changing times and to make the necessary concessions without which domestic harmony and continuing international support were inconceivable. The first test of KMT’s willingness to make concessions was Taiwan’s national legislature election, to be held on December 6, 1986. Inspired by the publicity surrounding Benigno Acquino’s return to Manila and that of Kim Dae-jung to Seoul, a number of Taiwanese dissidents attempted to return to Taipei without valid entry documents. On November 14, six members of the Taiwanese Association of America, three of them holding U.S. passports, boarded a Singapore Airlines flight to Taipei. As soon as their feet touched the ground of their beloved homeland, they were seized by the airport security force. In the meantime, a 200-strong police contingent surrounded the airport while hundreds of DPP supporters, some of whom coming all the way from Pingtung and Kaohsiung, waited for more than six hours to welcome what they viewed as a heroic return. The impatient crowd ultimately turned rowdy and clashed with the police, resulting in injuries on both sides. While the crowd battled the police, DPP representatives negotiated with KMT officials for the release of their overseas comrades, but to no avail. The six Taiwanese dissidents had no choice but to return to the United States in despair.38 Also on November 30, the coeditor of the Formosan Magazine, Hsu Hsin-liang, who had been exiled since September 1979, also attempted to return to Taiwan without a valid passport. On his dramatic return, several Americans accompanied Hsu, including reporters from CBS, NBC, The Los Angeles Times, and Lynn Miles, who sympathized the cause of Taiwan independence.


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Because Hsu was formerly a magistrate of Taoyuan county, where the Taipei International Airport is located, the citizens of Taoyuan came out in droves to give him a hero’s welcome. However, by the night of November 30, the KMT security personnel had put Hsu on a plane bound for Tokyo.39 Hsu’s highly publicized, and unsuccessful entry was a dramatic indication of the escalation of Taiwan’s political battle. During this particular election, the nervous KMT utilized its superior resources and threw everything at the challenger DPP—the new kid on the block. It ran on a platform on economic prosperity, full employment, continuity, and stability while the DPP called for changes, pitching particularly the theme of independence from China, self-determination, a clean government, and a green environment. Of the more than 18 million eligible voters, some 11.77 million, about 65.4 percent, of them cast their votes to fill 84 open seats in the National Assembly and 73 in the Legislative Yuan. The KMT won 68 seats in the National Assembly and 59 in the Legislative Yuan, while the DPP captured 12 seats in the National Assembly and 11 in the Legislative Yuan, with a few seats going to independent candidates.40 When the election was over, both parties claimed victory. The KMT maintained its numerical advantage, and the real balance of power remained unaffected. But the DPP quickly pointed out that in the 1983 national election, the KMT won 62 out of the 71 open seats in the Legislative Yuan, but could only win 59 out of 73 this time. Furthermore, several DPP candidates received the highest votes in their respective districts and the island-wide total votes for the newly formed party had exceeded 20 percent—certainly a promising start under the circumstances. The biggest victory, however, was that of the Taiwanese people, since the once elusive concept of democracy was becoming a normal practice. There is no question that the legitimization of the DPP, although reluctantly acquiesced in by the ruling party, was as historical as it was significant. To illustrate this historical significance, both the New York Times and the Washington Post reported the election on their respective December 7 front pages. Since earthshaking events in Taiwan almost always create ripple effects on China, Japan, and the United States, the chattering classes—called themselves “China Hands,” “Taiwan Watchers,” or “Sinologists”—plus the State Department officials in charge of East Asian affairs also kept a very close eye on the ramifications of this particular election. By the standards of emerging democracies, it was a relatively clean and orderly election. However, there was a long way to go before Taiwan had a bona fide “two-party” democracy. But who could have predicted that 14 years later, the DPP would have won the presidency and became the largest party in the Legislative Yuan? A few months after the 1986 election, two dramatic developments happened, one regarding Taiwan’s relations with mainland China, and the other

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the lifting of martial law. For more than 35 years since the conclusion of the Korean War, Taiwan’s KMT government had maintained the “Three Nos” policy—no negotiations, no contacts, and no compromise—with the Communist regime in Beijing. While Beijing was unable to force Washington to cut all ties with Taiwan, it did make a deal with Great Britain on Hong Kong’s future after 1997, providing for Hong Kong’s economic self-rule under Beijing’s political authority. Since early 1984, Communist Chinese leaders had suggested that the Hong Kong model, touted as “One Country, Two Systems,”could be used to unify the mainland and Taiwan. Despite the frequent volleys of hostile rhetoric fired across the Taiwan Strait, Chinese on both sides of the strait still possessed blood ties and kinships. In addition, the Communist leadership hoped that the continued modernization of the mainland, coupled with continued efforts to diplomatically isolate Taiwan, could be the carrot and stick that would eventually compel the KMT government to begin bargaining for peaceful unification. Taiwan, on its part, had since consistently and categorically rejected the “One Country, Two Systems” scheme. However, in the fall of 1987, partially influenced by the AngloChinese agreement on Hong Kong, the aging Chiang Ching-kuo decided to relax the tension between both sides of the strait and to ease restrictions on family visits to mainland China. Against the backdrop of the new reality, President Chiang first asked Ma Ying-jeou, then director of Research, Development and Evaluation Commission, to study and analyze the feasibility of opening dialogue with the Communists. After receiving a positive report, Chiang, on September 16, 1987, in a KMT Central Standing Committee meeting, announced his decision to permit Taiwan’s wai-sheng-jen (mainlander Chinese who had been separated from their families since the Civil War) to visit their ancestral homes in China. He then charged Lee Teng-hui to head an ad hoc committee, called “the New Mainland Policy Special Committee,” to prepare the ways and means for facilitating such visits. On November 2, 1987, the first group of wai-sheng-jen (who were not in military or government service) visited their relatives in mainland China. Within a year, an estimated 220,000 “Taiwan compatriots”—a term designated by Beijing—had visited mainland China.41 In responding to this new gesture, the People’s Republic of China offered trade, investment, and other incentives to attract their “brethren” from across the strait. As the chairman of this new special committee, Lee Teng-hui was, for all practical purposes, deeply involved in the complicated, evolving policy toward the People’s Republic of China. This was yet another important training ground for Taiwan’s vice president. In addition to relaxing its policy toward China, the KMT government also “accommodated itself to changing times and environment” by announcing to


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lift martial law, effective July 15, 1986. But the lifting of the 38-year-long martial law could not be done overnight. Instead, it had to go through several legislative phases before it could be completely replaced by a new State Security Law, which could not be enacted until July 1987 at the earliest. Consisting of ten articles, the State Security Law legalized the formation of political parties and restored constitutional rights of assembly and demonstration by the people. But the most significant improvement was Article 3 and Article 4, which substantially restricted the power of the Garrison Command. For instance, it no longer had the power to review applications for overseas traveling, nor did it have the authority over customs inspections.42 In conjunction with the lifting of martial law, Chiang Ching-kuo launched a series of other liberalization reforms, including ending taxes on farm land, relaxation of the control of foreign currencies, and gradually permitting the publication of new newspapers and journals. Prior to January 1988, only KMT-owned newspapers, such as the Central Daily News, and a handful of KMT-approved papers, such as the United Daily News, the China Times, and the English-language China Post, were allowed to be published on the island. But a few days after the ban on new newspapers was lifted, Chiang Chingkuo suddenly died. Immediately, Taipei basin was covered with sad whispers and rumors. Vice President Lee Teng-hui was thrust into the political spotlight without knowing if the transition of power would be cataclysmic, or if it would be peaceful and smooth. At this juncture, the death of an old political icon could easily turn into a crisis since Lee Teng-hui’s ability to shoulder such enormous responsibilities and challenges was unknown. Like a lottery winner, Lee did not know how to react initially, but instinctively sensed that he had to play it safe and not to rile the political waters. He also realized that in order to facilitate the unprecedented power transition—from the Chiang dynasty to a man from the remote village of Sanchih—he ought to first win the support of leading KMT elders, most of whom were mainlander Chinese. Thus, his mantra was maintaining status quo and seeking consensus within the party. And until he could consolidate his own power bases, Lee’s top priority was to keep the government from going off the rails. Lee would later characterize the first few months of his presidency “like a trapeze artist walking on a steel rope in the open air without any protective nets underneath.”43 Chiang Ching-kuo died of diabetes complications in his Taipei residence on January 13, 1988, ending his extraordinary life of 78 years and 10 months. Chiang was survived by his Russian wife Faina, a stateside daughter Hsiao-chang (Amy), his disabled second son Hsiao-wu (Alex), and youngest son Hsiao-yun (Eddy). He left a brief testament, believed to have been drafted belatedly by his secretary Wang Chia-hua, but was nonetheless dated January 5, 1988.

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The testament urged the people of Taiwan to unite, to fight the Communists, to recover the lost mainland China, but did not specifically designate a successor—although a few weeks before his death, the sick and fragile Chiang awarded Lee Teng-hui the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of First Order Service. Chiang’s youngest son Eddy, Lee Teng-hui, and presidents of the five yuan(s) signed the document.44 Exactly at 8:08 PM (Taipei time), almost five hours after the death of Chiang Ching-kuo, Lee Teng-hui took the oath to become the seventh President of the Republic of China. Raising his right hand above his shoulder, without the presence of the Holy Bible, and facing the portrait of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, Lee declared; “With utmost sincerity, I solemnly swear in front of my countrymen that I’ll uphold the constitution, faithfully carry out my duties, improve people’s welfare, defend the country, live up to the trust given me by the people. If I violate this oath, I’ll willingly receive the most severe punishment. I hereby give my testament.”45 Among the government top officials at the ceremony included presidential senior advisor Hsieh Tung-min, Premier Yu Kuo-hua, presidents of the four other yuan(s), Secretary-general of the Office of the President Shen Chang-huan, KMT Secretary-general Lee Huan, Governor of Taiwan Chiu Chuang-huan, Speaker of the TPG Assembly Kao Yu-jen, Minister of the Interior Hsu Shui-teh, Minister of Defense Cheng Wei-yuan, Chief of the General Staff Hau Pei-tsun, KMT Deputy Secretarygeneral James C.Y. Soong, Minister of Economic Affairs Chen Li-an, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Lien Chan. Once again, unlike the U.S. presidential inauguration ceremony, Lee Teng-hui’s wife was not present on the occasion. But surprisingly, Lee received a congratulatory telegram sent from Beijing by Zhao Ziyang, then-President of the People’s Republic of China. That same evening, President Lee Teng-hui appeared on television, pledging to continue the late president’s policy, and so on. The death of Chiang Ching-kuo was the end of an era as well as the end of a dynasty. For more than half a century, Chiang Ching-kuo and his father Chiang Kai-shek defined for Lee Teng-hui’s generation the polity of Taiwan. Chiangs were the only presidents the islanders had ever known until Lee stumbled into the national consciousness. However, the transformation of Taiwanese society and politics was already set in motion, and the torch was lit. The question was: Was Lee Teng-hui prepared to carry the torch forward? The answer was yes and no. Despite Chiang Ching-kuo’s poor health, Lee Teng-hui fully expected Chiang to serve out his term. So did Chiang himself. In fact, Lee remained doubtful if Chiang really wanted him to be the next president.46 Neither did the ranking KMT coterie want Lee, or any other Taiwanese, to succeed Chiang as the chairman of the party, because it was unthinkable to have a KMT chairman without the surname of Chiang.


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That was why for the next six months, Lee Teng-hui could serve only as the Acting Chairman of the KMT and the new president did not have a free hand to reshuffle his cabinet positions and party personnel. Thus, during the first 200 days of his presidency, Lee Teng-hui generally functioned in the shadow of the deceased Chiang Ching-kuo. Thereafter, however, Lee had decided that he did not wish to be merely the follower of Chiang’s reform phenomena, but also wanted to be among the movers, the shapers, and the creators of a new Taiwan. On the evening of Chiang’s death ( January 13, 1988) on the television screen, the new president’s refreshing looks, slight hesitation in his courtly manners, firm voice with imperfect Mandarin, and characteristically Taiwanese bearing made him both vulnerable and irresistible. In time, Lee Teng-hui would grow stronger, tougher and, some would even say “meaner”— the side of him that belied the cool exterior and gentle smiles. He would then walk out of the shadow of Chiang Ching-kuo, lead his people toward a new direction, and build his own legacy.


CHAPTER 8

The Presidency of Lee Teng-hui, 1988–93

W

hen Lee Teng-hui assumed the presidency of the Republic of China, he faced numerous challenges. For one thing, Taiwan was only marginally democratic. It was internationally isolated, as well as overly dependent on the United States both militarily and economically. For another, unlike his predecessors, Lee’s power was not absolute: he had to share power with the mainland-born KMT old grandees. And his country was in the process of a rapid transition, politically, economically, and socially. On paper, the president of the Republic of China is the head of state and is granted broad constitutional powers to conduct national affairs. Operationally, however, all acts of state are conducted in the president’s name, such as commanding the land, sea, and air forces. As a consequence, Hau Pei-tsun (born in 1919 in Kiangsu province), chief of the general staff, was a formidably powerful person. Hau had placed his personal confidants in almost all of the key military positions; his office controlled nearly 99 percent of the national defense budget. Hau was also in charge of formulating military strategies, conducting exercises and supervising a wide range of military activities, as well as purchasing weapons and equipment.1 The new president generally acquiesced to Hau’s military appointments and decisions, and indeed General Hau constituted a real threat to Lee’s early presidency. The constitution also grants the president the power to promulgate laws and decrees; declare martial law with the approval of the Legislature; conclude treaties; declare war and make peace. However, the exercise of such powers often required the cooperation of the Legislative Yuan, and its president, Ni Wen-ya, another mainlander Chinese, with whom the new president had to develop a

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good working relationship. In his first cabinet reshuffle, Lee Teng-hui would appoint Ni’s Taiwanese wife, Dr. Shirley W.J. Kuo, to be the first female minister in his government. As president, Lee Teng-hui could convene the National Assembly, grant amnesty and commutations, appoint and remove civil service officials, and confer honors and decorations. He also enjoyed special powers: appointments of the president and vice president of the Executive Yuan, that is, the premier and vice premier; the president of the Judicial Yuan; the president, vice president, and members of the Examination Yuan; as well as the president, vice president, auditor-general, and members of the Control Yuan. In the event of a dispute among the various branches of government, such as a controversy between the Executive Yuan and the Legislative Yuan, the president may intervene to seek a solution. The president may, by resolution of the Executive Yuan Council, issue emergency orders and take all necessary measures to avert an imminent threat to the security of the state or the people, or to cope with any serious financial or economic crisis, without being subject to the restrictions prescribed in Article 43 of the Constitution. Once again, in actual operation, the premier and the director of the National Security Bureau, which was established in 1967 and later expanded to become the National Security Council, were crucial to the implementation of these constitutional tasks. The premier at the time was the Harvard-educated Yu Kuohua, a native of Chekiang province and a trusted financier of the Chiang family, while the NSB director was Sung Hsin-lien, born in 1923 in Anhui province and personally groomed by Chiang Ching-kuo to become an intelligence expert. In addition to sharing powers with Chief of the General Staff Hau Pei-tsun, President of the Legislative Yuan Ni Wen-ya, Premier Yu Kuohua, and the national security chief Sung Hsin-lien, the new president also had to heed the advice of KMT Secretary-General Lee Huan, whose ancestral home was Hankow city in Hupeh. Because the KMT government was a party-state, the KMT policy became the policy and functions of the government. As a consequence, during Lee Teng-hui’s early presidency, KMT Secretary-General Lee Huan, another mainlander Chinese, also wielded significant power. At the same meantime, the new president had to learn how to manage the big bureaucracy of his office. Directly under the president is the secretarygeneral who administers the affairs of the Office of the President, directs and supervises staff members, and is assisted by two deputy secretaries-general. Several bureaus and offices under the Office of the President perform the following functions: The First Bureau is in charge of promulgating laws and decrees, translating documents into foreign languages, and other general political affairs. The Second Bureau is in charge of conferring honors, safekeeping

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seals, and distributing official documents. The Third Bureau is in charge of holding the inauguration ceremony of the president and vice president and arranging and receiving foreign guests of the president and vice president. The Code Office is in charge of telegraphic, written and e-mail correspondence and national archives. The Department of Security Affairs is in charge of president’s security while the Department of Public Affairs is in charge of public relations. In addition, there are five institutions under the direct administrative supervision of the Office of the President: Academia Sinica (established in 1928), Academia Historica (founded in 1914), the National Palace Museum (restructured in 1965), the National Unification Council (founded in 1990), and the National Security Council. Finally, scores of agencies and advisors including senior advisors, national policy advisors, and military advisors, provide information and assist the president in planning security strategy and decision making.2 During his early presidency, Lee Teng-hui faced several major challenges: (1) how to secure his own power bases within the KMT while gradually diminishing the influences of the mainlander Chinese grandees; (2) how to harness the increasingly restless population and forge ahead with democratization and governmental reforms started by the late President Chiang Ching-kuo; (3) how to respond to Taiwanese increased travel and business investments across the Taiwan Strait and deal with the sensitive issue of “unification with China”; (4) how to break the island’s diplomatic isolation by establishing trade and economic relationships with countries that did not have official diplomatic ties with Taiwan; and (5) how to reduce the island’s overreliance on the United States, in both trade and weapon supplies, by building new overseas ties, diversifying markets, and broadening its sources of military supplies from such Western democracies as France and the Netherlands. The questions raised by reporters at Lee’s first press conference underscored the challenges that awaited the new president of the Republic of China on Taiwan. Lee’s press conference was held on the morning of February 22, 1988, attended by 126 reporters, 57 of whom represented foreign media, including Associated Press and the UPS, Agence France-Presse of France, Asahi Shimbun of Japan, and the Reuters of Great Britain. Lee responded to a total of 21 questions, 11 from Taiwanese reporters and 10 from international journalists. On the issue of constitutional reforms, Lee pledged to gradually persuade elderly members of the National Assembly and the Legislative Yuan, many of whom were in their eighties and physically incapacitated, to retire voluntarily so that the restructure of the legislative branch could begin. However, he did not intend to alter the “dual-executive” structure of the constitution. The constitution of the Republic of China sets up a system with

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two chief executives, but does not clearly define and demarcate their powers. The president has the exclusive power to appoint the premier, who is accountable to the Legislative Yuan, but the president, who enjoys the decision-making power, does not have to answer to the Legislators. In other words, the president enjoys all the power, but if government policies go astray, it is the premier who will be held accountable and forced to resign. Lee reiterated the “three nos” policy toward People’s Republic of China— no contacts, no negotiations and no compromises—established by his predecessors. However, he said that he would allow his people to visit relatives in the mainland and also would study the feasibility for limited and gradual cultural and scholarly exchange with the Chinese. He pointed out that the PRC has not yet renounced its policy to unify China by force and that because Beijing’s “One Country, Two Systems” policy would make Taiwan into a local government, it was not acceptable. When Lee was asked about the “2.28 Massacre” of 1947, he appealed to his countrymen to use forgiveness to ease ethnic tensions and to practice kindness for creating social harmony. On economic issues, the new president pledged to continue economic growth and increase foreign trade, but refused to divulge how his government invested and utilized Taiwan’s huge $75 billion foreign reserves. He did however promise to improve the trade balance with the United States by opening up Taiwan’s market even wider, reducing Taiwan’s tariff rates, purchasing more American goods, and by appreciating Taiwan currency against U.S. dollars between 25 percent to 45 percent.3 The press conference lasted for nearly 2 hours. Generally speaking, Lee’s earnest manner, his mastery of statistics, firm and confidant voice, and homespun humor, made the occasion a success.4 After the death of Chiang Ching-kuo, and even in the midst of the most trying conditions, KMT’s mainland-born elders did not want to relinquish their powers to Taiwanese—to them, this was unthinkable and undesirable. Certainly, Lee Teng-hui’s meteoric rise within the party ranks was unprecedented and had inevitably aroused jealousy among quite a few ambitious KMT leaders. They suggested separating the presidency of the government from the chairmanship of the party. Among the most outspoken and influential KMT stalwarts were the 88-year-old Madam Chiang Kai-shek, Shen Chang-huan, the incumbent secretary-general of the Office of the President, and Chiang Wei-kuo, Chiang Ching-kuo’s foster brother, among others.5 In their calculation, Lee Teng-hui had only two years to serve out the seventh term of the presidency and chances were he would only be a temporary caretaker. They hoped that Lee Teng-hui would follow the footsteps of Yen Chia-kan, who was elevated to the president for only two years upon the death of Chiang Kai-shek in 1975. And during Yen’s presidency, it was Chiang’s son, Chiang Ching-kuo, who became the chairman of the KMT and the

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de facto ruler of Taiwan. In other words, there was a precedent that the incumbent president did not necessarily have to be concurrent chairman of the party. On the other side of the political spectrum, however, Lee’s ascent to the presidency pleased and excited the islanders at large. Moderate KMT leaders, such as James C.Y. Soong, who at the time served as deputy secretarygeneral of the party, warned that the party should not ignore the fact that there were more Taiwanese KMT members than the mainlanders and that, in order to maintain harmony and continuity, President Lee should be elevated to the party chairmanship. After lecturing the older KMT grandees, Soong slammed out of the room. Finally, a compromise was reached and President Lee was to serve as Acting Chairman of KMT until a nationwide party congress could be called to decide the new party leadership. During this transition period, Lee was quite willing to stand in the shadows of Chiang Ching-kuo’s legacy, gingerly pushing forth with his predecessor’s reform agenda. He approached the first year of his presidency with the same trepidation as when he first joined the KMT government as a rookie minister of state in 1972.6 Lee survived this trial, mainly because he had spent 16 years immersed in the KMT political complexities and had cultivated some basic Chinese political virtues, especially the importance of humility, or at least the appearance of it, in dealing with other KMT elders. For example, Lee saluted Chiang Ching-kuo’s portrait every day, held lectures in honor of the KMT founder Sun Yat-sen, paid courtesy visits to powerful mainland-born KMT elders whenever he could spare the time. At the same time, he mingled with peasants, fishermen, laborers, and other ordinary people, creating an image of a caring, humane leader. The new president utilized his personal appeal, energies, intellect, and above all, Taiwan’s highly educated population and enormous foreign reserves to achieve his goals. The much-anticipated party congress—the thirteenth in the history of KMT—was held in early July 1988. At this time, there were about 2.356 million KMT members, representing peasants and fishermen (10.94 percent), workers (18.03 percent), businessmen and industrialists (11.71 percent), government and KMT employees (16.95 percent), students (8.80 percent), teachers (7.52 percent), military personnel, veterans, and overseas Chinese (26.05 percent).7 A total of 1,184 delegates took part in the post–Chiang-era party congress, which was held in Taipei’s Mt. Yang-ming, from July 7 to July 13. Compared to previous party congresses, the delegates of the 13th Party Congress were younger, better educated, and more Taiwan-born (ben-sheng-jen) delegates than mainland-born (wai-sheng-jen). During the session on July 8, 1,176 delegates stood up to show their support of Lee Teng-hui as their new chairman. Only a trickle of fervid opponents refused to rise, insisting that the election should be conducted by secret ballot. Six days later, Lee Teng-hui,

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the newly elected KMT chairman, handpicked 31 Central Standing Committee members, including a woman. Sixteen were Taiwanese, and 15 were mainlander Chinese. This marked yet another milestone in KMT history because for the first time there were more native-born Taiwanese than mainland-born Chinese handling the KMT decision-making apparatus. President Lee had now also concurrently become Chairman Lee, hence had all the tools at his disposal—power, money, media, and an interlocking network of individuals who would faithfully serve as his first knights, as well as his own personal charm. However, Lee’s power was still not absolute. He continued his effort at self-preservation and ruled Taiwan as heir to Chiang Ching-kuo, waiting patiently until February 1993 when he finally was strong and secure enough to purge the formidable mainlander Chinese figures from both government and party.8 With the party machine more or less under his control, Lee Teng-hui shrewdly decided to reshuffle his cabinet. On July 20, 1988, he announced that the technocrat Yu Kuo-hua would stay on as the premier, functioning as a transitory figure. Nevertheless, in the rapid changing society, there were new problems and burning issues that required bolder measures, new energies, and more dynamic and creative personnel. There were indeed several policy reforms awaiting the new president: political restructuring, law and order, economic development, policy toward People’s Republic of China, environmental protection, and social welfare. Thus, Lee appointed a number of younger Taiwanese to fill half of the top ten posts, hitherto reserved exclusively for the mainlander Chinese. These new ministers owed personal loyalty to him and were usually able to execute his will faithfully. They included Shih Chi-yang, a Heidelberg University Ph.D., as vice premier; Hsu Shui-teh, a native of Pescadores, as minister of the interior; Shirley W.J. Kuo, MITeducated, Kobe University Ph.D., as minister of finance; Lien Chan, whose mother was mainlander and was thus regarded as a half-mountain, as the minister of foreign affairs; and the Taita-educated Hsiao Tien-chan as minister of justice. In addition to the ethnically balanced characteristics, the new cabinet members were also much younger than previous governments. For example, the five ministers in charge of finance and economic affairs in the previous cabinet had an average age of 67.2 years, but the new ministers averaged only 57.4 years—almost ten years younger. Nearly half of Lee’s new cabinet members had doctoral degrees, including 14 American-educated Ph.Ds. There were also three lawyers.9 When Lee Teng-hui first took over the government, there were doubts about his ability to deal with national security issues. Madam Chiang Kai-shek for one insisted that the new president needed to retain Chiang regime’s old hands so as to help assuage public anxieties about Lee’s

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lack of national security experience. Accordingly, Lee did not dare to touch the military personnel as he asked Minister of Defense Cheng Wei-yuan (75, native of Anhwei) and Chief of the General Staff Hau Pei-tsun to remain in their posts. But on October 17, 1988, he replaced Sheng Chang-huan, who had expressed disdain for Lee, with the 65-year-old Li Yuan-tsu, a Hunanese and former minister of justice, as secretary-general of the Office of the President. While Lee was able to fill most high offices of state with his own choices, he faced ever increasing public demonstrations, some of which challenged KMT government’s existing systems, others directly questioning Lee’s own economic philosophy and policies. For example, in trying to improve the trade balance with the United States, Lee’s government opened up Taiwan’s market faster and wider, reduced Taiwan’s tariffs, and purchased more American agricultural products. But only four months into his presidency, more than 10,000 Yunlin farmers came to Taipei, petitioning the government to limit the import of American agricultural goods. They also requested that President Lee reform Taiwan’s existing agricultural policies, which Lee had invested so much time and energy to establish and implement during the previous decade. The Yunlin farmers then surrounded the Legislative Yuan, removed many of its building signs and bulletin boards, and specifically demanded that the government: (1) institute medical insurance for all of Taiwan’s farming families; (2) guarantee that it would not arbitrarily raise the price of fertilizers; (3) purchase larger quantities of rice, which had been suffering from low price because of the competition of cheap imported grains; (4) abolish the outdated electoral system by which officials of the Farmer’s Associations were elected; (5) take over the administration of Taiwan’s hydraulic and irrigation personnel; (6) establish an agricultural commission with the status of a cabinet department; and (7) permit unrestricted buying and selling of agricultural lands.10 Caught totally by surprise and utterly unprepared for such a shrill street demonstration, Lee’s government hastily dispatched police to drive the petitioners away. But the enraged crowd fought back with sticks, bricks, and stones, and even holding several security people and news reporters as hostages. Some 62 people were injured and more than 130 petitioners from Yunlin were arrested.11 The previously tame Taiwanese populace was shocked by the incident; the media characterized it as a riot, because hitherto assembly, parade, and demonstration without prior government permissions had been strictly prohibited. But after 40 years of silence and forbearance, the islanders had built up enough pressure to finally push off the lid of repression. With a Taiwanese in the presidential office, the streets of Taiwan’s major cities would from now on face wave after wave of angry protestors. It is to be noted that

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President Lee did respond to most of the demands from the Yunlin folks, including establishing the Agricultural Commission in the Executive Yuan. But as Lee’s government became more responsive to the demands of the protestors and petitioners, the island’s populace also grew more emboldened For instance, from March 16 to March 22, 1990, several hundred students from Taita and other colleges formed what they called the Wild Lily Movement by occupying the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Park in the heart of Taipei. They began a hunger strike and vowed to continue it until Lee’s government promised to reform both the National Assembly and the Legislative Yuan. All told, there were a total of 1,433 protests and demonstrations in Taiwan in 1988; the figures increased to 5,431 in 1989, and to 7,775 in 1990. As a consequence, Lee’s government had to put more police on the beat and in 1990 alone, it mobilized more than 41,000 security personnel to deal with the unrest and rioters.12 The causes of these protests ranged from demands to elect the entire membership of the National Assembly and the Legislative Yuan, oppose military intervention in civilian government, championing the rights of the aborigines, petitions from various farming, fishing, and laboring organizations, to institute the direct election of the president, halt construction of nuclear power plants, stop blacklisting dissidents, and so on. In many cases, political opposition groups, in particular the Democratic Progress Party (DPP), were the driving force behind the protests. Also, most of the major demonstrations took place in the crowded city of Taipei, where bus load after bus load of protesters occupied key transportation stations, frequently crippling the municipality’s functions. For instance, the 1992 Direct Election for President Demonstration started on April 19, but lasted for six long days, as citizens from all walks of life poured into Taipei. During the week-long chaos, piles of garbage, vandalism, fist fights, and bloodshed became daily scene.13 Demonstrations were certainly an important sign of the new freedoms that were common to emerging democratic societies. Lee Teng-hui quickly learned how to utilize some of these protests to parlay popular appeal into broader public support for his reforms while letting the press and the students to pan the KMT grandees as potentially undermining the island’s fledgling democracy. Ironically, despite his position in the KMT government, Lee played the role of an outsider, and it worked very well for him. For example, he shrewdly utilized the Wild Lily Movement to pressure the permanent members of the National Assembly to vote for him in the presidential election in March 1990, and afterward persuaded them to retire with a handsome pension for each. Lee also used public opinion to remove Hau Pei-tsun from Hau’s entrenched position as chief of the general staff, thereby openly defying Madam Chiang Kai-shek. This symbolic victory might have caused Madam

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Chiang to decide to leave Taipei for New York on September 21, 1990, where she lived in semi-seclusion in her Manhattan apartment. Her last visit to Taiwan was in 1995; she died in New York City on October 23, 2003, at the age of 105. Lee then appointed Hau as the minister of defense. On surface, it looked like a promotion for General Hau, but in actuality, Lee had stripped Hau of his direct control of the military. But while Lee Teng-hui was able to turn the domestic protests to his own advantage from time to time, he faced tremendous challenges in Taiwan’s external relations. At the time Lee assumed the presidency, only 23 countries maintained diplomatic links with Taiwan. With Beijing’s continuing campaigns to limit Taiwan’s official status and to keep the island from participating in world affairs, Taiwan was in danger of being left without international status. Even in nongovernment organizations (NGO), Beijing had numerous times challenged Taiwan’s presence. However, the island’s economic successes and strong trade position reinforced its desire to play an active role in the international arena. As a result of his economic training, Lee Teng-hui understood the strength of his country and was able to chart a strategy that remarkably improved Taiwan’s status in the world. By 1988, Taiwan had become the fifth largest trading partner of the United States and the world’s twelfth largest trading nation. Lee’s government appropriated US$1 billion to bolster its Overseas Cooperation and Development Fund, enabling it to offer development grants to other nations, aiming particularly at the developing nations in Africa and Latin America. In 1990, Lee Teng-hui announced a US$300 billion Six-Year Plan for the island’s economic development. Lee wanted to utilize these resources not only to give Taiwan a higher profile in Asia, but also to put his country on the world map. As a consequence, by the end of his presidency, Lee’s government had either established or resumed diplomatic relationships with several countries, including Belize, Grenada, the Republic of Liberia (all in 1989), Nicaragua (1990), Republic of Senegal (1996), the Republic of Gambia (1996), and Republic of the Marshall Islands (1998). Southeast Asia nevertheless remained Taiwan’s priority because of its important geopolitical location and its economical potential. Hence, among Lee’s first diplomatic initiatives was to launch the highly touted “Go South” policy, which aimed to explore Southeast Asian raw materials and to invest in such ASEAN members as Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, and Singapore. Using economic aid and plentiful cash as incentives, Lee pioneered a new brand of diplomacy as he kept saying: “Formal diplomatic links are not essential to the pursuit of foreign relations.”14 Before Lee’s first official visit to Southeast Asia, Taiwan already had substantial investments in the region, many of whose economic leaders were ethnic Chinese, and some of whom were also college classmates of Taiwanese

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investors. Lee Teng-hui’s official visit to Singapore from March 6 to 9, 1989, signified what Lee called his “flexible diplomacy” and also ushered his government’s “Go South” policy. It was the first state visit abroad by Taiwan’s head of state since 1978, when the then-President Yen Chia-kan made a three-day visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which had unfortunately severed its diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 1990. In order to underscore the importance of this state visit, Lee brought along his wife, his minister of foreign affairs, minister of defense, minister of economic affairs, trade representative, and the mayor of Taipei. Prior to the visit, Indonesia President Suharto had just normalized relations with Beijing, and Singapore had announced its intention to establish formal diplomatic ties with the People’s Republic of China. At this time, Singapore had a population of 2.6 million, of whom 76 percent were ethnic Chinese who shared cultural values with the people of Taiwan. Besides, there were core interests mutually beneficial to the two island nations. Taiwan had established a major base for deep sea fishing at Singapore’s Jurong Fishing Port. Singapore’s tiny land area means that it lacks large territorial space for military training purposes. Thus, Taiwan had been providing some training facilities to the Singapore military since the early stages of the latter’s independence in 1965. Singapore boasted a per capital GNP close to US$9,000, and one of the highest standards of living in Asia while Taiwan’s investment in Singapore reached US$6.43 million. The overall trade between the two “Asian tigers” was US$3.1 billion and rising. Taiwan exported to Singapore computers, electronics, and electrical items, some of which were subsequently reexported to European markets.15 Taiwan and Singapore both cherished rational economic strategies, adopted aggressive approaches to improve productivity, and maintained open, free market, as well as the interflow of international investment. Against this backdrop, Lee Teng-hui was accorded a very warm welcome by his host Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. Lee Kuan Yew had for his part, made 21 visits to Taiwan since 1972. The two Lees exchanged gifts and shared views on matters of mutual concerns, including major topics in Asian affairs and the world situation. They also signed an agreement to protect investment and related matters. During a press conference in Singapore, President Lee declared that Taiwan must stand by its principle of maintaining the sovereignty of the nation and that the concept of sovereignty should be viewed in the context of economic logic and continued viability. However, Lee also stressed the importance of adopting a flexible foreign policy, adding that adoption of such a policy needed to be implemented step by step. During this visit, the heavily government influenced Singapore media referred to him the “President from Taiwan,” rather than President of the Republic of China, or President of Taiwan.16 Lee Teng-hui said he was not totally satisfied

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but could live with such a “flexible” title. Since substance was more important than form, Taiwan’s diplomatic mission in Indonesia was subsequently changed from China’s Commercial Office to the Taipei Economic and Trade Office, while its Center for Far East Trade and Travel in Malaysia was changed to Taipei Economic and Cultural Office. Lee also announced that, from then on, Taiwan would not avoid dealing with the Chinese face-to-face in international arena. As it turned out, on April 12, 1989, Taiwan did send a team, under the banner of “Chinese Taipei,” to compete in an Asian gymnastics contest in Beijing. In January 1990, Lee’s government applied for membership in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) with the title of “Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu.” By the time it received membership in 2001, the name had changed from GATT to WTO (World Trade Organization). In the meantime, Lee’s finance minister was preparing to attend an Asian Development Bank conference to be held in Beijing in May 1989. This series of moves indicated that Lee wanted to use trade and economic strength as instruments to expand Taiwan’s external relations and to counter Beijing’s attempts to isolate Taiwan. Lee Teng-hui’s flexible diplomacy was soon put to use in the regional meeting of the Asian Development Bank. An economic arm of the Asia-Pacific Economic Development program as well as an international financing organization, the Asian Development Bank was spearheaded by Japan. Although Taiwan was a founding member of the original 35 countries, in 1986, under the pressure from Beijing, the Asian Development Bank changed Taiwan’s membership name from Republic of China to “Taipei, China.” Taipei took such a name change as an insult and injury, and hence decided to boycott the next three annual meetings. However, when Lee Teng-hui took over the reins of the Taiwan government, he decided to face up to China’s obstructionism by sending a 12-member delegation to Beijing, headed by his first-ever woman finance minister Shirley Kuo. This was a bold diplomatic coup on Lee Teng-hui’s part, as Kuo’s dignified bearing and profound knowledge of international finance made an indelible impression on her Chinese hosts as well as on other Asian delegates. During the conference, Kuo was the only delegate who was not received by Zhao Ziyang, the then-President of the PRC.17 But, in hindsight it scarcely mattered, because only a few days after Kuo returned to Taiwan, President Zhao himself became a political casualty of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. On June 4, 1989 as hundreds of thousands of Chinese students were being brutalized and driven out of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square by Communist tanks and soldiers, Lee Teng-hui and his Japanese friend Nakajima Mineo were watching a live report on television. Nakajima was a well known political scientist and a highly respected public opinion leader in the Japanese media.

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When he visited President Lee in Taipei, he was the president of a major national university—the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. The two friends exchanged views on the dynamics of East Asian politics, including possibly the big question: Should Taiwan declare independence at this opportune juncture?18 Afterward, Lee Teng-hui instructed his foreign ministry to cable the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), asking the Bush administration to not only openly condemn the Chinese Communist atrocities, but also to consider sanctions against the People’s Republic of China. Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, George Washington University faculty members later caused the Bush government to decode 35 Tiananmen related documents, which show that, of all the Asian countries, only Taiwan had asked the United States to take immediate punitive measures against Beijing. Initially, President George H.W. Bush (forty-first) was very reluctant to authorize any sanctions on the PRC after the Tiananmen Square Massacre. However, Congress was being lobbied hard by protectionist interests within the United States who worried about loss of American jobs if China joined WTO. Under the circumstances, the Bush administration finally took tough stance on Beijing, forcing the Chinese to make an extraordinary number of concessions— far exceeding any other member—before they could be admitted to the WTO in 2001.19 Nevertheless, the Tiananmen Square Massacre did not change the U.S. basic policy toward China and Taiwan, that is: the United States recognizes the government of the PRC as the sole legal government of China and concurrently deals with Taiwan as a de facto independent sovereign state based on the Taiwan Relations Act. This dual-track U.S. policy under the broad rubric of one de jure China and one de facto Taiwan, though purposefully ambiguous, has thus far proven to be pragmatic and flexible. Its defenders argue that it is in accord with the reality and status quo of two sides of the Taiwan Strait.20 As Lee Teng-hui was becoming more confident about himself and about his country, he wanted the world to treat Taiwan in line with its financial and trade strength, its performance in human rights and democratic development, and its influence in business, education and high technology. Thus, he dared to engage his enemy as well as his enemy’s allies head-on. For instance, in February 1990, Taiwan began commercial relations with the former Soviet Union, thus launching direct trade with the Russians. By then, Taiwan had already established trade relations with and set up nonofficial representative offices in seven of the former Soviet bloc countries: East Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Romania. Moreover, Taiwan contributed US$10 million to EBRD, a special funding regime established to assist East European countries in their technology development and banking operation. In addition, Lee’s government approved direct trade with,

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and investment in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Cuba. Other communist countries, such as North Korea and Albania, would follow the pattern established with Russia.21 The year 1989 was significant: first, because it marked the second anniversary of Lee Teng-hui’s presidency and second, because the population of Taiwan reached the 20 million mark, registering a high density of 556 persons per square kilometer. Other vital statistics show Taiwan’s birthrate at 17.24 per thousand (i.e., 1.724 percent) in 1989, death rate dropped to 0.514 percent, but the divorce rate rose from 5 percent in 1951 to 12.6 percent in 1989. Demographers calculated that, if these trends continued, Taiwan’s population would be much grayer by the year 2000, with people 65 and older making up 8 percent of the island’s residents.22 In 1989, Taiwan’s per capita income exceeded $6,300, ranking thirty-first in the world and sixth in Asia. The country with the highest per capita income was Switzerland with a figure of $17,840; United States was second with $17,500; Japan, the second highest in Asia only next to Brunei, showed $12,850, while China had a per capita income of only $300. Lee’s government, in the meantime, had aggressively promoted bank liberalization and internationalization, permitting the penetration of Taiwan’s markets by foreign competition, as well as encouraging Taiwanese banks to compete abroad. By 1989, excess savings in Taiwan’s banking system had approached NT$5 trillion (US$178 billion), an amount almost equal to Taiwan’s gross national product for 1987. It was against this background that Taiwan’s China Trust Bank opened up a branch office in New York’s Wall Street district to serve a large Chinese population in the Big Apple while Chiao-t’ung (Communication) Bank set up an office in San Jose, California to facilitate the development and transfer of advanced technology between the area’s Silicon Valley and Taiwan’s Hsinchu Science-Based Industrial Park.23 As for Lee Teng-hui himself, the 1989 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica contained his concise biography, which also appeared, almost verbatim, in the U.S. Congressional Record. On the political front, on May 30, the 72-year-old KMT Secretary-general Lee Huan replaced Yu Kuo-hua to become the second premier under Lee Teng-hui’s presidency. Lee Huan had previously served, among other government and party high positions, as director of the Chinese Youth Anti-Communist Corps, president of Dr. Sun Yat-sen University (in Kaohsiung), and minister of education. Lee Teng-hui then promoted the 47-year-old James C.Y. Soong, a native of Hunan Province and recipient of Georgetown University Ph.D., to be the new secretary-general of the KMT. These changes were made in preparation for two important elections. One, scheduled for December 2, 1989, was for all members of the national legislatures, excluding the permanent members elected in 1947–48

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in mainland, as well as all mayors, county magistrates, and legislators. The other was the election of a new president in March 1990. In the elections of 1989—the first multiparty elections in 40 years and also the first in the post–Chiang era, the KMT gained less than 60 percent of the votes, losing 7 local magistrate slots, out of a total of 21, to the newly formed DPP. The DPP also captured 21 seats out of 101 in the Legislative Yuan, thereby gaining the right to introduce legislation. Together with Taiwan-born KMT members, they now formed a powerful bloc in the Legislative Yuan and strategically and selectively showed their support for some of Lee’s reform programs.24 Likewise, Lee Teng-hui did not read the election results as a personal setback because his popularity remained high. He instead viewed the election results as a warning to the KMT old guards, and a sign of Taiwanese voters’ dissatisfaction with the long domination of the minority mainlander Chinese in the party, the government and the military. Tables 8.1 and 8.2 corroborate this analysis.25 As if directing a game of political musical chairs, the astute Lee resolved to quicken his reform pace by appointing more Taiwanese to responsible positions while taking measures to rid his party and government of dead wood. But before he could carry out any meaningful reforms, he needed to win a new term as president on his own. Lee’s will, skills, and popularity would soon be tested in his quest for the KMT nomination. At the outset, Chiang Kai-shek’s foster Table 8.1 Statistical breakup of leading party, government and military personnel in 1988 Division

Total number

Taiwanese

Mainlander Chinese

KMT Administration Congresses Military Police

243 150 1300 350 150

33 (13.6%) 21 (14.0%) 220 (16.9%) 15 (4.3%) 11 (7.3%)

210 (86.4%) 129 (86.0%) 1080 (83.1%) 335 (95.7%) 139 (92.7%)

Total

2193

300 (13.7%)

1893 (86.3%)

Table 8.2 Makeup of military leaders prior to Lee Teng-hui’s presidency (in %) Year

1950–65 1965–78 1978–88

General & Admiral

Colonel & Major

Taiwanese Chinese

Taiwanese Chinese

1.3 7.4 15.8

98.7 92.6 84.2

9.6 18.8 32.6

90.4 81.2 67.4

Captain & Lieutenant

Sergeant & Corporal

Taiwanese

Chinese

Taiwanese Chinese

13.8 34.7 48.3

86.2 65.3 51.7

52.8 68.4 78.7

47.2 31.6 21.3

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son Chiang Wei-kuo openly expressed his desire to run for the presidency while Premier Lee Huan and the popular Taiwanese politician Lin Yang-kang, then serving as the president of the Judicial Yuan, were also known to harbor presidential ambitions. Without consulting with KMT grandees, Lee Teng-hui chose the unassuming mainlander Lee Yuan-tsu, the incumbent secretarygeneral of the Office of the President, to be his running mate. Such a move upset many powerful members of the elite KMT, who then plotted to challenge Lee Teng-hui’s nomination during a special KMT Central Committee session scheduled for February 11, 1990. Under the two presidents Chiang, the nomination of the presidential candidates by the Central Committee had become a formality in which all the 150 to 170 members, merely stood up and approved by ovation a slate of candidates designated by the party chairman. But widespread rumors reported that Chiang Wei-kuo had already persuaded Lin Yangkang to be his running mate and that Premier Lee Huan would propose a “new democratic formula”—by means of individual, anonymous ballots—for nominating party candidates. On hearing the rumors, Lee Teng-hui lost no time in lobbying all of the Central Committee members on the eve of the party session. That night, Lee’s supporters and his opponents waged an intense telephone campaign, each side trying to win votes for its respective candidates. On the day of the nomination, the proposal for individual, anonymous ballots was defeated by a vote of 70 to 99. The upshot was that the traditional standing up ovation formula was again used to nominate KMT’s candidates for president and vice president. In the end, many of the anti-Lee “conspirators” also stood up to rubber-stamp the slate of candidates designated by Lee Teng-hui himself.26 But Lee Teng-hui was not out of the woods yet, for he still needed to win at least two-thirds of the votes in the National Assembly. In 1988–90, there were approximately 920 members in the National Assembly, of whom some 829 permanent members were elected in mainland China during 1947–48 and only 91 were elected in Taiwan. Because nearly 200 of the elderly members were either critically ill or permanently lived overseas, those actually attending numbered less than 725. Since a valid candidacy required the endorsement of at least 150 members, there was much interparty arm-twisting and behind the scene maneuvering.27 Taking advantage of his incumbent position and utilizing every resource at his disposal, he soon secured more than two-thirds of the signatures from the voting members. By contrast, General Chiang Wei-kuo and his running mate Lin Yang-kang could muster less than 80 signatures from the National Assembly members. On March 23, 1990, when the ballots were finally counted at the National Assembly meeting hall at Mt. Yang-ming, Lee Teng-hui received more than 80 percent of the votes and was duly elected the eighth president of the Republic of China.28

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But the irony was that on June 21, 1990, the Grand Justices, in the case no. 261, ruled unanimously that all of the permanent members of the National Assembly and the Legislative Yuan, whose average age was over 80, had to resign by December 31, 1991. Thus, the most difficult stumbling block for the constitutional reform had begun to move, albeit at a snail’s pace. On December 21, 1991, a total of 325 new members—254 KMT, 66 DPP, and 5 others—were elected by the people of Taiwan and the overseas Chinese community to replace the old permanent members in the National Assembly. Together with the 78 Taiwan-elected member who had not yet served out of their six-year term, they formed the 2nd National Assembly. Of the 325 new National Assemblymen, only 66 were mainlander Chinese. Among these 66, 64 were affiliated with KMT, one had no affiliation, and only one DPP member.29 The Taiwanese-dominated 2nd National Assembly then passed new election rules in 1994 to directly elect future presidents and vice presidents for fouryear term, limiting their eligibility to a maximum of two terms. From then on, those who supported Lee Teng-hui within the KMT were identified as the mainstream faction while those who opposed him were called the antimainstream faction. In dialectic theory as well as in realpolitik, the KMT had gone through a real qualitative change. At this juncture, its leader Lee Teng-hui impressed others through sophistication in both style and substance. Soon after securing a second term as president, Lee Teng-hui launched a series of sweeping reforms at home, liberalizing and broadening Taiwan’s relations with China, and taking on even bolder and broader international initiatives. But first thing first: Lee Teng-hui fired Lee Huan. He then asked the 72-year-old Hau Pei-tsun to be the premier, and to form a new cabinet. By so doing, Lee Teng-hui had killed two birds with one stone: effectively stripping Lee Huan of his political powers while simultaneously reducing Hau’s influence within the military and, in essence, precluding the possibility of a military coup. To ensure that the authority to appoint top brasses was the president’s purview, Lee put his own men in the high command. He assigned a civilian to succeed Hau as minister of defense and promoted a number of Taiwanese to the rank of general and admiral, including Admiral Chuang Ming-yao, a native of Kaohsiung city, who became deputy minister of defense. For all practical purposes, the Lee Teng-hui Era had begun.30 This was Lee’s third cabinet, the ninth since the Nationalists reestablished its government in Taiwan in 1950, and was filled with more specialists and fewer political appointees than its predecessors. Lee’s cabinet selections were viewed as a litmus test of his determination to continue the reforms that he had championed. The new cabinet consisted of 8 ministers, 6 ministers of state without portfolio and 13 commissioners, among others. Of the new ministers and commissioners, 18 held Ph.D. degrees and the average age was 56, making

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them the best educated and the youngest ministerial group in Taiwan’s political history.31 As he promised the students who took part in the Wild Lily Movement, the newly elected president granted special clemency to 27 tang-wai political dissidents. Among them were DPP Chairman Huang Hsin-chieh, DPP Secretary-general Chang Chun-hung, Yao Chia-wen, who became president of the Examination Yuan in 2002, Shih Ming-teh, Hsu Hsin-liang, and other founding members of the DPP. With presidential clemency, these dissidents immediately became eligible to run for offices, to practice law if they had lawyer’s licenses, and so on. On June 28, 1990, Lee called into session a National Affairs Conference, once again fulfilling his promise to the students. Attended by many prominent figures, including a number of newly released political dissidents, the conference discussed five major reform issues: (1) restructuring the national congresses, (2) overhauling local governments, (3) redefining the powers of the central government administration, (4) constitutional amendments, and (5) new policies toward mainland China. The week-long conference established a perimeter and several nonlegal binding agreements by which future negotiations between the KMT and the DPP were be conducted.32 Shortly after Taiwan liberalized its policy toward China, the relationships across the strait had drastically changed, both quantitatively and qualitatively. It was estimated that in 1989 alone over 15 million pieces of mail were exchanged between China and Taiwan, an increase of five times from the previous year. Telephone calls from China to Taiwan via Hong Kong connections accounted for 1.8 million in 1989, an increase of 11 times from those of 1988. Mails and telecommunications between the two sides underwent another phenomenon increase as the year 1990 registered more than 21 million mails between Taiwan and China, while 42,000 telegrams were sent across the strait.33 In order to face up to the new realities and to better serve the Taiwanese visiting or doing business in the mainland, Lee’s government, on April 27, 1990, established a new cabinet-level department called the Mainland Affairs Council, headed by Vice Premier Shih Chi-yang. On February 8, 1991, Lee’s government contributed NT$520 million to help set up an unofficial organization called the “Strait Exchange Foundation” (SEF) so that it could handle the burgeoning family, economic and tourist links between China and Taiwan. Headed by the Taiwanese financier Koo Chen-fu, SEF signed a 14-article contract with the Mainland Affairs Council, and was charged to deal only with “technical” and “general business” affairs. Any political issues or policy decisions would have to be made by the Mainland Affairs Council, which later demanded a special “state-to-state” apparatus for any future negotiations on the unification issue. On its part, Beijing set up in

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1991 a liaison agency called the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) to manage practical matters arising from the various forms of interaction across the strait. At the time SEF was established, Lee’s government had already approved some 2,530 Taiwanese companies to set up factories or to invest in the mainland.34 While Taiwan’s political environment became more relaxed, its economy and trade conditions had also changed tremendously by the time Lee was elected the eighth president of the Republic of China. Beginning in 1987, when China lifted its ban on importing goods from Taiwan, the volumes of trade grew leaps by bounds. However, trade across the strait was subject to restrictions, and had to go through Hong Kong, Macao, or another third country. Taiwan could and did indirectly sell electronics, office machines, automation equipments, textiles, steel, and electrical devices to China while the mainland exported to Taiwan, also via a third country, such raw materials as petroleum, cooking oil, coal, herbal medicine, fertilizers, and minerals. Under this unique trade arrangement, Taiwan generally exported six or seven times more goods to China than the other way around, but it also meant that the island was growing more dependent on the China market for its own economic growth. Furthermore, if one factors in all the money that Taiwanese tourists spend in the mainland and the remittances Taiwan’s “wai-sheng-jen” send to their mainland relatives, the net trade balance between Taiwan and China is about zero. In 1990, the two-way trade via Hong Kong had exceeded US$4 billion, an increase of 16 percent from that of 1989. By 1991, Taiwan’s dependency on trade with mainland had reached the 14 percent mark and counted for 18 percent of the island’s total exports in 1999. In the meantime, Taiwan’s total export to the United States had declined from its peak of 48 percent in 1985 to 32 percent in 1990.35 Mainland China would surpass the United States as Taiwan’s biggest export market by 2002. It was against the backdrop of Taiwan’s new political reality and economic conditions that Lee Teng-hui was forced to make another dramatic policy change toward mainland China. In his inaugural address on May 20, 1990, Lee declared that Taiwan was willing to end its civil war status within a short period of time. It was widely rumored, and later confirmed, that early in his second administration, Lee secretly dispatched his personal secretary Su Chih-ch’eng (a native of Tainan) to Hong Kong to negotiate with representatives of Yang Shangkun, President of the People’s Republic of China. After setting up a secret “Taipei-Beijing Conduit” in Hong Kong, Su subsequently made more than 30 trips to the former British colony to convey Lee’s messages to the leadership in Beijing.36 Lee’s clandestine actions as well as his open statements further signaled his rising stature and his growing confidence. In pursing these new policies, he appointed a confidant named Chiu Jin-yi

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(Cheyne), born in Kiangsu province and then 53 years old, to serve as Taiwan’s first-ever Spokesman of the Office of the President. And when Li Yuan-tsu was elected to become Lee Teng-hui’s vice president in May 1990, Tsiang Yen-si, born in Chekiang province, was appointed the new secretarygeneral of the Office of the President. Trained as an agricultural scientist at University of Minnesota, the then 75-year-old Tsiang had previously worked at the Joint Commission for Rural Reconstruction, in fact serving as Lee Teng-hui’s supervisor there. Before this important appointment, Tsiang had served as KMT secretary-general from 1979 to 1984, and was generally regarded as a trustworthy ally of Lee. In the early 1990s, Tsiang, Su, and Chiu formed a kind of Kitchen Cabinet in Lee Teng-hui’s presidential office. The three formed a cocoon to protect the president, controlling access to Lee Teng-hui, filtering reality for him and coordinating and compiling policy documents for Lee’s reference and decision making. In order to appease mainlander Chinese on both sides of the strait, Lee Teng-hui, on October 7, 1990, announced the establishment of the National Unification Council (NUC). He then appointed 31 government and private sector leaders to investigate and advise the government in devising a framework and building public consensus for unification. On February 23, 1991, the NUC, chaired by Lee himself and with Lee Yuan-tsu, Hau Pei-tsun, and Kao Yu-shu (Henry) as vice chairs, passed guidelines for national unification. These set forth Taiwan’s conviction and the process for pursuing “freedom, democracy, equitable distribution of wealth and, ultimately, national unification.”37 While Lee paid lip service to the “unification” issue by setting up the NUC, he was dead serious about furthering his domestic reforms. On April 30, 1991, Lee announced at a press conference that effective the next day, May 1, the Period of National Mobilization for Suppression of the Communist Rebellion would be terminated. Since these were the formal statutes established during the civil war in China in the late 1940s, and had served as the legal foundation for the KMT dictatorship on Taiwan, the announcement bore some historical significance. The Republic of China unilaterally declared the end of hostilities against the Chinese Communist regime, while at the same time formally recognizing that its own jurisdiction covered the Taiwan area only. In order to fill the legal void, the National Assembly passed, on April 22, 1991, ten constitutional amendments to restructure national legislative bodies, to redefine the executive powers, and to protect people’s basic rights to work, to own property, to move, and to correspondence and communication.38 While undertaking the task of reconstituting Taiwan, Lee’s government made many adjustments, policy changes, and revisions of statutes. For example, in international discourse, Taiwan’s officials now refer to “Republic of China”

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as “Republic of China on Taiwan.” In dealing with China, Taiwan’s textbooks now refer to Chinese Communist government as the “mainland regime” instead of “rebellion group.” Taiwan’s radio and print media no longer refer to the Communists as “bandits”; mainland-born veterans could now retire and live in their native homes in China with pensions paid by Taiwan’s government; cross-strait marriages were legalized. Most of these involved Taiwanese men marrying mainland women; their number reached 150,000 by 2002. Some 156 types of Chinese raw materials could be imported indirectly to Taiwan while Taiwan citizens were allowed to invest in more than 3,000 different kinds of business and industry on the mainland. Responding to Taiwan’s new polices, Chinese troops in Fukien suspended their daily psychological warfare broadcast to Kinmen islands.39 Thus, in the early 1990s, tensions across the strait abated and an air of optimism that was conducive to dialogue, and even for some degree of interaction and common interests prevailed. It was against this hopeful background that Annette Lu (Lu Hsiulien), Harvard Law School L.L.M. 1978 and Taiwan’s vice president between 2000 and 2004 (and reelected in 2004 for another term), organized a 16-member delegation to visit mainland China in the late summer of 1992. Annette Lu, one of the Formosa magazine political prisoners, had received a five-year prison sentence in 1979 as the result of her passionate advocacy of democracy and independence in Taiwan. Known as a feminist and women’s rights activist, Lu has always spoken for what she believes in, championing for a society of social equality and harmony and political rule by both sexes. But when she attempted to explain to the Beijing authorities the many intractable differences between Taiwan and China and reiterate her belief that “Taiwan is Taiwan and China is China,” Chinese security personnel confiscated her passport and ordered her and her delegation to leave Beijing immediately.40 The lifting of the “Temporary Suppressing Communist Statutes,” generally referred to in the West as martial law, and the passage of the ten constitutional amendments represent the first stage of Lee Teng-hui’s ambitions to reconstitute Taiwan, and several changes took effect immediately. For example, prior to 1992, identity cards always included the cardholder’s place of birth. But since Taiwanese now refer to all individuals living on the island who feel a shared destiny and community—Lee Teng-hui calls it “sheng-ming kung-t’ung t’i”—identity cards no longer list the native place of the holder’s father. New statutes and more liberal policies were soon established to replace the old ones. Beginning August 1, 1992, the once fearful Garrison Command, established since July 1958, was abolished and replaced by a new Coast Guard agency with General Wang Jo-yu as its first commander. Intelligence gathering apparatus, such as wire-tapping and various surveillance programs,

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was now dismantled. The authorities to censor newspapers, book publications and broadcasting, to infiltrate gangster organizations, to screen arrival and exit of citizens and foreign travelers at ports of entry, and the like were now transferred to various ministries under civilian management. Other new statues to protect people’s basic rights included a revised “assembly law,” a more liberal “people’s organization law,” and a revamped law to safeguard against the abuse of inmates and parolees. In addition, licenses of doctors, lawyers, and other professionals, who had been previously convicted under the martial laws, were to be reinstated; bans on remitting gold and foreign currencies overseas were also lifted.41 The lifting of the decrees also meant that Taiwanese dissidents who had been convicted of sedition would soon regain their freedom, and those who were forced to live in exile would be permitted to return to Taiwan. On June 4, 1991, Lee’s government rescinded the warrants for seven persons who were convicted for treason, including Peng Ming-min, President Lee’s Taita colleague and a well-known political scientist. After a few years of exile in Sweden, Peng went to the United States and was living in Eugene, Oregon, when he learned that he was no longer a fugitive wanted by the KMT government. Peng returned to Taiwan on November 1, 1992, receiving rousing welcome from an enthusiastic audience at Taita’s Law School auditorium where he delivered a public speech with the topic: “How to Prepare for and to Enter the 21st Century?”42 Other prominent Taiwanese dissidents, such as Huang Chao-shun and Hsu Shih-kai, who had lived in exile in Japan for decades, were subsequently permitted to come home as well. However, at this point in time, eight other leading Taiwanese independence activists remained on the sedition list, including the self-taught historian Shih Ming (Shih Ts’ao-hui), 72; the Cal Tech-trained engineer Chang Ch’ang-hung, 55; and Li Ying-yuan, 38. Chang Ch’ang-hung decided, near the end of 1991, to test the limits of Lee Teng-hui’s new lenient policy by choosing to enter Taiwan without valid documents. Chang was immediately apprehended at the airport, and incarcerated for eleven-and-a-half months in a special prison. On October 24, 1992, however, the Higher Court of Taiwan set a bond of NT$300,000 for Chang and ordered his release for “medical reasons.”43 Chang, who served for many years as president of the Taiwan Independence League in America, later successfully ran for the mayor of Tainan city. The other prominent dissident Li Ying-yuan ran unsuccessfully in the 2003 mayoral race of Taipei, but was rewarded with the position of the DPP deputy secretary-general. With all these events happening so quickly, what kind of schedule did the Taiwanese president maintain? A chronological itinerary of the president’s office documents the variety and scope of Lee’s brisk activities. It also reveals

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that Lee was an energetic, talkative, and a hands-on chief executive. In the year 1990 alone, Lee Teng-hui received in his office 2,294 visitors and guests, averaging 5 guests per day, which consumed him a total of about 3 hours each day. Among the president’s visitors, 1,647, or 71.7 percent, were from Taiwan and 647, or 28.3 percent, were foreign guests, including ten heads of state from such friendly countries as Haiti, El Salvador, the Republic of Nauru, Paraguay, and Costa Rica. In addition, he received an equal number of people while on inspection tours, or before and after official meetings. During this year, Lee chaired numerous scheduled as well as impromptu conferences and meetings, plus receiving 37 briefings, attending 11 memorial services, and delivering 31 speeches. As commander-in-chief of the nation’s defense forces, Lee chaired 13 military conferences with his generals and admirals, inspected military installations seven times, reviewed military exercises four times and visited offshore islands five times, including a visit to Tung-sha (Pratas) Island in the disputed Spratlys.44 In addition, Lee visited counties and cities 40 times, and periodically visited and rallied the troops and police during holidays. Whenever natural disasters, such as typhoons and earthquakes, hit Taiwan, he always quickly went to the disaster areas to experience first-hand the difficulties of the victims. Finally, he would squeeze out of his busy schedule a little time for golfing, politicking, and cultivating good will with legislators from various political backgrounds and different regions.45 Lee’s second stage for reconstituting Taiwan included: (1) bolstering Taiwan’s national defense; (2) continuing to utilize his country’s economic prowess to enhance his flexible diplomacy; and (3) electing a new Legislative Yuan, scheduled for December 19, 1992. Realizing that Taiwan is strategically important to U.S. national interests, President Bush followed a resolute and prudent one China and one Taiwan policy, that is to prevent aggression from mainland China and to encourage peaceful dialogue between the two sides. Specifically, the Taiwan Relations Act and the Six Assurances of 1982 by Reagan continued to govern U.S. policy toward Taiwan. Faced with a difficult election campaign and a domestic defense manufacturing base that had drastically contracted after the demise of the Soviet Union, Bush, on September 2, 1992, announced the sale of 150 copies of Lockheed Martin F-16 to Taiwan. With a price tag of US$6 billion to be paid from 1993 to 2001, these advanced fighter planes would be completely delivered by 1997 to replace Taiwan’s 360-odd aging F-5E and F-104 combat squadrons. In addition, Taiwan was able to lease three Knox-class cruisers from the United States Navy. Specifically, Lee Teng-hui authorized his chief of the general staff to pay US$3.94 million for renting USS Brewton, $6.34 million for USS Robert E Peary, and an unpublished amount for renting USS Kirk, with an understanding that after five years of rental service, these American vessels,

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primarily for defensive purpose, would belong to the Taiwanese navy. By 1999, Taiwan had four submarines, including two Sea Dragon-class submarines built in the 1980s, seven U.S. Perry-class missile frigates, nine Knox-class frigates, some two dozen destroyers, four Hawkeye airborne early warning planes, 15 Chinook helicopters, and a variety of short-range surfaceto-air (SAM) missiles, including late-model Patriots.46 Since controlling the country’s air space and safeguarding the Taiwan Strait were top military priorities, and because Taiwan wished to find alternatives to U.S. military supplies, Lee Teng-hui’s government had been trying to buy weapons from Germany, Australia, the Netherlands, and France. In 1991, in spite of China’s strong diplomatic pressure and enticing financial baits, France agreed to sell 60 copies of Dassault Mirage 2000–5s fighter jets to Taiwan. On June 5, 1991, the Mitterand government further announced its intention to sell to Taiwan six LaFayette-class missile frigates with electronic equipment for 12 billion francs, to be delivered beginning in 1996. However, when Taipei and Paris signed the final bill of sale on August 12, 1991, the price was set for 16 billion francs, which were ultimately paid off before the end of 1997. But the increase of 4 billion francs between the announced price and the purchase price, plus the circumstances under which the deal was struck, subsequently aroused suspicion. In due course, investigators in both France and Taiwan discovered that several French and Taiwanese high officials were involved in a very complicated scheme of bribery and kickbacks. Thus far, the disgraced former French foreign minister Roland Dumas, who played a pivotal role during the negotiations, had confirmed that a sum of US$100 million was paid to Beijing’s Chinese Communist Central Committee to “buy China’s silence.” In addition, some US$400 million were paid to Taiwan’s KMT secretary-general, and millions of under-the-table dollars were used to bribe President Francois Mitterand’s mistress, Anne Pingeot, and other French high officials. As of December of 2004, more than1.7 billion francs remains unaccounted for, but the investigation of the LaFayette warship scandal is continuing in both France and Taiwan, as well as in Switzerland where some of the illegal payments were deposited. On several occasions, Lee Teng-hui has categorically and openly declared that he delegated the Chief of General Staff Headquarters to make the deal and that he knew nothing about the bribery and kickbacks.47 While strengthening Taiwan’s defense was a top priority for Lee Teng-hui, winning the sympathy and support of scholars and academic groups in the West was also important. After the United States had normalized its diplomatic relations with China, America’s China scholars, who previously relied upon Taiwan’s libraries and resources for their research, began returning to the mainland, and several leading U.S. academic institutions established

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exchange programs with their counterparts in China. Under the circumstances, Taiwan fretted about a serious erosion in its cultural ties with the academic world in the United States. Thus, Lee Teng-hui’s government encouraged wealthy Taiwanese individuals and big corporations to build mutually beneficial relationships with major U.S. universities and to warmly befriend influential American public-opinion makers. One way to achieve this goal was to win the loyalty of American academicians through scholarships, grants, and donations—euphemistically touted as “cultural diplomacy.” In 1991 alone, Taiwan donated more than US$20 million to American universities. Among them, $6 million was given to MIT to help set up its Sloan College of Business Management; $1.8 million to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, followed by another $1.2 million pledge by the Far East Textile Corporation. Other universities, such as Columbia, Harvard, Kansas, and many others, also received grants from the newly established Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for Scholarly Exchange. Soon after Chiang Chingkuo died in 1988, several mainland-born political heavyweights, including Li Kuo-ting, Yu Kuo-hua, and James Soong, began to raise money to establish a cultural foundation similar to that of the Japan Foundation. With their power and influence in the KMT and the government, they easily persuaded Taiwan’s ministry of education to allocate NT$300 million in 1988 and then another NT$1.2 billion as initial funding for this foundation. In the meantime, they solicited more than NT$500 million from wealthy Taiwanese individuals. In only three years, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation had raised US$100 million, and by 1991, it had doled out more than US$11 million to nearly 100 American academic institutions and programs. For example, it contributed US$4 million to the University of California at Berkeley for promoting Chinese studies there; and US$72,000 to support a Chinese studies project at South Dakota University.48 In 1993, chiefly because of the influence of James Lilley (a former U.S. AIT chairman, and ambassador to South Korea, and China), the foundation gave US$2 million to help establish Institute of Global Chinese Affairs at the University of Maryland. Thanks to James Soong’s personal relationship with the late Chancellor T’ien Chang-lin, the foundation again pledged additional US$15 million to build a projected Chiang Ching-kuo Memorial Library on the Berkeley campus.49 In addition, the foundation supported international scholarly conferences, sponsored symposia, subsidized pro-Republic of China scholars in their research. But the foundation also funded pro-unification scholars like the late Michael Oksenberg of Stanford University, Kenneth Lieberthal of the University of Michigan, and so on.

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From its onset, the foundation was controlled by a few Chiang regime loyalists with a handful mainlander “unificationist scholars” functioning as its directors and managers. As a consequence, any Sinologists or Taiwanese scholars who were known to have criticized the Chiang regime in the past, or those who had supported or shown sympathy for Taiwan independence movement would have no chance of receiving grants from this foundation. As a matter of fact, after his retirement from the presidency, even Lee Tenghui himself had second thought about the original intent and the end results of this China-oriented nongovernment organization.50 In the meantime, several presidents from top U.S. universities personally visited Taiwan for money raising purpose and for a closer embrace with their wealthy Taiwanese alumni, many of whom had become corporation executives. For example, in the fall of 1994, President Gerhard Casper of Stanford University came to Taiwan to sign an exchange program with Taita while receiving a huge donation from Taiwan’s Stanford Foundation to endow the “Li Kuo-ting Permanent Faculty Chair” in Palo Alto. During his Asian tour in April 1995, the outgoing Cornell University President Frank H.T. Rhodes told Lee Teng-hui that a faculty chair was slated to be endowed in Lee’s name. Within weeks, Cornell University alumni in Taiwan raised US$2.5 million, subsequently establishing the Lee Teng-hui Faculty Chair at Ithaca.51 But while Lee Teng-hui’s money diplomacy was making inroads into America’s ivory-towers, his KMT party received a setback at the polls in December 1992. During this post-martial-law election for 161 new members to form the second Legislative Yuan (the first Congress having lasted from 1947 to 1991), the KMT received only 53.2 percent of the popular votes, winning a total of 96 seats, while its chief rival party, the DPP, captured 50 seats with 31.3 percent of the popular votes. Nonparty affiliated candidates won the remaining 15 seats. It was the worst election result in the KMT history, and meant that the party could no long enjoy the absolute majority in the Legislative Yuan. The fledgling DPP had improved its record from a 22.20 percent in 1986, to 30.18 percent in 1989, garnering nearly one third of the popular votes. Moreover, in some counties and cities, the KMT had simply lost its traditional dominance, particularly in the urban areas. For example, in Taipei city, the KMT won only 41.04 percent of the votes and in Tainan city 44.83 percent. In Hsinchu city, Chiayi city and Kinmen, all of the KMT candidates were defeated. Another significant aspect of this election was that three of the leaders of Taiwan independence movement— Drs. Tsai Tung-jung (Trong R. Chai), Chang Hsu-ch’eng (Parris Chang), and Ch’en Tang-shan (foreign minister of Taiwan since 2004)—who had been living in the United States for many years, were also elected.52

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The 1992 Legislative Yuan election reflected Taiwanese new attitudes toward representative government—their desire for younger, cleaner and fresher representatives, and above all, for continuing political reforms. During this particular election, several of the KMT’s incumbent and tycoon candidates actually lost their bids.53 As soon as the haze had cleared from the election cannon fire, Lee Teng-hui made his own assessment and began to prepare for another political reshuffle. Lee understood the patience of politics and had been waiting until such an opportune time to fasten his gun belt when he fired both Premier Hau Pei-tsun and National Security Council Secretary-General Chiang Wei-kuo, Lee’s last two serious political challengers. Early in 1993, President Lee nominated the 57-year-old Lien Chan to form yet another cabinet–Lee’s fourth one. Born in Xian, in northwest China, Lien did not return to the island until after World War II. After earning his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, Lien had been well groomed by the KMT as evidenced by his long, impressive resume: ambassador to El Salvador, director of KMT Youth Commission, KMT deputy secretary-general, minister of communications, vice premier, and minister of foreign affairs. At the time of his nomination, Lien was serving as the governor of Taiwan. On February 23, he won an easy confirmation from the Legislature Yuan with a vote of 109 yeas, 33 nays, and 18 abstaining. With Lien as the premier, several new people were also appointed to the cabinet, primarily in economic, scientific, and education fields. But there were a few surprises as well. For example, the President of National Taiwan University, Sun Ch’en, was tapped to become the minister of defense. A native of Shantung province, the then 59-year-old Sun was Lee Teng-hui’s Taita student, and a team player who earned a Ph.D. in economics from Oklahoma State University. In the meantime, Lee stacked his top posts with his allies by promoting James Soong to be the governor of Taiwan in March 1993 while naming Hsu Shui-teh the new secretary-general of the KMT, which claimed to have a 2.66 million membership, but could usually mobilize only 950,000 due-paying members during elections. A native of the Pescadores and formerly mayor of Taipei and minister of the interior, Hsu was charged to supervise KMT’s central, provincial, and local operations, which maintained over 7,000 employees. In addition, he managed 378 community service centers throughout Taiwan, plus several dozen overseas Sun Yat-sen Service Offices. Within the KMT organization, a new agency was created to manage the party’s enormous assets and extensive enterprises.54 Lee Teng-hui chose his Cornell understudy Liu Tai-ying (Ph.D. 1974) as the chief executive; Liu would, during the next seven years, become KMT’s treasury czar as well as Lee Teng-hui’s financier. The appointment of Liu as the KMT treasury czar signified Lee Teng-hui’s attempt to gain a tighter control of the party’s finances, making them more

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systematic, accountable and transparent. In the past, billions of NT subsidies that the KMT received from the government were unaccounted for, while party properties tended to be registered under the names of individual KMT leaders. Before Liu was appointed the party’s treasury czar, the KMT controlled 7 big enterprises with an available cash of roughly NT$2.89 billion. In 2003, during a bribery trial of Liu, Liu disclosed that after he took over the management of the KMT treasury, he was able to provide his party with a sum of NT$10 billion every year.55 How did Liu do it? In addition to regularly soliciting donations from wealthy businessmen and industrialists, Liu invested the KMT money in several profitable enterprises. One of such conglomerates was called Hua-hsia Enterprise that facilitated KMT’s penetration into Taiwan’s media and cultural businesses as it owned the Central News Agency, The Central Daily News, The China Daily News, the Broadcasting Corporation of China, Central Motion Picture Corporation, China Television Inc., Taiwan Television Inc., Cheng-chung Book Publishing, and so on. It was in the capacity as Hua-hsia’s CEO that James Soong was entrusted with tens of millions of dollars to provide for the widow and family of the late KMT Chairman Chiang Ching-kuo. But Soong deposited these special KMT funds into his personal accounts and employed his sister-in-law, a Central Trust accountant, to launder the money to the United States. When the scheme was exposed during the 2000 presidential election, it quickly turned into a scandal. Many observers believed that this contributed to Soong’s defeat.56 In addition to the seven conglomerates, the KMT operated and benefited from a number of state-owned enterprises in steel, petroleum, banks and trusts, machinery, shipbuilding, cement, glass, synthetic fiber, and so on.57 At Liu Tai-ying’s 2003 trial, he testified that KMT’s annual expenditures were at least NT$5 billion. During his seven-year term as the KMT treasury czar, Liu invested more than NT$96 billion in hundreds of businesses and was able to give his party a total of 41.8 billion as earned income and profits. He claimed that at the end of his service, he helped increase the net assets of the seven KMT enterprises by 27.6 billion.58 Thus, Lee Teng-hui’s political power, his successful election campaigns and his highly touted pragmatic diplomacy, was to a certain degree, built upon KMT’s enormous financial assets. However, in the waxing and waning of Lee’s political fortunes, Liu Tai-ying would one day become a liability whose activities significantly helped to taint Lee’s reputation. On November 12, 2003, Lee was called to testify as a witness in an open court in the trial of Liu, who was indicted for taking NT$1.6 billion (US$47 million) in bribes from the major shareholder of the Zanadau development project in Kaohsiung. While the case is pending and while Lee has not been personally implicated in the corruption, he has become Taiwan’s first head of state to ever serve as a witness in a criminal trial.59

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Still, the year 1993 was a relative good year for Taiwan and a satisfying year for Lee Teng-hui personally as things were generally going his way. The 70-year Lee enjoyed good health and drew a monthly salary of NT$790,000, making him one of the highest paid heads of state in the world.60 In particular, he was reelected KMT chairman at the party’s 14th National Congress by an overwhelming majority—this time by secret balloting. By then, Taiwan was certain to have obtained both advanced French Mirage 2000–5s and new F-16 jet fighters, as well as several formidable U.S.-made warships, with which to defend itself. The country was also able to build one Perry-class frigate every 11 months. As the Cold War came to an end, the international environment was much relaxed, and with the Tiananmen Square massacre still haunting Beijing’s policy makers, the cross-strait relationship could almost be described as peaceful coexistence. In April 1993, Koo Chen-fu, chairman of Taiwan’s SEC, and Wang Daohan, chairman of China’s ARATS, met in Singapore to discuss technical, functional, and procedural matters between the two sides of the strait. In the meantime, China sent, for the first time, two basketball teams, for men and women, to play in Taiwan.61 The year 1993 not only signified the second stage of Lee Teng-hui’s political reforms, but also marked several milestones in Taiwanese history. For the first time, the island registered a population of 21 million while per capita income surpassed US$10,000. For the first time, there were more Taiwanese than Chinese in the Legislative Yuan; a great number of Taiwanese new men had replaced Chinese “old thieves” in government, party, military, and judiciary positions. In addition, there was a Taiwanese premier, albeit a “half-mountain” one, a Taiwanese serving as the KMT secretary-general, and a Taiwanese Nobel Laureate in chemistry, Lee Yuan-tse. President Lee Teng-hui was so proud of Lee Yuan-tse that, on December 17, 1993, he appointed the latter to direct the prestigious Academia Sinica. Furthermore, for the first time in the island’s history, all the presidents of Taiwan’s major universities were elected by their own faculties, instead of being appointed by the ministry of education. As a consequence, Drs. Ch’en Wei-ch’ao and Lu Hsi-mu, both Taiwanese, were elected to lead Taita and Shihta (National Taiwan Normal University), respectively. Lee Yuan-tse, Ch’en Wei-ch’ao, and Lu Hsi-mu were among the thousands of highly trained Taiwanese in sciences, technology, social studies, public administration, law, and other disciplines who studied abroad and had returned to serve their native land. Finally, citizens could now organize social movements and autonomous associations without fear. They also could, and did, elect representatives to formulate an expression of national sorrow and regret for the 2.28 Massacre of 1947. Yet, there was a seamier side of Taiwan with several barriers impeding progress in Taiwan’s development, modernity, and harmony. First of all,

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Taiwan’s government was growing too fast and becoming too cumbersome. In 1993, there was a total of 577,000 civil servants, as against 463,000 in 1983 at local, provincial, and central government levels. That meant that one out of every twenty-four adults between the ages of 20 and 64 was on a government payroll. The gap between the haves and the have-nots was widening and the gender gap also remained, despite the fact that an increasing number of women were now in offices, not aprons. In the new 161-member Legislative Yuan, for instance, only 17 were women, and only two women were serving in the new cabinet. Because Lee Teng-hui espoused the market economy and deficit spending, including supporting all sorts of pork barrel projects, Taiwan’s budget deficit reached hundreds of billions of New Taiwan dollars by 1993. Worse still, gangster (black) and business (gold) interests continued to influence elections by buying votes to win seats not only in local assemblies, but even in the Legislative Yuan. Thus, corruption and cronysm in business and government continued unabated because the black and gold elements fixed bidding prices for public works, engaged in blackmailing, kickbacks, and murders, and also routinely intimidated judges and bribed officials.62 There was also an absence of certain political values essential to achieve a genuine democracy, in particular protection of individual rights, civil liberties, and tolerance of contrary views. As a result, there was too much political quibbling both within the KMT and in the Legislative Yuan. But most worrisome of all were issues of political identity and ethnic differences that boded ill for further divisiveness. In fact, any discussion on the topics of unification with China and Taiwan independence could easily provoke visceral reactions. In 1993, Lee Teng-hui acted as if he was still following the will of his predecessor Chiang Ching-kuo and was genuinely working for both the democratization of Taiwan and for peaceful unification with China. In public, he coyly refused to say he was a separatist and forthrightly swore to being a unificationist. In his private conversation with mainstream KMT members and DPP leaders, Lee Teng-hui was quoted as saying he favored neither unification nor independence. Thus, with a combination of ambiguity and cunning, Lee waffled on the issues of unification and ethnicity. That is why he tolerated the use of some 21 different names for his country, even though these names frequently compounded the confusion on the issue of Taiwan sovereignty. As the President of the Republic of China, he had to maintain a vague status quo, that is: Republic of China was neither China nor Taiwan, but at the same time it also represented China as well as Taiwan. However, many anti-mainstream KMT members, particularly those who had participated in the struggles against Lee Teng-hui, pointed out Lee’s many concessions to DPP demands. They viewed such concessions as a reflection of Lee’s

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endearment, if not endorsement, of Taiwan’s independence. Those who distrusted him the most had begun to suspect that Lee had a hidden agenda, because his series of reforms were gradually weakening the power of the mainland-born Chinese, while consolidating his own power base and secretly but methodically promoting Taiwan independence. In hindsight, their suspicions were not groundless. Lee Teng-hui paid lip service to the mainlanders by pledging his support for a unified China, while in actuality he was seeking to establish a separate sovereign state on the island with a distinct Taiwanese national characteristics. Finally however, a group of young mainland-origin KMT members whose disdain for Lee Teng-hui had grown more palpable, decided to boycott the party’s 14th National Congress. On August 10, 1993, they founded their own New Party. These alienated second generation mainlanders, led by Jaw Shau-kong, soon became Lee’s most serious critics and passionate political opponents. In the 1995 Legislative Yuan election, the New Party received 12.95 percent of the popular votes and won nine seats, accounting for most of the KMT’s losses. However, Lee managed to weather their incessant, thunderous attacks and opted to collaborate with the enemy’s enemy—the DPP. In a nationwide election in 1998, the New Party could only muster 7 percent of the popular voters and, for all practical purposes, had declined into political irrelevance. Though historical reputation is in the fickle eye of beholders, no one can gainsay that Lee Teng-hui had become a barometer of Taiwan’s changing cultural and political attitudes in the 1990s.

CHAPTER 9

Leading Taiwan to Democratic Consolidation

F

lush with his initial successes in democratic reforms and the island’s thriving economy, Lee Teng-hui assumed the posture of leader of a New Taiwan when he launched an aggressive diplomacy in 1994 to raise Taiwan’s international visibility. Early in February, Lee began what he characterized as an “ice-breaking” journey to Southeast Asia, where Taiwan had no formal diplomatic relations but substantial investments. More than 4,000 Taiwanese manufacturers had invested there since the 1980s. Intending to break the diplomatic ice with money and to take advantage of the natural resources and cheap labor of the region, Lee brought along Taiwan’s three top financiers—KMT treasury czar Liu Tai-ying, Minister of Economic Reconstruction Council Vincent Siew, and the CEO of the China Trust Bank Koo Lien-sung ( Jeffrey). Lee’s entourage first visited the Philippines, where President Fidel V. Romos talked with Lee for two hours after a luncheon in the Subic Bay. The two presidents reached a seven-point agreement on economic corporation, ranging from land acquisition, easing the visa process for Taiwanese businessmen, to taxation problems. Lee’s second leg was Bandung, Indonesia, where Lee visited an aircraft manufacture factory and space industrial center, and on February 11, became the guest of President Mohamed Suharto. At a working luncheon, Suharto’s ministers and Lee’s financiers hammered out six specific ways and means to finance and develop Indonesian natural gas and heavy chemical industry, increase sugar and salt production, and improve the infrastructure on Batam island, 20 kilometers from Singapore, and where Taiwanese set up the Kuang Hwa Industrial Park. From Java, Lee flew to Bangkok where the Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej received Lee on February 16 and the Taiwanese delegates and Thai ministers signed several

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mutually beneficial agreements, including how to convert the notorious opium fields of the Golden Triangle into fruit and vegetable plantations.1 Lee’s so-called Go-South policy was designed to reduce the potential impact of Taiwan’s capricious trade with, and investment in, mainland China, as well as to bring in cheap laborers from Southeast Asia to ease the problems faced by Taiwan’s labor-intensive manufacturers. By 1998, there were approximately 250,000 foreign laborers—primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand—working in Taiwan’s manufacturing and construction industries, and constituting the majority of domestic helpers and caregivers there. Lee claimed that, one year after his visit to these three countries, Taiwan had streamlined customs and tariff procedures with ASEAN nations, and that its investment and trade with Southeast Asia had doubled or even tripled. For example, in July 1995, a group of 47 Taiwan manufacturers signed contracts with Philippine authorities to lease land and to invest a sum of US$200 million in the Subic Bay Industrial Park. From May 1994 to May 1995, total Taiwan investment in Thailand increased from US$4 billion to 5 billion, while nearly 300 new Taiwan projects worth a total of US$2.35 billion were invested in Malaysia. By the end of 1994, the Philippines registered a total of 317 Taiwanese investments totaling US$2.5 billion, and 18 times more than the year before. In addition, Taiwan established bank branches throughout major Southeast Asian cities, including branch offices of Chinfon Commercial Bank and the Export-Import Bank of ROC in Vietnam. In overall direct foreign investment, Taiwan ranked first in Malaysia and Vietnam, third in both the Philippines and Indonesia, and fifth in Thailand.2 Less than 11 weeks after his fruitful trip to Southeast Asia, Lee Teng-hui was once again pushing his flexible diplomacy, this time traveling across three continents—America, Africa, and Asia. In a fast-paced 13-day itinerary, Lee signed a joint communique with President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro of Nicaragua on May 4, 1994, attended the inauguration of President Jose M. Figueres Olsen in Costa Rica on May 8 and was seated among world leaders at the inauguration of President Nelson Mandela in South Africa on May 10. During his stop in Managua, Lee forgave 75 percent of the US$22 million debt that Nicaragua owed Taiwan. In San Jose, Lee announced that Taiwan would help Costa Rica build a 45-kilometer highway in its northern border and provide a loan of US$15 million for developing Costa Rican businesses, industry and agriculture. In Pretoria, Lee had a chance to chat with Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Prince Philip of Great Britain, and several other world leaders who came to congratulate the first black president in South African history. Lee also donated US$20,000 to Pretoria University for its cancer research program and gave half a million dollars to King Mswati III of Swaziland for the construction of the Shobuza Memorial Park.3

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Also during 1994, Lee Teng-hui hosted respective visits of Presidents of Niger ( June), Burkina Faso (August), and Central African Republic (October) in Taipei and pledged to each and every one of his African friends that the “ROC Overseas Development Fund” would send both specialists and money to assist them improve their agriculture, fisheries, trade, public health, and so on. In return for Taiwan’s assistance programs, these African leaders promised to sign petitions to help Taiwan regain her seat in the United Nations and to lend their voices and support in backing Taiwan’s efforts to take part in international activities. Like many developing countries, these three poor African countries recognized Beijing’s PRC soon after ROC was expelled from the United Nations, but subsequently reestablished ties with Taiwan. Among the African countries who followed this pattern were the Central African Republic, which reopened its embassy in Taipei in July 1991, Niger in June1992, Burkina Faso in February 1994, the Republic of Gambia in July 1995, the Republic of Senegal in January 1996, the Republic of Sao Tome and Principe in July 1997, and the Republic of Chad in August 1997.4 Lee Teng-hui’s next diplomatic goal was reestablishing a foothold in the Middle East. In 1990, Taiwan suffered a terrible diplomatic setback when the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia severed its ties with Taipei. However, during the first Iraqi War (Operation Desert Storm) in August 1990, Taiwan contributed tens of millions of dollars to help defray Uncle Sam’s expenditures. For example, Taiwan gave Jordan US$10 million in cash, plus another 10 million dollars in rice and blankets in spite of the fact that Jordan had severed its formal ties with Taiwan in 1977. Responding to Taiwan’s generosity, Crown Prince Hassan of Jordan and Foreign Minister Hamdan of the United Arab Emirates invited Lee Teng-hui for an informal visit to their states. On April 2, 1995, during an official luncheon in Abu Dhabi, Lee and his host Crown Prince Khalifa had substantive exchanges on natural gas and petro-chemical development, as well as the possibility of establishing a Taiwanese warehouse on the shore of the UAE. And in Amman, Prince Abudullah, then commander of Jordan’s special troops, hosted a state dinner for the ROC delegation.5 Lee Teng-hui’s flexible diplomacy in general, and his personal visits to Southeast Asia, Central America, South Africa, and the Middle East in particular, were sometimes criticized for being both reckless and not cost-effective. For example in May 1994, Lee secretly gave the African National Congress US$10.5 million, but by November 1997, President Nelson Mandela of South Africa had announced plans to set up diplomatic ties with Beijing. Critics charged that Lee not only squandered resources without substantive diplomatic gains, but also put Taiwan in grave peril of provoking retaliation from China. Moreover, the money Lee used to “bribe” foreign leaders came primarily from the president’s secret slush funds—the kind of practice that

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often invited embezzlement and other improper use by his aides, as recent investigations have revealed. Lee’s rationale, however, was that Taiwan had a $98 billion foreign exchange reserves—the second largest in the world after Japan—and that Taiwan could afford his money diplomacy. But more importantly, these activities and foreign aid programs were very important steps in breaking out of China’s containment and in achieving Taiwan’s international legitimacy as a sovereign state. In 1995, Lee even offered one billion U.S. dollars to the United Nations for a seat in the cash-starved body, a gesture that underscored Lee’s burning desire to gain international status for his islandnation. Though the U.S. State Department cautioned him not to push PRC too hard and to take into account severe political and economic consequences, Lee was determined to be recognized as an active player on the world scene. In fact, as a result of Lee’s persistent and tireless efforts, Taiwan had, by 1995, staffed some 130 embassies, consulates, or nonofficial representative offices in 90 countries. In addition, Taiwan had established 45 agricultural mission groups in more than 30 countries, providing agricultural, medical, technical, and other assistance to the natives.6 But Beijing viewed Lee’s pursuit of flexible diplomacy only as a means, his end was an independent Taiwan state separate from mainland China. On January 30, 1995, PRC President Jiang Zemin made an eight-point statement, saying that “Chinese won’t attack Chinese” while urging negotiations on unification. Nine weeks later on April 8, Lee responded with a six-point statement, in which he also called for peaceful unification but urged stronger bilateral exchanges between the mainland and Taiwan.7 In the meantime, the PRC exerted considerable diplomatic pressure on countries that had formal ties with Beijing not to treat Lee Teng-hui as a head of state, and not to accord customary diplomatic privileges to Lee’s visit. A case in point was the shabby treatment that Lee received at a transit stop in Honolulu during his 1994 trip to Central America. In order to avoid Beijing’s wrath, the U.S. State Department arranged for Lee’s chartered plane to land in a small Hawaiian military airbase and sent a low-level colonel to greet him. As soon as Lee learned of the substandard airport facilities, he decided not to get off the plane. When the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Chairman Natale H. Bellocchi went aboard Lee’s plane, Lee intentionally put on a casual jacket and wore a pair of slippers, then darkly complained to Bellocchi that he represented a democratic sovereign state and that he deserved a measure of dignity, and would not tolerate such second-class treatment. Clearly, China’s goals were to narrow Taiwan’s foreign alignments and to rile Lee whenever possible. On the other hand, Lee had learned to use money as a leverage to counter China’s strategy. For example, in June 1994, Lee’s KMT treasury czar Liu Tai-ying hired Cassidy & Associates, a powerful Washington lobby firm, to


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strengthen Lee’s hand in winning favors with the U.S. government. Taiwan reportedly paid Cassidy & Associates an annual fee of 1.5 million U.S. dollars for three years.8 Early in April 1995, Frank H.T. Rhodes, Cornell’s ninth president, visited Lee in Taipei and discussed the feasibility of Lee’s visiting Ithaca to attend a ceremony establishing an endowed faculty chair that was created by a US$2.5 million donation from Cornell’s 300-strong alumni in Taiwan. This time, Cassidy and Associates lined up 369 House of Representatives as well as a nearly unanimous bipartisan Senate vote to support Lee’s visit. In addition, hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese Americans sent postcards, letters, and telegrams to the White House, requesting that the U.S. government stand up to China and issue a visa to Lee Teng-hui. Against the advice of his State Department, Bill Clinton ultimately relented, but under restricted terms of privilege that Lee would visit Cornell as a “private traveler” rather than a head of state and that he would not hold a press conference while in America. But China immediately lodged fierce protests and objections to Lee’s visit to Cornell. PRC President Jiang Zemin expressed outrage, Foreign Minister Qian Qichen summoned U.S. Ambassador J. Stapleton Roy for a diplomatic dressing down, and Defense Minister Chi Haotian postponed his official visit to the United States. In addition, China threatened to cancel the purchase of Boeing jet liners and close down the U.S. consulate in Chengdu, in Sichuan province.9 Amidst such an uproar, and even the threat of war between China and Taiwan, Lee Teng-hui made his historic journey—a feat Lee called “as tough as going to the moon.” While Henry Kissinger, the man who invented the One-China Policy, called Lee’s abandonment of the protocol “highly reckless and provocative,” Senators Frank Murkowski (R-AK), Jesse Helms (R-NC), Alfonso M. D’Amato (R-NY) and many other prominent Republicans came to the Syracuse Airport to welcome Lee. The mayor of Syracuse then declared June 8 “President Lee Teng-hui Day.”10 Ironically, because of China’s threat of a diplomatic rift with the United States, Lee scored public opinion points. On the afternoon of June 9, Lee delivered the 1995 Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Lecture to an audience of more than 4,000 Americans. More than 400 international journalists, videographers, and photographers came to Ithaca to cover Lee’s speech. During a 40-minute speech, entitled, “Always in My Heart,” the six-foot tall, silveredhair Lee reminisced about his graduate life at Cornell and summed up what he called the “Taiwan Experience.” He took pride in the island-nation’s successful constitutional reform and pointed out that Taiwan was the sixth largest trading partner of the United States and also the number two buyer of U.S. treasury notes. Lee also cited Czech President Vacla Havel’s motto, “the salvation of this human world lies nowhere else but in the human heart,” and called for closer ties between Taiwan and the United States.11

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There is no question that Lee had played a high stakes poker game, as Beijing viewed his Cornell visit as the most egregious example of Taiwan’s prelude to an independent state. On August 15, China began to threaten Taiwan with a series of war games, first firing tactical guided missiles and live artillery shells into the sea 136 kilometers north of Taiwan. Once again, Lee showed the defiance that ultimately became part of his legacy. In the fall of 1995, Lee directed his armed forces to conduct Taiwan’s own military exercises and called on his Asian neighbors to take security measures for selfdefense. Lee’s bravado, though frowned upon by the United States, might have actually increased his popularity among the Taiwanese voters. While Lee was pursuing his aggressive, personal diplomacy all over the world, he continued to push for democratic reforms at home. Among his immediate concerns were several important elections in three consecutive years between 1994 and 1996. In1994, citizens of Taiwan were called to elect the governor of Taiwan province as well as the mayors of Taipei and Kaohsiung, the two largest cities on the island. Since both were formerly directly administered by the central government as special municipalities, this was a significant step forward for democracy. The ensuing elections for a new Legislative Yuan in 1995 and a new National Assembly in 1996 were also critical for Lee’s reform agenda. And of course, on March 23,1996, the president and the vice president of ROC would also to be directly elected by the voters for the first time in Taiwan history. Lee had every intention of winning that particular election. The December 1994 elections were as much about the personalities of the candidates as they were about the issues of local and national interests. In the gubernatorial race, the KMT candidate James Soong faced the DPP candidate Chen Din-nan, a former magistrate from Ilan county. Soong, who had a huge campaign fund and a well-greased party machine, received more than 4.7 million votes and handily defeated his opponent by a ratio of 56.22 to 38.72 percent. In the southern port city of Kaohsiung, the KMT candidate Wu Den-yih received 54.46 percent of the votes whereas his DPP opponent Chang Chun-hsiung got 39.29 percent. But the real battleground—some even claimed the harbinger of Taiwan’s democratic development—was the mayoral race in the capital city Taipei, where three major parties engaged in a fierce struggle. The DPP fielded a 43-year-old brilliant lawyer named Chen Shui-bian, who was once a political prisoner, a Taipei City councilman and a member of the Legislative Yuan. The charismatic Chen was quick witted, and well-known for his fiery oratory. The KMT candidate Huang Ta-chou was President Lee Teng-hui’s Taita student, who was appointed the mayor of Taipei by Lee in 1990. But Huang was too traditional and not very articulate, and performed poorly during the two television debates. Jaw Shau-kong, candidate of the New Party, was viewed by the second-generation mainlanders as


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a shining star and a true leader. Jaw easily appealed to mainland immigrants who lived in traditional military compounds as well as to young liberal voters. The campaign was relatively rational with occasional fisticuffs, and punctuated by serious debates over the environment, education, public health, transportation, as well as national security issues. An estimated 77 percent of Taipei’s 1.8 million eligible voters went to the polls, of whom more than 615,000 (43.67 percent) cast their votes for DPP’s Chen, while over 420,000 (30.17 percent) chose Jaw of the New Party. During the campaign, Lee Teng-hui went on many hustings for his hand-picked candidate. However, Huang placed an embarrassing third, winning less than 26 percent of the votes.12 Political observers viewed the elections of 1994 as a milestone in Taiwan’s democratic development because the KMT for the first time lost not only the mayoral race in Taipei, but also its majority in its City Council, winning only 20 out of 52 seats. Indeed, frequent election cycles provided KMT opponents ample opportunities to make political gains against the ruling party. By then, more than 70 registered political parties had emerged, even though most of them were little more than a business card and a mailing address. Various media, think tanks and social movements were created, as well as several lobby groups concerned with single or multiple issues. But while elections were generally considered the pillars of democracy, some of the pillars were hollow. For one thing, these were very expensive, boisterous endeavors. Candidates usually spent between 25 to 50 times more money than their American counterparts on such things as flags and pennants, parades, feasts, advertisements, entertainments, and sometimes even on buying votes. Such frequent election cycles also drained the island’s human and material resources and distracted Lee’s administration from addressing fundamental economic and social issues. In order to break up the KMT monopoly of the electronic media, more than 40 “underground call-in” radio stations suddenly appeared on Taiwan’s air waves, turning the island into a media-saturated culture. Of the three major parties, only the KMT had well established local organizations, a huge business consortium, and a media empire. And to be sure, the KMT continued to control the governorship and the Kaohsiung city hall. But the two major opposition parties were off to the 1995 parliamentary races, emboldened by the encouraging 1994 results that had helped validate KMT’s vulnerability. On December 2, 1995, more than 9.5 million Taiwanese voters went to the polls and elected a new Legislative Yuan, the second since democratic reforms were initiated nine years earlier. The results gave the ruling KMT party yet another jolt as its nationwide voter support for the first time fell below 50 percent. Nevertheless, the KMT managed to win 85 seats (as against 96 in 1992) and maintained a razor thin two-seat majority in the new Legislature. The two-year-old New Party, which ran on its clean and uncorrupt

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image, not its stance on China, turned out to be the big winner as it increased from 7 seats to 21 seats and hoped to formulate a bona fide three-party system in Taiwan. The nine-year-old DPP, on the other hand, set forth a platform with a national sovereignty plank, but garnered only two percent more votes, improving from 50 seats in 1992 to 54 seats. Of the 164 new lawmakers, 128 were elected from the 29 electoral districts in the Taiwan area, 30 were nationwide representatives and six represented overseas Chinese. Among the highly publicized and hard-fought contests occurred in Chiayi City where the KMT Vincent Siew, a mild-mannered career bureaucrat amassed 67,029 votes against the incumbent DPP Trong R. Chai’s 58,848, the latter having devoted his life to a plebiscite on Taiwan’s independence.13 Results of the 1995 parliamentary election changed the political landscape in Taiwan and also set the stage for the island-nation’s first full-suffrage election of a new president, as well as for the elections for the third National Assembly only 15 weeks away. The presidential election of 1996 was a long time in coming, and not only consolidated Taiwan’s democratic edifice, but once again showed Lee’s political savvy. It began with party primaries when the KMT’s 14th National Congress convened in Taipei in August 1994 to nominate the party’s presidential candidate. Even though there were some 1.9 million card-carrying members, the KMT congress decided to limit eligible voters to 1,973 delegates, who represented six districts—Taipei, Hsinchu, Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung, and Hualien—throughout the island. On August 31, 1,795 attending delegates cast their ballots, among them 1,637 (91.2 percent) voted to nominate Lee Teng-hui as the party’s candidate for the presidency. Even before the KMT delegates had gone through such a formality, Lee had already made known his intention to have Premier Lien Chan (59) as his running mate for vice president. But as soon as KMT’s 14th National Congress declined to devolve the party’s presidential nomination to the entire 1.9 million members, Lin Yang-kang, then 69, one of KMT’s four vice chairmen and formerly governor of Taiwan and president of the Judicial Yuan, held a press conference and declared his intention to seek the presidency by means of collecting required signatures directly from citizens. Election laws require a minimum of 1.5 percent of the nation’s eligible voters, about 210,000 signatures, to qualify as a presidential candidate and Lin subsequently submitted 637,193 signatures to the election commission. By November 15, Lin had already worked out a deal to have the 76-year-old Hau Pei-tsun, who had been premier from 1990 to 1993, as his running mate. Lin and Hau’s challenge to the KMT organization came as no surprise. As a matter of fact, during the recent legislative elections, both Lin and Hau had stumped for the New Party. They now criticized the KMT as a party of patronage and called its leader Lee Teng-hui a “dictator.”


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On December 13, the KMT’s 31-member Central Standing Committee approved an investigation report from the party’s Evaluation and Discipline Committee to expel both Lin and Hau.14 This act, however, aggravated the ruling party’s differences into a formal split, seriously damaging the party’s image and prestige. In addition to the Lin-Hau team, Chen Li-an (58), President of the Control Yuan, also announced his candidacy. In due time, Chen paid a US$550,000 deposit and submitted 386,548 signatures to the election commission, then chose Wang Ch’ing-feng (43), a Taiwanese woman lawyer, to be his running mate.15 The DPP, on the other hand, followed a more complicated, controversial, and risky nomination process and its primaries produced many dramatic twists and turns. It proceeded in two phases, first to narrow the field of candidates and the second to have a runoff between the top two first-phase winners, Hsu Hsin-liang, and Peng Ming-min. Hsu, editor of the Formosa Magazine and Taiwan’s leading Hakka politician, conducted a vigorous primary campaign against the 72-year-old Peng, who was decorously called the “godfather of Taiwan independence.” They debated three times on television, in the end, Peng emerged victorious as he won a total of 177,477 votes, compared to Hsu’s 129,816 votes, thus becoming DPP’s first-ever presidential candidate.16 Peng then chose Hsieh Chang-ting (Frank, aged 49), a lawyer and seasoned politician, to be his running mate. The stage was now set for the historic event—Taiwan’s first, direct, popular election of a president and a vice president, as well as a new 334-member National Assembly. Plurality voting applied, meaning that the candidate with the most votes won. The four tickets, in order of their drawing ballot number, were: (1) Chen Li-an and Wang Ch’ing-feng; (2) Lee Teng-hui and Lien Chan; (3) Peng Ming-min and Frank Hsieh; and (4) Lin Yang-kang and Hau Pei-tsun. The election commission scheduled four nationwide televised forums for the candidates: February 25, March 9, and March 17 for presidential candidates, and March 3 for vice presidential candidates. As the election campaign wound down, gaily colored election pennants and sound trucks began to crowd the streets while the media—newspapers, radios, journals, televisions—kicked into high gear to cover the activities of respective candidates. The candidates and their surrogates waged grassroots campaigns by making connections with local political organizations, passing out handouts, and arranging displays of fireworks in both small villages and big cities, thus turning many streets into garbage dumps. In addition, the candidates, including mainlanders Chen Li-an and Hau Pei-tsun, delighted their audiences by addressing them in Taiwanese dialect. Trading business suits for sneakers, baseball caps, and windbreakers, the candidates almost always plunged into the crowd to shake hands at rallies. During such kinetic occasions, numerous

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uniformed guards, armed with M-16s and live ammunition, stood conspicuously close to the candidates while tens of thousands of enthusiastic crowd sat on the chairs or stood to watch entertainers and listen to speeches. Some of the rallies were like colorful carnival festivals, with audiences provided with foods, drinks, music, and souvenirs.17 Of the four candidates, Chen Li-an started strong but, primarily due to the lack of campaign funds and a clear-cut strategy, gradually fell behind the other contenders. But “outsider” rhetoric notwithstanding, Chen was no political neophyte. He had had a 30-year political career that included his top administrative posts in defense, economy, and intelligence. Furthermore, his late father Ch’en Ch’eng was Chiang Kai-shek’s right hand man in the 1950s and 1960s. In that sense, Chen himself represented the establishment and was an “insider.” The Lin and Hau ticket, on the other hand, enlisted the support of the New Party and openly committed themselves to unification with China. Hoping to undercut Lee Teng-hui’s popularity among the mainlanders, they also relentlessly criticized the corruption and inefficiency of the Lee administration while promising to reduce the influence and power of big business and gangsters.18 While Lee Teng-hui’s stance on the abstract issue of unification with China was purposefully blurred, the DPP could count on the stable support of 30 percent of the pro-independence public when Peng Ming-min repeatedly declared that “Taiwan is not a part of China” throughout the campaign. The former law professor elaborated: “There is no such thing as inherent or traditional territory because people do not belong to the land, but rather land belongs to people. Thus, the people of Taiwan have the right to decide the island’s status.”19 Peng listed several missed opportunities for Taiwan to declare independence, including right after World War II in 1945, in 1971 when UN admitted People’s Republic of China, and in 1987 when Taiwan lifted martial law. By labeling the KMT government “a localized foreign regime,” the DPP campaign slogan was “Peace, Dignity, and Taiwan President.” In addition, the DPP promoted constitutional reform, pledged to expand Taiwan’s maneuvering room in international society, and emphasized environmental protection and health care for the whole population. On his part, Lee Teng-hui confidently ran on his record, repeatedly telling the voters that he had almost completed a peaceful political revolution, established a National Health Insurance Program, and maintained sustained economic progress, making Taiwan one of the Asian tigers. Despite the high-profile split of Lin and Hau, Lee remained in firm control of the KMT’s party machine, as well as the party’s corporate and other assets, officially pegged at US$1.8 billion but generally believed to be several times that amount.20 Throughout the contest, Lee emphasized leadership qualities—vision, experience, global views,


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wisdom, and courage—and pledged to ensure public security and stability, continue economic prosperity and effective management of a great Taiwan, and enhance Taiwan’s international status and dignity. But the one issue that frequently raised the voters’ anxiety was the military threats by China. In particular, Lin and Hau, who were popular among the military and the veterans, accused Lee of dragging Taiwan to the brink of war, offering themselves as the antidotes. However, Lee Teng-hui knew very well that Beijing’s threats were primarily for its own “domestic consumption” and that China lacked the military equipment or skilled manpower to invade Taiwan at that point. Likewise, Lee consistently displayed his calm manner and forceful stance toward China, thus effectively tempered voter unrest.21 As a matter of fact, Lee would match Chinese military threats with verbal salvos as he declared in his typical televised addresses and stump speeches: “I want to emphasize that force and threats will not obstruct our pursuit of democracy, freedom and dignity”; “This kind of bullying mentality will only make those Chinese people who are yearning for freedom and democracy more disgusted with the Communist regime . . . They shall not achieve their purpose”; “We’re not shrimps with weak feet”; “There will be no surrender”; “China’s threats are just futile nagging.”22 As it turned out, there was a national backlash against China’s military threats because such saber rattling actually alienated the islanders from thoughts of unification and ironically helped to rally Taiwanese behind the incumbent Lee Teng-hui. In the face of renewed military provocations from mainland China, Taiwan’s well-armed 450,000-strong military strengthened its combat readiness, was put on heightened alert and told to be ready to strike back, especially those stationed on the offshore islands that are not covered by the Taiwan Relations Act—the U.S. law that requires the United States to take unspecified action in response to any Chinese military action against Taiwan. Consequently, U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry, in a strongly worded speech on February 13, urged Beijing to “refrain from menacing military maneuvers directed at trying to intimidate Taiwan.” On March 8, China test-fired three unarmed ballistic missiles into waters near Taiwan’s two major ports—Keelung and Kaohsiung. During the next week, China’s live-ammunition military exercises extended halfway across the Taiwan Strait from the coast of northern Kwangtung and Southern Fukien provinces, sending warplanes and ships of various classes beyond an imaginary line that Taiwan and mainland military units usually refrained from crossing. On March 9, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher said that China’s reckless military provocations “smack of intimidation and coercion” and that “China will face grave consequences from the United States if it decides to use force against Taiwan.”23 On March 12, a bipartisan group of House of Representatives called for explicit guarantees

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of a U.S. military defense of Taiwan if it were attacked by China while the Clinton administration was weighing other sanctions, depending upon the new developments. Despite China accusing the United States of conniving with Taiwanese separatists, the United States nevertheless sent two aircraft carriers battle groups to the region to deter a possible Chinese attack. In December, the nuclear-powered carrier USS Nimitz, accompanied by other escort warships, left the Persian Gulf and passed through the100-mile wide strait between Taiwan and the mainland. At this juncture, President Clinton had just appointed the 56-year-old James C. Wood Jr., ( J. D. University of Arkansas, 1965) to replace Natale Bellocchi as the chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan. Unlike his predecessors, Wood was not a career diplomat, nor a China expert. Thus, Wood had his hands full in dealing with the imminent Taiwan Strait crisis. Worse still, Wood quickly found himself in an awkward situation during his first visit to Taiwan between February 2 and February 15, 1996. The newly elected Taipei mayor, DPP stalwart Chen Shui-bian, in an election year scheme to embarrass the KMT government, announced that AIT owed the Taipei City millions of U.S. dollars in office building rentals. Nevertheless, Wood maintained effective communication with the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Washington, DC and routinely directed the activities of AIT’s Taipei and Kaohsiung staffs. He also made it known that AIT had no plans to evacuate any of the approximate 30,000 Americans from Taiwan.24 On the eve of the election, the Nimitz carrier battle group was in the South China Sea off the coast of Vietnam, a day or so away from Taiwan, as a precautionary measure. The Pentagon then confirmed that the Nimitz group would join another naval battle group led by the aircraft carrier USS Independence, which was within about 100 miles of Taiwan. The Nimitz and the Independence each carried about 55 combat aircraft—F-14 Tomcat fighters, F-A-18 Hornet strike fighters, and A-6 Intruder attack planes. In addition, the destroyer O’Brien, the guided-missile frigate Hewitt and the destroyer McCloskey, which were elsewhere in the region, were dispatched to join the Independence.25 With the presence of the U.S. carriers near Taiwan waters, Taiwan’s voters went to the polls on March 23 with enthusiasm. Out of the eligible 14,313,288 voters, 10,883,279 (76.04 percent) cast their ballots. The KMT’s Lee-Lien ticket won 5,813,699, or 54 percent of the votes; Peng-Hsieh of the DPP received 2,274,586, or 21.13 percent; Lin-Hau captured 1,603,790, or 14.90 percent; and Chen-Wang ended with 1,074,044, or 9.98 percent of the votes. In the elections of the National Assembly, the KMT won 183 seats as against 254 in 1991, the DPP captured 99 seats compared with 66 seats in 1991, the New Party took 46 seats as against none in 1991, and 6 seats


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went to independents. Lee Teng-hui carried every county and every city except Nantou County, where Lin Yang-kang was the native son and Lin’s brother the incumbent magistrate. In fiercely contested Taipei City, Lee won 38.90 percent as against Lin’s 24.87 percent and Peng’s 24.34 percent. Even in the DPP stronghold of Chiayi City, Lee beat Peng by 47.04 percent to 33.35 percent. In the less urban counties, such as Miaoli, Taitung, Hualien, Yunlin, and Hsinchu, Lee took more than 64 percent of the votes.26 The Americanization of Taiwan politics had been evident for a long time, but the 1996 direct presidential election demonstrated that democratic values can also be Asian values, and that freedom and human rights have universal appeal. It also demonstrated that China’s missiles and war games had less influence on Taiwan’s evolving democracy and emerging pluralistic civil society than the authoritarian Beijing government had anticipated. As a matter of fact, China’s military threats turned into a virtual referendum on the question of which candidate could most skillfully deal with Beijing to safeguard the island-nation’s future. It is clear that China’s missiles did not scare the Taiwanese, and perhaps even helped Lee to win 54 percent of the vote, to claim a mandate for his policies, validate his concept of the nation, and earn the title “Mr. Democracy.”27 DPP polls consistently showed that China’s attempts to make Lee the villain indeed backfired as an estimated 800,000 traditional DPP supporters abandoned Peng and cast their votes to protect Lee.28 Though DPP’s Peng Ming-min won just over 21 percent of the popular vote this time, its new standard-bearer was to crush the KMT candidate in the 2000 presidential election four years later. On the other hand, Lin Yangkang and Hau Pei-tsun, who represented the New Party and called Lee Teng-hui “Taiwanese, or Japanese, but not Chinese,” were beaten so badly that prounification sentiment in Taiwan was also squelched and the New Party was drubbed in the 1998 parliamentary elections. Following Lee’s inauguration ceremony on May 20, a new government was formed. Newly elected Vice President Lien Chan also served as Premier, but among the 19 cabinet members, three-fourths were new faces, and five were women. The fact that Lee appointed so many new people to his new government indicates that Lee understood the changing political environment of Taiwan. In his groundbreaking May 17 interview with CNN, the president vowed to build a consensus on government policy. The realistic Lee realized that even with a new electorate mandate, he faced a tough time in pushing his agenda, mainly because his party had a razor-thin majority in the Legislative Yuan and the KMT representatives in the National Assembly had been sharply reduced as well. Thus, in order to continue his domestic reforms, he had to solicit recommendations from outside his inner circle and to cut deals with the opposition parties. It is against this new political reality

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that Lee called for a national development conference (NDC) to discuss constitutional and governmental reforms, economic issues, and cross-strait relations, including reviewing the policy behind Taiwan’s US$24 billion investment on the mainland. Between December 23 and 28, 1996, 170 representatives, including members of political parties, elected representatives, government officials, scholars, experts, and community leaders, took part in the conference. Chaired by Vice President Lien Chan, it adopted 192 recommendations and proposals, among them strategies and concrete measures to reorganize and streamline the functions, operations, and structure of the provincial government. The conference also reached a consensus that elections for National Assembly, rural township, urban township, and townshiplevel municipality offices should be suspended, and that elections for provincial offices should be suspended starting the next terms.29 The New Party refused to go along with the proposed constitutional amendments and, on December 27, its chief delegates walked out of the conference. Four days later, James Soong also announced his resignation from the governorship in protest against NDC’s recommendations to freeze elections for provincial governor and for members of the Provincial Assembly. Soong, like most mainlanders, had long suspected Lee of harboring secret design to make Taiwan independent. Abolishing the provincial government represented Lee’s turning from secret plan to open action. At any rate, Soong’s open defiance came as a bombshell to Lee Teng-hui, who always thought Soong would go along with his scheme to eliminate entrenched bureaucrats at the provincial level. Nevertheless, Lee went ahead with the NDC proposal and appointed a committee to identify the overlapping layers of government bureaucracy, and to demarcate the powers and responsibilities of the central and local government, with the goal of making the government smaller and more efficient. As the state could no long dominate all aspects of social development and as multiparty politics had become a reality, Lee Teng-hui had to find new ways to restructure the government and to balance the state powers with a stronger and an increasingly active civil society. Since Taiwan was evolving from an agriculture-centered society to one based on industry, technology and export, and thanks to such factors as travel, education, immigration and media, the islanders had become more mobile, less tradition-bound, and also more assertive and conflict-prone. Because Taiwan’s civil society vigorously promoted basic freedom and human rights, Lee Teng-hui and the KMT leaders could no longer keep the population under tight control. As a consequence, the Lee government became less coercive and more constrained, and its police less ruthless but more corrupt. In the meantime, the notions of political democracy, social equality, and contractual relationships had already undermined the rigid and restraint Confucian social system


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of family and individual responsibility. In addition to political division, there was a rural–urban cleavage, a growing gap between the rich and poor, and wave after wave of street demonstrations, which engendered more conflicts and violence to a transitional society. Against the backdrop of such a transition, a series of gruesome crimes was committed between the winter of 1996 and the spring of 1997. On November 21, 1996, the magistrate of Taoyuan County Liu Pang-you and seven county councilmen were killed in the magistrate’s home. Ten days later, Peng Wan-ju, DPP’s Director of Women Membership, was murdered in Kaohsiung. Even though the government vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice, these two seemingly political murder cases were never solved. Then on April 14, 1997, Pai Hsiao-yen, the teenaged daughter of the famous actress Pai Ping-ping, was kidnaped. Two weeks later, the girl’s corpse was found in a sewer in Taipei suburb. Taiwan’s media, such as the United Daily News and China Times, which by now played an adversarial role against the government, harshly criticized the existing authorities and conditions. On May 4, a huge column of marchers, estimated 50,000, snaked through downtown Taipei and finally gathered in Taipei’s Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Park, chanting slogans critical of the government’s feeble and ineffective policy against the soaring crime rate and demanding better public security. Two more large scale demonstrations followed. On May 15, during his press conference, Lee made a public apology and vowed to do everything in his power to safeguard the safety and security of the citizens. In these hectic days, Lee Teng-hui took time out to receive retired U.S. General Colin Powell in February and talked with Dalai Lama in March. General Powell delivered a paid speech, titled, “Leadership and Challenge in a Changing World,” to a select audience in Taipei and afterward signed his recently published autobiography, My American Journey. The Dalai Lama was invited by devout Taiwan Buddhists who raised US$500,000 for Dalai Lama’s personal use. One year later, Lee Teng-hui presided over the founding of the “Dalai Lama Foundation,” which was to serve as a liaison office between Taiwan and the Tibetan exile government in India.30 Responding to public pressure, Lee Teng-hui partially reshuffled his cabinet as a few heads did fall. In May 1997, the new National Assembly opened its session to consider the NCD recommendations, but due to the obstruction of New Party members, President Lee was unable to deliver his state-of-the-nation report as had been customary. After more than 80 days of tense discussion and heated debate, the National Assembly did make some amendments to the ROC constitution—the fourth time during Lee’s presidency. It suspended the elections of governor and provincial assemblymen, but not to suspend elections for the more than 360 township-level governments that the NDC originally suggested. Thereafter, the Taiwan Provincial

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Government was restricted to implementing cabinet decisions and exercising limited supervisory functions while its employees were either absorbed by the central government or forced to retire. Another amendment stipulated that the appointment of the premier by the president no longer requires the consent of the Legislative Yuan. The amended constitution granted the Legislative Yuan the power to recall and impeach the president and the vice president. It also increased the seats of the Legislative Yuan from 164 to 225, to provide an opportunity for ambitious provincial assemblymen to continue public service. The National Assembly also passed amendments to enhance the independence of the judiciary and accentuated Article 80 that requires judges to be above political affiliation and free from any interference, but limited the Grand Justices—who interpret constitution and unify the interpretation of laws and orders—to an 8-year term without reappointment. The National Assembly also added amendments to guarantee minimum female representation in the legislature and to mandate facilities for disabled people in public places. On the other hand, it rescinded Article 164 that required the government to allocate no less than 15 percent of its budget for education and cultural expenditures during any fiscal year.31 Soon after the National Assembly completed its constitutional amendments, Lee Teng-hui called for the KMT’s 15th National Congress to elect the party chairman and to revamp party platform. Of the 2,209 delegates who attended the congress, 2,064 , or 93.44 percent, voted to reelect Lee the party chairman. However, during the ensuing election of the Central Standing Committee, 1,696 delegates cast their votes for James Soong, who was absent in the United States in protest. Soong’s popularity among the delegates suggests that there was an endemic restlessness within the KMT party. Nevertheless, Lee Teng-hui decided to cold-shoulder the ambitious mainlander Soong as he declared, on August 28, 1997, to form a new cabinet—his fifth one—with the Taiwan-born Vincent Siew as the premier. Siew, then 58, was a team player and a congenial person with a background in economics and trade. But Siew also served in the Legislative Yuan and was familiar with the violent antics and shouting matches that often erupted in the Legislative Yuan—which critics compared to a boxing ring or an American football field. With the logjam of bills awaiting passage by the Legislative Yuan, plus new bills to downsize the provincial government, Siew seemed to be a better choice than Soong. The average age of the new cabinet members was 55; four women were appointed to lesser posts. The new cabinet clearly indicated that President Lee was in charge of the government and that Premier Siew was to execute whatever policy Lee wished to make. James Soong, on the other hand, would be expelled from the KMT, but would form his own People First Party and run against the KMT presidential candidate Lien Chan in 2000. Soong, who previously considered himself like a son to Lee Teng-hui, would soon become Lee’s


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political nemesis. In life, most friendship is feigned. In politics, there are neither permanent comrades nor permanent enemies. At the time of Siew’s appointment, only 3 percent of Taiwan’s GDP came from the agricultural sector, while 35 percent came from the industrial sector, and the remaining 62 percent from the service sector.32 Thus, Premier Siew’s top priorities included making Taiwan a member in the World Trade Organization (WTO), developing the island into an Asia-Pacific regional operations center, strengthening the “Go South” investment and trade policy, and building an industrial infrastructure, including the construction of the North-South high-speed railway. Thanks to the Lee-Siew leadership, Taiwan escaped from a severe financial turmoil in 1997 that not only caused bear market all over Asia, but also threatened global convulsions. Initially, it started with the rapidly declining value of the Thai baht during the summer, but quickly triggered an Asian economic infection. But as soon as Lee and Siew sensed the knife-edge the Asian economy was teetering on, they effectively utilized Taiwan’s huge foreign reserves to shore up the island’s currency and stock market, thus, steering Taiwan away from the financial menace. Premier Siew also carried out a military reform program by reducing the number of soldiers under arms from 453,000 in 1996 to 400,000 and eliminating the Bolshevik-style political role of the military while strengthening Taiwan’s air and sea defense. Finally, in designing its policies and ordinances to improve Taiwan’s economic competitiveness, the Siew cabinet tried to balance consumer and corporate rights, taking into consideration the interests between industry and business on the one hand, and those of the farmers, workers, teachers, and social welfare recipients on the other hand. However, the increasing crime rate, social problems and deteriorating environment ultimately caused a reversal of political fortunes for Lee Teng-hui and his party. During the November 1997 elections, the KMT lost nearly two-thirds of the local government seats contested while the DPP won 12 out of 23 seats for county magistrates and city mayors. The KMT retained only 8 of its previous 15 seats, with three others going to independents. And, for the first time, the DPP out-polled the KMT 43.32 percent to 42.12 percent overall—another milestone in Taiwan’s political development.33 It was a strong indication of a changing political mood. Though most of the magistrates and mayors were elected by their personal or family standing in local electorates, a few of them did have national, not just parochial, instincts, maintaining broad contacts with students, intellectuals, organized labor, and business leaders. The election sent a clear message that the people were dissatisfied with the ruling KMT, now in power for half a century. While Lee Teng-hui and Vincent Siew were startled by the erosion of KMT grassroots support, they were even more upset by the U.S. tilt toward China, which had shifted from “containment” to “engagement.” In order to

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assuage China’s anger with Lee Teng-hui’s trip to Cornell University and in order to induce Beijing to resume diplomatic dialogue with Washington, Bill Clinton invited PRC President Jiang Zemin to visit the United States in 1997. Then, during his reciprocal state visit to China in early summer of 1998, Clinton, who in 1992 assailed then-President George Bush’s compromise with “the butchers of Tienanmen,” praised Beijing’s economic reforms, and talked about a “strategic partnership” between the United States and China. Worse still, at a round table discussion in Shanghai, Clinton revealed that he had told Jiang Zemin: “We don’t support independence for Taiwan, or two Chinas, or one Taiwan—one China. And we don’t believe that Taiwan should be a member in any organization for which statehood is a requirement.”34 Clinton’s so-called Three Nos statement not only caused consternation in the U.S. Congress and dismay in Japan, but also stimulated more debate on the sovereignty issue among Taiwan’s various political groups. Though the U.S. State Department dispatched Richard C. Bush, Chairman of AIT, to Taiwan to offer reassurances and to explain that U.S. policy on Taiwan had not changed, Lee Teng-hui’s ambitions to establish a state-like presence for Taiwan in the world arena had suffered a severe setback.35 China then began to play the “Three Nos Clinton Card” by initiating new measures to force Taiwan to resume cross-strait talk, which had been interrupted since the April 1993 Singapore meeting. Under the new circumstances, Lee Teng-hui relented and agreed to send an 11-member delegation to talk with the Chinese in mainland China during October 14–19. Led by Koo Chen-fu, Chairman of Taiwan’s Strait Exchange Foundation, the Taiwanese delegation conducted negotiations with its Chinese counterpart at Shanghai’s “Peace Hotel.” It was led by Wang Daohan, Chairman of Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait. Koo then journeyed to Beijing and met with Jiang Zemin and other PRC leaders in Beijing. At the end of this historic talk, the two sides reached four mutually agreed points, including continuing dialogue and actively resolving problems stemming from crossstrait interactions, such as personal and property safety. The Taiwan delegation also invited the mainland delegation to visit Taiwan in the very near future.36 During the December 1998 election cycle, Lee Teng-hui’s KMT took advantage of the abating cross-strait tensions and the marginalization of several fledgling parties—including the New Party, the Green party, the Taiwan Independence Party, and the New Nation Alliance—to regain control of the Legislative Yuan, the National Assembly, and the Taipei mayoral office, as well as the city councils of both Taipei and Kaohsiung. Only DPP candidate Frank Hsieh won the Kaohsiung city hall, and that by a narrow margin. For the next seven months, Lee Teng-hui continued to dominate the party and the government. During this unusually tranquil period, President Lee, in an


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interview with Deutsche Welle Radio of Germany on July 9, 1999, demanded a “special state-to-state” diplomatic apparatus by which future China–Taiwan negotiations would be conducted. While Washington was stunned by such an unexpected demand, Beijing ordered Wang Daohan to postpone his scheduled visit to Taiwan, exactly what Lee was hoping for. Lee Teng-hui subsequently told the American political scientist June Teufel Dreyer that he made such a demand to forestall Wang Daohan’s trip where Wang, he had declared, was going to proclaim that Taiwan accepted PRC’s One-China principle.37 In the meantime, Lee continued his flexible diplomacy as he received China’s prominent dissident Wei Jingsheng and hosted a luncheon for Jimmy Carter, who decided in 1979 to break off diplomatic relations with Taiwan and recognize People’s Republic of China. However, outside the Taipei Guest House, where the American ex-president was staying, a few angry Taiwanese protested, with one banner reading: “Jimmy Carter, go home and sell your peanuts.” In early September 1999, Lee played host to a Central American summit conference in Taipei where leaders from Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Dominica, and Belize met to discuss trade, investment and other economic and agricultural cooperation in the region. And during the third week of November, Lee met with Senator Robert Dole and his wife Elizabeth Dole who publicly praised Lee for his efforts to “continue this canter toward a mature, vibrant democracy” in Taiwan.38 While Lee Teng-hui and his fellow Taiwanese were feeling their oats, a powerful earthquake, registering 7.3 on the Richter scale, suddenly rocked the island to its foundation at 1:47 in the morning of September 21, 1999. The epicenter of the quake was located in the island’s banana belt in the Chichi township of Nantou county, but within minutes, four simultaneous aftershocks shook both the northern and southern parts of the island, including Taipei. The devastating “9.21 Quake” destroyed or seriously damaged 119,000 buildings, took a total of 2,492 lives, injured more than 10,000 people, and left hundreds of thousands without home. It also caused an estimated NT$300 billion (or US$10 billion) worth of property losses.39 These were the most destructive earthquakes for more than a century in Taiwan and, as Lee Teng-hui put it, “God’s final test on my presidency.” Within hours, Lee Teng-hui flew to Nantou, Taichung, and Fengyuan to learn about the disasters firsthand, to be seen by the victims and the media, and to be briefed by local officials. After making a brief television appearance, Lee called for an emergency meeting at the Presidential Office and on the following day, a “relief center” was set up to coordinate resources for the massive relief work. On September 25, Lee issued an emergency decree, which would remain in force for the next six months, and with subsequent approval by the Legislative Yuan, his government could now deal with the emergency without

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worrying too much about the restraints of the existing budget, public bond regulations, national property laws, or land usage laws. The emergency also granted officials and relief workers leeway to cut through bureaucratic red tape regarding city planning, environmental restrictions, water conservation, building codes, and the like. Traditionally, September is a month to be merry in Taiwan because the Mid-Autumn Festival and the Teacher’s Day both fall in this month, and because it is the time for family reunions and celebrations. The natural disaster however changed the mood of the nation as the hundreds of thousands affected by the quake had difficulty knowing what to do with themselves during this year’s festival. Consequently, despite the government’s vigorous efforts to dole out cash, provide shelters, food, and water for the homeless, to rescue those remained trapped under collapsed buildings and to deploy armed forces in the disaster areas, polls showed that nearly two thirds of the public were dissatisfied with the government’s overall relief work. And in spite the NT$130 billion that the government appropriated for the quake victims, plus all kinds of foreign personnel, machines and materials sent to Taiwan from 38 countries and international organizations, the recovery and the islandwide reconstruction would take a much longer time, in fact continuing beyond the new millennium and into the next administration. Many Taiwanese were also upset because, in an impromptu press conference on June 7, Lee Teng-hui announced the donation of US$300 million to aid Kosova refugees in Macedonia, Albania, and other Balkan countries. Partly to respond to his critics, Lee Teng-hui, on November 8—exactly 49 days after the quake—made known his 30,000-word “Relief Work Diary,” in which Lee recorded the places he visited, the people he met, the measures he took, and the decisions he made, as well as his daily activities during these trying days.40 The 9.21 quake brought all sorts of social, economic, educational, legal, architectural, and environmental problems and it would take a long while before the islanders could restore their sense of normalcy. Not unexpectedly, it also turned into a political liability for the ruling KMT party. Even before the shock of the quake had faded away, Taiwan had reverted to the usual partisanship. During the past 50 years, Taiwanese had forged a peculiar love–hate relationship with the KMT. Many residents hated the party with a passion, but hundreds of thousands of others looked to the government to save them from invasion, hunger and worse. Interesting, it would take a big earthquake like this one to cause a political earthquake on the island as the voters of Taiwan cast their ballots to end the KMT rule on March 18, 2000—first time ever in Taiwan. The DPP candidate Chen Shui-bian won 4,977,697 votes (39.30 percent) as against the KMT-turned-independent James Soong’s 4,664,972 votes (36.84 percent) and the KMT Lien Chan’s mere 2,925,513 votes (23.10 percent).41 In spite


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of its rich campaign war chest and deep-rooted party structure in every community, the KMT candidate suffered a humiliating defeat. Observers attributed the DPP historic victory to the split within the KMT forces and also to Lee Teng-hui’s moving away from a pro-unification stance favored by Lien Chan. Two days after the election, disgruntled KMT loyalists demonstrated at the party’s headquarters while angry supporters of James Soong set cars on fire nearby President Lee’s residence. They charged that it was Lee who forced James Soong to leave the KMT and to run as an independent and that Lee should be held responsible for splitting the party. They accused Lee of waging a half-hearted, wooly campaign on behalf of his own KMT candidate, Lien Chan. They blamed him for leaking secret KMT documents implicating James Soong in a huge KMT financial scandal. In the same vein, they also charged Lee of secretly conniving with the DPP and providing aid to Chen Shui-bian during the last days of the campaign. Thus, they called Lee a “liar” and a “hypocrite,”and demanded his immediate resignation as the party chairman.42 The distressed Lien Chan also asked him to step down right away, instead of serving for a six-month transition period. In such a politically charged atmosphere and under pressure from other leading KMT members, Lee experienced a sinking feeling and, on March 24, reluctantly passed the baton of the party chairmanship to Lien Chan, who had been his deputy for the past four years. Two months later, on May 20, 2000, the 77-year-old Lee handed power to the DPP Chen Shui-bian, ending his colorful and stormy 12-year presidency, as well as ending an era of iconic Taiwan leaders—including Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo—whose long tenures and strong personal styles left a deep imprint on modern Taiwan. On his last day as president, Lee received Lech Walesa, former premier of Poland and a Nobel Peace Prize winner. After the usual courtesies and protocol, they complimented one another for replacing their respective Bolshevik-style party-governments with a multiparty democracy and a functioning constitution. It was a rainy afternoon when Lee bade farewell to the Presidential Office, wherein he exercised leadership and used the power of persuasion during the past 12 years to establish a democratic, free, and prosperous society on what his Hakka grandfather would call the “Feng-lai Immortal Island.”43 As 28 years of public life were being carefully packed away, Lee was preparing to move to a Taoyuan suburb called the “Green Hill Mansion,” where he and his wife would spend their golden years. In addition, Lee kept an office on the top floor of a 30-story building called “Taiwan Research Institute” in Tamsui where he regularly receives guests, writes speeches and book-length manuscripts, and engages in other public activities appropriate to an ex-president. The tall structure is nothing like an American

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presidential library, but from his office, Taiwan’s ex-president can see a mountain named for the goddess Kuan-yin and the mouth of the Tamsui River. There, the adrenaline-charged days have given way to occasional childhood reminiscence as well as to reflection on his incredible life. But Lee’s retirement is far from quiescent, as the restless Lee does not wish to disappear into opprobrium like many ex-presidents. His energy, his personality, and his “big mouth” frequently cause him to make impromptu hype comments, thus creating many unexpected headlines news. In spite of his declining age and his two major bypass heart surgeries, and in spite of the many diplomatic roadblocks thrown at him by Beijing, Lee Teng-hui continues to travel abroad to promote himself and his beloved Taiwan. For example, in late June 2000, he presented a paper at the Schumpeter Society conference at Manchester University in England and, in October 2000, attended a “2000 Millennium Forum” in Prague, Czechoslovakia. On April 22, 2001, when he went to an Osaka suburban hospital for a post heart surgery checkup, more than 200 news reporters and nearly 1,000 Japanese well-wishers came to the Kansai Airport to greet him. And on June 26–28, 2001, Lee once again returned to Cornell University to officiate the establishment of its $62.5 million “Lee Teng-hui Nano Technology Institute.” Though planned as a low-key visit, 42 news organizations sent 72 journalists, videographers and photographers to cover Lee’s 2001 visit.44 Once again, Beijing sent an official protest to Cornell President Hunter Rawlings as soon as Lee’s visit was reported in the news media. Since his retirement from presidency, Lee continues to enjoy relatively good health, notwithstanding two heart bypass surgeries, and remains fairly active intellectually and politically. There is no question that Lee will try his best to see to it that his successors uphold the fundamental democratic values and economic freedoms, but more importantly that the successors will preserve Taiwan’s sovereignty and fight for the island-nation’s independence. This is why Lee formed a new strategic alliance with the DPP and why he works so closely with President Chen Shui-bian. Chen was elected by only a small plurality in 2000, and at the time, was not as well trained in governance as either Lien Chan or James Soong. Indeed, Chen came to office with a limited mandate and also faced a rough battle against the opposition-controlled Legislative Yuan. But Lee functioned as Chen’s mentor and eased a peaceful transition of power to the inexperienced DPP, thus minimizing any damage that might have been caused by inter-Taiwanese squabbles and political nastiness. Unlike American ex-presidents, Lee remains a force to be reckoned with—it is generally believed that Lee was also instrumental in Chen’s successful bid for reelection in 2004. For one thing, Lee is the spiritual leader of the Taiwan Solidarity Union, a party of ardent, lifelong campaigners for


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Taiwan independence. In that capacity, Lee regularly teaches seminars at the so-called Lee Teng-hui Leadership School. For another, Lee is the best-known Taiwanese in the world and is well connected with business community and nongovernment organizations, such as the Presbyterian Church and the Farmers’ Associations. He also publishes books in both the Chinese and Japanese languages, frequently gives lectures at colleges and universities throughout the island, and can easily mobilize hundreds of thousands of Taiwan citizens to demonstrate in streets. However, Lee has his limits and his dream of establishing an independent, sovereign Taiwan state separate from China will depend upon so many variables, including those in the hands of Chinese leaders and American policy makers.


CHAPTER 10

Epilogue

T

he beautiful island of Taiwan abounds with life that has been molded by unseen forces for over three centuries. As complex groups of immigrants evolved, Taiwanese society repeatedly experienced defeats—in such sorrowful years as 1642, 1683, 1895, and 1947. As a vanquished nation, Taiwan’s people responded in a variety of psychological, cultural and political forms. After each defeat, the spiritual and moral backbone of Taiwan was nearly crushed. Its people were forced to learn the language, the soul, the spirit, and the cultural identity of the victorious nations—from the Dutch, the Japanese, and the Chinese. Furthermore, the lack of social consensus and the disruption of political continuity added to the cultural problems of Taiwan. During the occupation, the islanders initially resisted the foreign regime, but ultimately succumbed to the victor’s demands for moral and spiritual surrender. Nevertheless, the defeats did not altogether derange nor disassemble all of the island’s cultural elements. In time, they added to the mosaic of a new national identity and created notions of colonial dignity and a shared desire for home rule. The result was that throughout the centuries, Taiwanese adopted certain traits of the victors and rejects others. They consumed changes and changed themselves. In other words, Taiwan might have succumbed to superior powers, but even in defeat retained its moral and intellectual distinctiveness, ultimately creating a unique sense of belonging to what the Taiwanese proudly call the Heritage of the Immortal Island. Human memory is selective, emphasizing certain aspects while ignoring others. And it was this sense of self, melded with the memories of defeats, oppression, brutalities, and massacres that forge the identities of Lee Teng-hui’s Taiwan. Whenever Taiwan was ruled by colonial power, it had people with sticky feet, marsupial collaborators, poisonous traitors, toe-tapping cowards, and

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many more. On the other hand, in the throes of every rebirth, there were also heroes, martyrs, and dissidents of all kinds acting in defiance against their colonial masters according to the models set out in Taiwan’s history. Though it is difficult to know the depth of Lee Teng-hui’s personal conviction, it is clear that he was not a purist with regard to ideology and political affiliations, successively transforming himself from a loyal subject of Japanese emperor, to a collaborator of the Chiang regime, and finally becoming a champion of Taiwan’s independence. Because every new regime rewrites history, it always selects documents from the past and reshapes them according to interests of the present. During the Reign of White Terror of the 1950s and 1960s, Taiwan’s intelligentsia, who sought job security and favors with the state, could and often did make propaganda for the KMT regime while ignoring the crimes it committed. Consequently, contemporary Taiwanese politics is replete with intellectual and emotional debates about the island’s history. With few exceptions, contemporary Taiwanese writers tend to glorify those who defied the colonial masters and those who had dogged tenacity in the face of adversity. Thus, while this book is about the life of Lee Teng-hui and the history of Taiwan during the past century, it is also a metaphor for present-day Taiwan. It is mindful of the philosophy of English political scientist Edmund Burke (1729–97), who insisted that the social contract should not be negotiated solely between the citizens and those in power. Instead, it should be “a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”1 In trying to fathom the waxing and waning of Lee Teng-hui’s status in Taiwan history, to search for Lee’s underpinnings of ideas, and to evaluate Lee’s flaws and virtues, the book outlines traditions and changes in Taiwan during the last century and links Lee Teng-hui’s memory, imagination, and his Japanese education to the formation of his Taiwanese consciousness. It memorializes victims of the Japanese colonial rule and the KMT terror in Taiwan while discussing the complex relationships between party-state and pluralistic society, political repression and economic prosperity, as well as various forms of Taiwanese cultural memory. It analyzes the stages and processes through which Taiwan evolves from what Thomas Gold calls “a highly penetrative Leninist” KMT system of governance into a fledgling democracy in the 1990s.2 It traces the situational and dispositional variables that foster Lee’s particular beliefs, but above all, it discusses issues of Taiwanese collective guilt, memory and identity. For it was during the presidency of Lee Teng-hui that the state for the first time ever expressed remorse and repentance, condemned its action of the past, demonstrated its transformation by discontinuing KMT’s political traditions, and finally started searching for a new identity.

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Taiwan had a dizzying variety of racial admixtures and was relatively socially homogeneous until the mainlander Chinese came to the island in the late 1940s. In the1950s when Lee was being reeducated to become Chinese, he, like millions of his fellow Taiwanese, was still breathing the air of war and defeat and there were tensions between the Taiwanese and the Chinese. The Sanchih into which Lee was born was a farming community, proud of its pioneer heritage but a cultural backwater compared to Tamsui and Taipei. But it was in Tamsui and Taipei that Lee spent his formative years. As a youth, Lee enjoyed intellectual exchanges with kindred spirits, was thoroughly imbued with Japanese culture, and was also attracted to Marxism. Since then, Lee Teng-hui oscillated between the experiences of his formative years and the reality he faced at different stages of his life. Always flirting with a tantrum just under his well-behaved surface, Lee was erudite and loving, but, like a circus lion, he was always fiercely unpredictable, as evidenced by his conversion to Christianity, to the KMT political ideology, and finally to the Taiwan independence movement. Lee rose to power without having the ties by blood, marriage, family pedigree, business, or special kuan-hsi (personal connections) with KMT elites. He achieved leadership status through his temperament, dexterity, and tirelessness of his intellectual quest, or perhaps by happenstance. Though he had collaborated with KMT’s autocratic and corrupt administrations, he resents the idea that he sold out his soul in exchange for power. As anti-KMT Taiwanese felt disenfranchised in the 1970s, Taiwan’s political debate was gradually radicalized and many opposition leaders were jailed or exiled. The most ironic twist of fate was that, the more the KMT attempted to silence Taiwanese dissidents, the more the KMT needed Taiwanese collaborators like Lee Teng-hui. Thus, within a span of ten years, Lee was elevated to the mayor of Taipei, the governor of Taiwan, vice president of the KMT government, and finally the president of the Republic of China. It is difficult to ascertain if, during this time, Lee felt a restless guilt for the suffering of those Taiwanese dissidents whom he could not help through his influence. Or whether he was tortured by the fact that his meteoric rise to power was somehow built upon the sacrifice of those who dared to defy KMT rule. On the other hand, Lee might not see himself as espousing evil, but using it when needed and then trying to make it up with good as the Hebrew scripture says: “Be not overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom., 12:21). After being sheathed in the velvet glove of KMT paternalism for nearly three decades, Lee, who sensed that public opinion was on the side of direct election of the president, dramatically announced his support for the proposal championed by the opposition DPP, and, with his usual cunning and an iron fist, helped to transform Taiwan’s political tradition from a one-party

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rule to a functioning democracy. Ever a complex man, Lee’s bigger-than-life persona brought sound and fury to Taiwan’s politics. His 12-year presidency was a strange combination of constitutional reforms without consensus, economic prosperity without clean government, diplomatic isolation without haplessness, social protests without disorder, national identity divisiveness without bloodshed, and great hope without certainty for the future. Lee left behind a politically, economically, and socially transformed country—but also a legacy of autocratic rule and controversy. Furthermore, after the presidential election of 2000, he broke off with the KMT, causing deeper cracks within Taiwan’s seemingly unbreakable political facade. Was Lee’s rebellion against the KMT a carefully meditated plan, or was it another episode of his reinventing character, or did divine reality also act to influence Lee’s destiny? While there maybe no simple answer to this question, Lee’s apologists see his political U-turn as normal and noble, because it demonstrates his courage and open-mindedness. It is a cliche that the historical reputation of great personality is in the fickle eye of beholders and Lee Teng-hui is no exception. When Lee first took over the presidency in 1988, he used his intellect and skilled leadership to establish the mores needed for an entrepreneurial market system. Lee seized the opportunity, harnessed the energy of his well-educated people, and made Taiwan into an economic power. Indeed, in the 1990s, Taiwan was bursting with economic dynamism based on diverse agriculture and manufacturing in a vast world market. Lee’s Taiwan, then, was a symbol of happiness and better life. By comparison, the memory of the 2.28 traumatic historical event and the ensuing collateral suffering under KMT’s reign of terror, takes in a specific historical culture. Thus, Lee’s admirers could convincingly claim that Lee brought democracy, freedom and prosperity to Taiwan without violence and bloodshed—a rare accomplishment in the exceedingly violent and cruel Chinese political tradition. And of the several epochs in Taiwanese history, Lee’s is the one in which Taiwan was not only propelled into a new era, but also constructed a new national identity. They praise Lee for his competence, strength and optimism, and would even honor him with the title of “Father of New Taiwan.” Lee’s detractors, particularly those with nostalgia for the Chiang regime, on the other hand, can easily paint a more harrowing portrait of the first Taiwanese president because he is not the leader who symbolizes loyalty, integrity, consistency, and magnanimity.3 In their opinion, Lee represents a pattern of “deviousness, hubris, and irresponsible political behavior,” and is interested only in his own self-preservation. They accuse Lee of weakening government accountability, of colluding with mafia and big businesses, of neglecting environment protection, and of failing to contain rising crimes.

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Moreover, near the end of his presidency, Lee began to denigrate Chinese culture and political history. Worse still, from his critics point of view, after his retirement from the presidency, Lee became the most ardent and outspoken advocate of an independent Taiwan. These series of “sins” would qualify Lee as a recidivist who made so many vows during the sterner era, only to recant his own statements one by one later. Thus, they charge, Lee’s words and deeds not only help to widen Taiwan’s political gap, but also inflame Taiwan’s ethnic tensions. Those who support Lee’s stance on an independent Taiwan are generally identified with the green color—symbol of the DPP, and those who oppose Lee’s campaign to separate Taiwan from China are identified with the blue color—the KMT party emblem. Some Taiwan scholars in the West, most prominently Ramon Myers of Hoover Institution, are rankled that Lee’s fitful China policy and his hyped state nationalism caused the increasing tension in the Taiwan Strait and that his failure to forge a durable national unity between the Taiwanese and the mainlander Chinese has ultimately sowed the seeds of political and social conflicts on the island. Other scholars and Taiwan watchers, on the other hand, have more sympathy for Taiwan’s struggle for independence, likewise are willing to give Lee credit for his uncanny ability to take the power and prestige he accumulated to consolidate Taiwan’s democratic reform, as well as to address Taiwan’s sovereignty problems. In his Taiwan and Chinese Nationalism (1997), Christopher Hughes shows that “Taiwan was not listed as a province in the Chinese Republic’s draft constitutions of 1925, 1934 or 1936” and that during World War II, even Mao Zedong wanted to help Korea and Taiwan “in their struggle for independence from Japan.”4 Thomas B. Gold, one of the first Western scholars to study modern Taiwanese state and society, says that “democratization in Taiwan has a dimension of decolonization: that is, capturing control of the state by local Taiwanese” from the mainlander Chinese who “dominated the political system and monopolized cultural, political, and economic capital” there since the 1950s.5 Certainly, an independent Taiwan could potentially upset the delicate China–United States–Taiwan triangular relationships. But then where will be the true future of Taiwan—with China or the West? Since China replaced Taiwan’s membership at the United Nations in 1971, the Communist government in Beijing has strenuously objected to Taiwan’s presence, participation, or even observership in certain nonpolitical international organizations, such as the World Health Organization, and the International Civil Aviation Organization. Beijing insists that all Taiwan-related information and international activities must fall under the patently false category of “Taiwan province of China.”6 Moreover, to this day, Beijing refuses to renounce the use of force to “liberate” Taiwan. Since the 1990s, China has

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deployed hundreds of advanced ballistic missiles along its eastern coast, increased its military budget every year, sometimes by as high as 17 percent in one year, and acquired sophisticated Russian warships and fighter plans. What would happen to the power balance in the West Pacific had the agile tiny Taiwan fallen into the hands of the Chinese behemoth? What would happen to the world economy when and if the oil tankers from the Middle East or cargo ships from Singapore could no longer freely transit the Taiwan Strait and the Bashi Channel—two of the world’s most important international sea lanes—and safely reach Japan? If the United States failed to come to Taiwan’s aid, Japan would certainly be forced to rearm and take over their own defense. These are some of the sobering questions that American policy makers must consider very carefully. Particularly instructive is the U.S. experience in Taiwan, which was to create a government in harmony with American traditions and American values. But more importantly, Taiwan is strategically important to U.S. national interests. Representative Tom DeLay (R-Texas), the House majority leader, said, on June 3, 2003, that a free-trade agreement between the United States and Taiwan should be pursued even though China was deeply opposed to it. DeLay also characterized China as a “backward, corrupt anachronism run by decrepit tyrants—old apparatchiks clinging to their dying regime.”7 While Congressman DeLay might represent the extreme views of the Sinophobes in Washington, the chattering classes of the American media had by 2000 begun to forecast the rising power of China. Moreover, in a worldviews poll conducted by the Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs in 2002, which included more than 9,000 respondents across the United States, 56 percent of Americans saw the emergence of China as a world power as a potential threat.8 More importantly, every poll taken in Taiwan between 1996 and 2003 shows that more than two thirds of the 23-million Taiwanese desire to maintain their newfound freedoms, democracy and prosperity, and do not want to be swallowed by a much poorer, unpredictable Communist neighbor under one-party rule. According to Opinion Research Taiwan and the Election Study Center of National Cheng-chih University, while the majority of the islanders continue to prefer status quo, the number of independence supporters has increased and the number of unification supporters has decreased drastically year by year. The number of Taiwan people who identify themselves as “Chinese” has dropped to just 10 percent in 2003 from about 25 percent a decade ago, and the percentage who identify themselves as “Taiwanese” has more than doubled in the same period, to 50 percent.9 Though separated only by a 140-kilometer strait, during the past 110 years, with the exception from 1945 to1949, the islanders appeared to be living

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on separate planets—Taiwanese are from Venus while Chinese are from Mars, a euphemism borrowed from the political analyst Robert Kagan.10 Indeed, Lee Teng-hui’s view is that there is a mainland-island divergence. It results less from racial admixtures or cultural differences, than from geographical division, historical circumstances, differing political systems, and economic realities. Likewise, during his 1996 presidential campaign, Lee Teng-hui repeatedly told Taiwanese voters: “The Communist Chinese have not ruled Taiwan for one hour, one minute. They have not collected a single cent of tax here, and yet they dare to shout, ‘You’re mine, you’re mine.’ ”11 In recent years, Taiwanese politics has gradually acquired a vengeful, harsh tone. Both the pan-green and the pan-blue factions can easily find materials for attacking one another in the always contentious record of the half-century KMT rule. Politics is a pugilistic business and there is often blood on the floor. Born into an island that had been conquered several times by foreign powers, Lee Teng-hui, like millions of Taiwanese throughout the last three centuries, always carries rebelliousness in his heart. Thus, it would have been both uncharacteristic and un-Taiwanese for Lee not to redefine the crossstrait relations as a special state-to-state status. It would have been a pusillanimous and timid leader had Lee not tried to explore the possibilities of independence. After all, Lee’s highest political ideal was to maintain Taiwan’s freedom, independence, and sovereignty. Understanding the resources at Taiwan’s command and those of China and the United States, and after listening to voices of anxieties and convictions of the Taiwanese who surrounded and were affected by himself, Lee became an outspoken public advocate of state nationalism. It was as much a bold, calculating strategic move as it was a Taiwanese rebellious tradition against a colonial power. Naturally, Lee quickly became persona non grata in the eyes of the Chinese but a national icon in the minds of the vast majority of the Taiwanese. That Lee has made state nationalism his theme and methodically proceeded to cultivate the rebelliousness of his fellow islanders, is especially clever and galling. It seems reasonable to conclude that Lee has a unique historical stature and sees himself, like the Biblical Joshua, carrying out a historical mission for his people. The pious Lee maintains a daily rendition of the Lord’s Prayer and enthusiastically talks about God, Jesus, and Moses all the time. He is mindful of the advice that “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise” (1 Cor., 1:27). In fact, among Lee’s most characteristic attributes are his take-charge mentality, and his keen self-knowledge, coupled with a willingness to broadcast both. The cacophony of Lee’s own voice is powerful, and wonderfully petulant and seductive in arousing Taiwanese nationalism. In this sense, Lee is a living contradiction. He is at once the agent and

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the subject of history. In the end, Lee remains something of a flamboyant mystery, which is perhaps the point in a biography about the fatuousness of political personality. Like the trail blazers of every new nation, Lee Teng-hui has left a record in Taiwan history that will be both an aspiration and a reproach to subsequent generations.

Notes

Preface Sources included in the Bibliography are listed here in abbreviated form. The Wade-Giles system is used for transliterating Chinese characters with some exceptions for names that are long familiar in the West, such as Chiang Kai-shek (instead of Chiang Chiehshih) and Tamsui (instead of Tan-shui), as well as personal names that were adopted by individuals themselves, such as Lee Teng-hui (instead of Li Teng-hui), Tsiang Yensi (instead of Chiang Yen-shih), and Vincent Siew (instead of Vincent Hsiao). Names of prominent officials in the People’s Republic of China are romanized in pinyin system, such as Mao Zedong and Jiang Zemin. 1. It is to be noted that, long before his death in 1975, Chiang Kai-shek had given up implicitly on the idea of going back to the mainland. 2. ROC Mainland Affairs Council, Taipei Speaks Up: Special State-to-State Relationship: Republic of China’s Policy Documents, 1–2. 3. Fairbank and Goldman, China: A New History, 45. 4. For more on nationalism, see Anderson’s Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, chapter 4; also Copper, Taiwan: Nation-State or Province? 5. Corcuff, ed. Memories of the Future: National Identity Issues and the Search for a New Taiwan, xiii; also Gary Klintworth, “In Search of Identity,” Taipei Review (previously Free China Review, hereafter cited as FCR) (September 2002), 30. 6. Independence Evening Post (Taipei) 4/28/1994, 4/30/1994; and Asahi Shimbun (Tokyo), 5/6/1994. 7. Quoted from Lee Teng-hui’s speech at Nantou County’s “Association of Lee Teng-hui’s Friends,” Sina Net, 1/11/03.

1


1. Sina Net, 5/11/2002. 2. For more on Spanish occupation of Taiwan, see Kelly Her, “Voyages to Ilha Formosa,” Taipei Review, previously FCR (January 2003), 25–26 and Mateo,

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3. 4. 5.

6. 7.

8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

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Notes

Spaniards in Taiwan. Mateo lists a total of eight governors during the 16-year Spanish rule of northern Taiwan. They include: Antonio C. Valdes, Juan de Alcarazo, Bartolome Diaz Barrera, Alonso Garcia Romero, Francisco Hernandez, Pedro Palomino, Cristobal Marquez, and Gonzalo Portillo. James W. Davidson, The Island of Formosa, Past and Present, 38–39; also Campbell, Formosa Under the Dutch. Ch’in Chiu, Tai-wan chi-fu: Cheng Ch’eng-kung, 362–363. Also Lien Ya-t’ang’s Tai-wan t’ung-shih, chuan 29, “Biography of Ch’en Yung-hua.” Ibid., 38. Edward I-te Ch’en goes one step further by declaring that “China’s interest in the island today is strictly a post-1945 phenomenon.” See Ch’en’s “Formosan Political Movements Under Japanese Colonial Rule, 1914–1937,” 496; Hughes, Taiwan and Chinese Nationalism: National Identity and Status in International Society, 3–5. Wills, Embassies and Illusions: Dutch and Portuguese Envoys to K’ang-hsi, 1666–1687, 148, 151. For more on Koxinga, see Chikamatsu, The Battles of Coxinga. For more, see Psalmanazar, An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa. This work was reprinted by R. Davis in London in 1964. At the Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley, there is a manuscript copy of a letter from Psalmanazar to the Reverend Mr. Birch, dated London, July 13, 1752. Kerr, Formosa Betrayed, 5. In his notes on pp. 489–490, Kerr cites LeGendre’s Is Aboriginal Formosa a Part of the Chinese Empire?, intending to refute the Sinologist thesis that Taiwan remained a Ming-Ch’ing “macroregions.” Also see Lamley, “Frontier Days in Formosa,” 59–63. Lamley, “From Far Canada to Set Up the First Tamsui Churches,” 56. Pickering’s book was published in London by Hurst and Blackett in 1898. See Kiang’s The Hakka Search For A Homeland and Constable, ed., Guest People: Hakka Identity in China and Abroad. Wu Cho-liu, Wu-hua-kuo, 11–13. History books on Taiwan authored by ethnic Taiwanese include Shih Bing’s (Shih Ming) Taiwan’s 400 Year History: The Origins and Continuing Development of the Taiwanese Society and People; Edward I-te Ch’en, “Japanese Colonialism in Korea and Formosa: A Comparison of Its Effects Upon the Development of Nationalism”; Wang Yu-te’s Tai-wan k’u-men te li-shi (The depressed history of Taiwan); etc. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People, 315; also Kerr, Formosa Betrayed, 5 and Long, Taiwan: China’s Last Frontier, 18. Ibid., 17–18. Long Stream Taiwan History Commission, ed., Tai-pei li-shih sheng-tu lue-you, 96–99. Hsueh Fu-ch’eng memorial to the Emperor Kuang-hsu, Kuang-hsu 19/5/16 (29 June, 1893), in Yuan-an ch’uan-chi, 1:318. Kuo Ting-yee, “Early Stages of Sinicization of Taiwan, 230–1683,” 174. Ta-Ch’ing hui-tien shih-li, 775:1a. Shepherd, Statecraft and Political Economy on the Taiwan Frontier, 1600–1800, 161. Ts’ai, “One Kind of Control: The hoko system in Taiwan under Japanese rule, 1895–1945,” 5. On Ch’ing’s pao-chia system, Kung-chuan Hsiao writes, “many

Notes

22.

23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36.

37. 38.

39. 40.

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persons of the Ch’ing dynasty discussed the pao-chia, but they all were muddled and difficult to understand.” See Hsiao’s Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century, 26, 48, 55, 58. Meisner, “The Development of Formosan Nationalism,” 92 and Myers, “Taiwan Under Ch’ing Rule, 1684–1895: The Traditional Order,” 495–520. Also, Chen Chiu-kun, “From Landlords to Local Strongmen: The Transformation of Local Elites in Mid-Ch’ing Taiwan, 1780–1862,” in Rubinstein, ed., Taiwan: A New History, 136. Long Stream Taiwan History Commission, ed., Tai-pei li-shih sheng-lu lue-you, 6; also Kuhn, Rebellion and Its Enemies in Late Imperial China: Militarization and Social Structure, 1796–1864, 24–27, 51. For more, see Lamley, “The 1895 Taiwan Republic: A Significant Episode in Modern Chinese History,” 739–762. Corcuff, ed., Memories of the Future: National Identity Issues and the Search for a New Taiwan, xiii, 3–20; also Hsu Chi-tun, Hsun-chao Tai-wan hsin tso-piao, 41. Edward I-te Ch’en, “Japanese Colonialism in Korea and Formosa: A Comparison of the Systems of Political Control,” 130–131. Weng Chia-in, Tai-wan Han-jen wu-chuang k’ang-Jih-shih yen-chiu, 92–95. Lo Chi-pu, Ye-hsin ti-kuo, 85. Ibid., 81, 90. Ibid., 97, 99–100. Ibid., 118; also Lee Teng-hui and Nakajima Mineo, Ajia-no-chiryaku (Intelligence and tact of Asia). Tokyo: Koubunsha, 2000, 164. Goto Shimpei, “The Administration of Formosa (Taiwan),” in Okuma Shigenobu, ed., Fifty Years of New Japan, 538–539. Ts’ai, “One Kind of Control: The hoko System in Taiwan,” 574–575. Lo Chi-pu, Ye-hsin ti-kuo, 112, 119–120. Also see Tsurumi, “Taiwan Under Kodama Gentaro and Goto Shimpei,” and Takekoshi Yosaburo’s Japanese Rule in Formosa. Borton, Japan’s Modern Century, 273. See also Bigelow, Japan and Her Colonies. See Chang Han-yu and Myers, “Japanese Colonial Development Policy in Taiwan, 1895–1906: A Case of Bureaucratic Entrepreneurship,” 441–455; Myers and Peattie, eds., The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895–1945, 420–452. Lamley, “Taiwan Under Japanese Rule, 1895–1945: The Vicissitudes of Colonialism,” in Rubinstein, ed., Taiwan: A New History, 221. Balcom, “A Literary Revolution,” 73–81. Also see, Chao-cheng Chung, “The Plight of Taiwanese Literature As Seen From Taiwan’s Literary History,” in North America Taiwanese Professors’ Association Bulletin, Vol. 4, No. 2 (December 1984), 5. For more on Taiwan Cultural Association, see Wu Mi-ch’a, Tai-wan-shih hsiao-shih-tien, 128, 132. Unfortunately, Taiwanese People’s Party was forced to dissolve by the colonial government in 1931. The Taiwan Youth continued to publish its bilingual issues in Tokyo until 1932 when it was moved to Taipei. For more see Kerr, Formosa: Licensed Revolution and the Home Rule Movement, 123–124 and Ong Joktik

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41. 42. 43.

44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

49. 50. 51. 52.

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“A Formosan’s View of the Formosan Independence Movement,” in Mancall, ed., Formosa Today, 163–164. Edward I-te Chen, “Formosan Political Movements Under Japanese Colonial Rule, 1914–1937,” 496; also Wu Mi-ch’a, Tai-wan-shih hsiao-shih-tien, 148. Tsurumi, Japanese Colonial Education in Taiwan, 1895–1945, 50. T’ang Yao-chung, “Ti-yi chia-ting ti tsu-p’u” (Genealogy of the first family), in Hai-wai hsueh-jen (The Overseas Scholars), 214, 5/31/1990, 28. Hereafter cited as HWHJ. Lo Chi-pu, Ye-hsin ti-kuo, 92. Also Ts’ai, “One Kind of Control: The hoko System in Taiwan,” 46–47, 65, 74–82, 102–106. Interview with Lee Teng-hui, 10/16/2002. Lee Teng-hui, Tai-wan ti tsu-chang, 38. HWHJ, 187, 2/29/1988,18. The top graduate of Lee Teng-hui’s class was Chi Fu-ming, who was poor and could not afford advanced education. Chi worked for Tamsui county office and grew vegetables for a living. Tsurumi, Japanese Colonial Education in Taiwan, 109, cf. Kawamura Takeji, Taiwan no ichinen, 6. For more on the role of language as a tool of imperialism, see Kleenman’s Under an Imperial Sun: Japanese Colonial Literature of Taiwan and South. Chung-yang jih-pao, 2/2/1999. The significance of the 1996 presidential election is elaborated on by Lin Chialung in his unpublished paper, “Taiwan’s Emerging Civic Nationalism: Origin and Implications,” presented at the 5th annual North America Taiwan Studies Conference, June 4–7, 1999, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

2 The Japanese Education of a Taiwanese Economist 1. Scottish missionary William Campbell arrived at Tamsui two years before Mackay did. See Huwei Culture and History Workshop, “Educator, Medic, and Never-tiring Missionary,” trans. Chen Wen-tsung, in FCR (May 1993), 68–70. In July, 2002, a delegation from Taiwan’s Presbyterian Church visited Mackay’s native home in Oxford, Ontario and made a payback donation to its St. David’s United Church. See Sina Net, 6/25/02. 2. Tsurumi, Japanese Colonial Education in Taiwan, 251. 3. Interview with Lee Teng-hui, 10/16/2002. 4. HWHJ, 140, 3/31/1984, 22. 5. Lee Teng-hui, Tai-wan ti tsu-chang, 38–39. 6. Tsurumi, Japanese Colonial Education in Taiwan, 118. 7. Lee Teng-hui, Tai-wan ti tsu-chang, 39–40. 8. Eugenia Yun, “The Hakka, The Invisible Group,” 9. 9. Aso Makoto and Ikuo Amano, Education and Japan’s Modernization, 49–50. 10. HWHJ, 187, 2/29/1988, 19.

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11. Lee Teng-hui, Tai-wan ti tsu-chang, 40. For details, see also Peng Ming-min, A Taste of Freedom, 17–18. 12. A modified version of Kokutai no hongi was translated into English by John O. Gauntlett, edited by Robert K. Hall, and published by Harvard University Press in 1937. 13. Wu Cho-liu, Wu-hua-kuo, 108. 14. Wu Mi-ch’a, ed., Tai-wan shih hsiao-shih-tien, 152. 15. Lo Chi-p’u, Ye-hsin ti-kuo, 241; also Kerr, Formosa: Licensed Revolution and the Home Rule Movement, 162–164. 16. Ibid., 168. Also Barclay, Colonial Development and Population in Taiwan and Wu Mi-ch’a’s Tai-wan shih hsiao-shih-tien, 141, 154. Taiwan’s two largest Shinto shrines, both in Taipei, had been converted respectively into the Grand Hotel and the Central Library, while the Tainan Shinto Shrine is rebuilt into a gymnasium. The only large shrine that remains intact is in Taoyuan, which is under government protection. 17. Yen Hsing-chu, ed., Ta-k’ai Hsinkan jen ti hsiang-p’u, 124–125. 18. Yeh Jung-chung, Lin Hsien-t’ang hsien-sheng chi-nien-chi, 24–41. For more see, Leo T.S. Ching, Becoming “Japanese”: Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation. 19. Kamisaka Fuyuko, Kokono souto, 52. 20. Aso Makoto and Ikuo Amano, Education and Japan’s Modernization, 52–54. 21. There were only eight higher schools in Japan; only the very best middle school students could get into such schools. 22. Interview with Lee Teng-hui, 10/16/2002. 23. Tsurumi, Japanese Colonial Education in Taiwan, 127, 253, 280; also see Itoh Kiyoshi, Ri Tohki shinden, 34–38. 24. For the Japanese authors and books that presumably have exerted various degrees of influence on Lee Teng-hui, see Lee Teng-hui, Tai-wan ti tsu-chang, 40–41. 25. For a critique of Nitobe’s “patriotic cosmopolitanism,” see Barshay, State and Intellectual in Imperial Japan: The Public Man in Crisis, 53–54; also McClain, Japan: A Modern History, 393, 428. 26. For more on autobiographical shosetsu, see Hibbett, “The Portrait of the Artist in Japanese Fiction,” 347–352. 27. This book was translated into English by Glenn W. Shaw and published by Hokusedo Press in Japan in June 1941. 28. Lee Teng-hui, Tai-wan ti tsu-chang, 40. 29. Reischauer and Craig, Japan, Tradition and Transformation, 215. 30. Tai-wan jih-pao, 8/18/1989; also Itoh Kiyoshi, Ri Tohki shinden, 39–40. 31. Interview with Lee Teng-hui, 10/16/2002. 32. Taihoku Imperial University was primarily a research institution. When it was first established in 1928, Taihoku University had only two colleges with 60 students, almost all exclusively Japanese. 33. The information about Kyoto University and its agricultural programs comes from Kyoto University’s internet website ⬍ddb.libnet,kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp⬎.

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34. In 1931, Kawakami Hajime began translating Das Kapital into Japanese. Lee Teng-hui told the author that he first read Das Kapital in Japanese translation in Japan soon after the war was over. 35. Li Hsien-wen, “Fu-ch’in yu wou” (My Father and I) in Chung-hua jih-pao (China Daily News), 8/8/1979. 36. Lee Teng-hui, Tai-wan ti tsu-chang, 41; also Kamisaka Fuyuko, Kokono souto, 51. 37. Lu, Sources of Japanese History, II, 164, 179. 38. Peng Ming-min, A Taste of Freedom, 32. 39. General Kuniaki Koiso was among the 28 top Japanese officials who were tried at the Military Tribunal of the Far East between 1946 and 1948. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. 40. The show was titled, “Annihilating Anglo-American Pilots,” in which Taiwanese militia shot down allies airplanes and captured American pilots. See The Puppetmaster (1993), a docudrama directed by Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien.

3 Clenched in the Jaws of War and Massacre: Lee Teng-hui’s Sorrowful Years, 1944–47 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

Kerr, Formosa: Licensed Revolution and the Home Rule Movement, 228. Shiba Ryotaro, Kaido o yuku-Taiwan-hen, 86–88. Kamisaka Fuyuko, Kokono souto, 42–43. HWHJ, 140, 3/31/1984,18. Interview with Lee Teng-hui, 10/16/2002. More on the training of Japanese student-officers, see Okuno Takeo et al., eds., Seinen shikan no senshi, 431–441. “Diary of a Housewife, 1943–1945,” and “Imperial Rescript on Surrender, 1945,” in Lu, Sources of Japanese History, 176–177. At the time Hirohito announced Japan’s unconditional surrender, a force of 80,000 drafted Taiwanese workers were repairing the severely damaged Taiwan Governor’s Office. “Enduring the Defeat, 1945, Diary of Yoshizawa Hisako,” in Sources of Japanese History, 183. About the house song, see Li Ao, Lee Teng-hui ti chia-mian-chu, 62–64. Barshay, State and Intellectual in Imperial Japan, 233. Das Kapital’s first volume was published in 1867, with the second and third volumes edited by Engels and appearing in 1885 and 1894, respectively. Interview with Lee Teng-hui, 10/16/2002; also Li Ao, Lee Teng-hui ti chia-mianchu, 64–65. Chuang Yung-ming, ed., Tai-wan shih-chih hui-wei, 24. Of the approximately 40,000 dead Taiwanese soldiers and conscripts, nearly 20,000 have not been claimed by their families. Nevertheless, twice a year, during the spring and fall, monks in the Jihua Shrine, located in Peipu County in Hsinchu prefecture, offer a memorial service for these fallen Taiwanese. See Sina Net, 10/27/2002. Ch’en Fang-ming, “Unexpected Encounter at Yuraku-cho,” FCR (July 1995), 38.

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14. Dr. Ho told this story to the Japanese writers Shiba Ryotaro and Kamisaka Fuyuko. See the former’s Kaido o yuku-Taiwan-hen, 89–91 and the latter’s Kokono souto, 56–57. 15. Early in April 1944, the Kuomintang set up a “Taiwan Investigation Commission” in Chungking, taking preparatory measures for the recovery of Taiwan from the Japanese. The Commission was headed by General Ch’en Yi. General Ando, probably because he could not endure the humiliation at the hands of the Chinese, hanged himself in a Shanghai jail on April 19, 1946. 16. HWHJ, 96, 7/30/1980, 46. 17. Tai-wan-sheng wu-shih-i-nien lai t’ung-chi t’i-yao, 1214–1217. 18. Ibid.; also see Kerr, Formosa: Licensed Revolution, 179; Tsurumi, Japanese Colonial Education in Taiwan, 123–124. 19. “Brief History of National Taiwan University,” in www.ntu.edu.tw. 20. HWHJ,187, 2/29/1988, 20. 21. Wakabayashi Masahiro, Shou-Keikoku to Ri Tohki, 54. In an interview with the author on October 16, 2002, Lee Teng-hui revealed that he thought about changing his major to sociology, but Professors Hsu and Wang promised to give him a teaching fellowship if he would stay and complete his B.A. program in agricultural economics. 22. In his Three Legged Horse, the Taiwanese author Cheng Ching-wen describes the Taiwanese complicity and collaboration with the Japanese police. This book won the 1999 Kiriyama Pacific Rim’s Book Prize. 23. Lee Teng-hui, Tai-wan ti tsu-chang, 42–43. 24. Ibid., 41. 25. Ibid., 47; also see, “The T’ung-sheng News,” in electronic Sina Net, 7/1/ 2002; also Li Ao, Lee Teng-hui ti chia-mian-chu, 65–66. 26. Lai Tse-han et al., A Tragic Beginning, 138. 27. For more on Lee Teng-hui’s alleged complicity with the Communists, see “The T’ung-sheng News,” in Sina Net, 7/1/ 2002 and Li Ao, Lee Teng-hui ti chiamian-chu, 21–23, 65–79. 28. For more on Chiang Kai-shek, see Keiji Furuya, Chiang Kai-shek: His Life and Times. 29. Kerr, Formosa: Licensed Revolution, 159–160 and Lai Tse-han et al., A Tragic Beginning, 8. 30. Lai Tse-han et al., A Tragic Beginning, 136–140; also Kerr, Formosa Betrayed, 438–439. 31. Kerr, Formosa Betrayed, 100–116; 136–140. For more details on the 2.28 Uprising, see U.S. State Department, The China White Paper, August 1949, 308–309. 32. Kamisaka Fuyuko, Kokono souto, 63. 33. Peng Ming-min, A Taste of Freedom, 69–70. 34. Taiwan Legislative Yuan testimony by Wu Den-yih, on 3/1/2003. Wu was incumbent Legislator and former Mayor of Kaohsiung City, as well as the son of the director of the Nantou Farmers’ Coop. 35. Kamisaka Fuyuko, Kokono souto, 66–67; Huang Wu-tung, Huang Wu-tung hui-i-lu, 163; U.S. State Department Central Files. Formosa: Internal Affairs, 1945–1949.

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36. 37.

38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44.

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Reel I (Dean Acheson’s report to Senator Joseph H. Bald); Lai Tse-han et al., A Tragic Beginning,156–157. Tai-wan hsin-sheng-pao, 4/1/1947, 1; also Meisner, “The Development of Formosan Nationalism,” 98–99. Kamisaka Fuyuko, Kokono souto, 65–68. According to the recollection of Chiang Yuan-lin, the youngest brother of Lee Teng-hui’s mother, Lee Teng-hui also sought refuge in his mother’s Sanchih home; see Itoh Kiyoshi, Ri Tohki shinden, 50. Lai Tse-han et al., A Tragic Beginning, 9, 158; also Peng Ming-min, A Taste of Freedom, 70. Sina Net, 2/28/2003. Robert Edmondson, “The February 28 Incident and National Identity,” in Corcuff, ed., Memories of the Future, 42; also see a review of this anthology by Gary Klintworth, in Taipei Review (September 2002), 31. Wakabayashi Masahiro, Shou-Keikoku To Ri-Tohki, 63. Taiwan Legislative Yuan testimony by Wu Den-yih, former mayor of Kaohsiung, on 3/1/2003. HWHJ, 216, 7/31/1990, 4–5. Wakabayashi Masahiro, Shou-Keikoku To Ri-Tohki, 63–64.

4


1. Lai Tse-han, et al., A Tragic Beginning, 170; also see Robert Edmondson, “The February 28 Incident and National Identity,” in Corcuff, ed., Memories of the Future, 26. 2. Yen Hsin-chu, ed., Ta-k’ai Hsinkan-jen ti hsiang-p’u, 80–118, 195–203. For more on Taiwan’s changing economy, see Samuel P.S. Ho, Economic Development of Taiwan, 1860–1970, 103–116. Also see Riggs, Formosa under Chinese Nationalist Rule. 3. Rankin, China Assignment, 202. 4. For more on Wei Tao-ming, see Boorman, ed., Biographical Dictionary of Republican China, III, 406–408. 5. Steven Phillips, “Between Assimilation and Independence: Taiwanese Political Aspirations Under Nationalist Chinese Rule, 1945–1948,” in Rubinstein, ed., Taiwan: A New History, 297. 6. Kerr, Formosa Betrayed, 341; also see “About NTU, Brief History” at ⬍http:// www.ntu.edu.tw⬎. 7. Interview with Lee Teng-hui, 10/16/2002. Colloquial Taiwanese is indeed unique and different from those of the Japanese and the Chinese. In fact, if one fails to fully understand and appreciate the multitudinous Taiwanese slangs, folk sayings and dialect, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to accurately dissect Lee Tenghui’s personality, let alone analyze Taiwanese identity issues. 8. Kamisaka Fuyuko, Kokono souto, 50–51, 77–78. 9. Ibid., 82–83. 10. For more on Ch’en Ch’eng, see Boorman, ed., Biographical Dictionary of Republican China, I, 153–160.

Notes 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21.

22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29.

30.

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233

Immanuel C.Y. Hsu, The Rise of Modern China, 746. U.S. Department of State Bulletin, January 16, 1950, 79. Kerr, Formosa Betrayed, 369. Taylor, The Generalissimo’s Son, 191. HWHJ, 221, 1/31/1991, 4. Peter Chen-main Wang, “A Bastion Created, A Regime Reformed, An Economy Reengineered, 1949–1970,” in Rubinstein, ed., Taiwan: A New History, 323–325. These public lands were confiscated from the Japanese individuals, corporations and colonial government at the end of World War II. For more on Taiwan’s land reform, see Ch’in Hsiao-yi, ed., Chung-hua min-kuo ching-chi fa-chan shih, III, 1026–29. Shu Wei-der, “Who Joined the Clandestine Political Organization? Some Preliminary Evidence from the Overseas Taiwan Independence Movement,” in Corcuff, ed., Memories of the Future, 52–53. U.S. Department of State Bulletin, July 3, 1950, 5. For more see Stueck, The Korean War: An International History. Peng Ming-min, A Taste of Freedom, 93. Also see, Douglas H. Mendel, Jr., “American Relations With The Republic of China,” in John Chay, ed., Problems and Prospects of American-East Asian Relations, 80. For more see Immerman’s John Foster Dulles and the Diplomacy of the Cold War. U.S. Department of State Bulletin, May 28, 1951, 847. Peter Chen-main Wang, “A Bastion Created,” in Rubinstein, ed., Taiwan: A New History, 325; HWHJ, 253, 9/30/1993, 32. The total Nationalist government budget for 1961 was $375 million, see Kerr, Formosa Betrayed, 408. After General Chase was removed from his position in 1955, both the budget and the personnel of MAAG were gradually reduced. Only 842 advisors remained in Taiwan by 1964, but the number was further reduced to 60 at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. For more on MAAG, see Kerr, Formosa Betrayed, 406–407; also Wu Mi-ch’a, Tai-wan shih hsiao-tien-ku, 171. Ibid., 166. Ames Daily Tribune, 10/11/1988. “Theodore W. Schultz Papers, 1933–1988,” Box 1, RS 13/9/14, Iowa State University Library Special Collections. Interview with Lee Teng-hui, 10/16/2002. Lee Teng-hui was particularly impressed with Ohkawa’s Nogyo no keizai bunseki. When Lee was teaching at Taita, his students were required to study Ohkawa’s economic analysis of agriculture. Ames Daily Tribune, 10/11/1988. Almost every country’s media, including those of Taiwan, Japan, and the United States, and every book on Lee Teng-hui has stated that Lee earned a Master’s Degree in 1953 at Iowa State College. But Lee told the author personally that he only stayed at Ames for a little over a year and did not have the time to write a thesis. For that matter, Lee never had a Master’s Degree from Iowa State or any where else. He later earned a Ph.D. from Cornell University, in 1965. Tai Kuo-hui, Tai-wan tsung-t’i-hsiang: chu-min, li-shih, hsin-hsing, 154–155. Tai cites his sources on “the White Corps” from an article by a former lieutenant

234

31.

32. 33. 34.

35. 36.

37. 38.

39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

49. 50.

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Notes

colonel named Ogasawara Kiyoshi in Japan’s popular journal Bungeishunju (August 1971 issue). Rubinstein, ed., “Political Taiwanization and Pragmatic Diplomacy: The Eras of Chiang Ching-kuo and Lee Teng-hui, 1971–1994,” Taiwan: A New History, 437. On several occasions, Lee Teng-hui calls Chiang Ching-kuo a “statesman,” a “great leader,” who initiated democratization and Taiwanization on the island. Hsu Chieh-lin, Tai-wan shi-chi, VI, 336. More on the early life of Chiang Ching-kuo, see Taylor’s The Generalissimo’s Son, 15–164, and Wakabayashi Masahiro’s Shou Keikoku to Ri Tohki, 17–37. In Chang and Myers, eds., The Storm Clouds Clear Over China: The Memoir of Ch’en Li-fu, 1900–1993, Ch’en Li-fu would not take the blame for the Kuomintang’s paralysis on the mainland. See ibid., 218–219. ROC Government, A Pictorial History of the Republic of China: Its Founding and Development, II, 385. The KMT elder statesman Ch’en Li-fu, however, characterized General Ch’en Ch’eng as a “power-grabbing” person. Ch’en Li-fu said, “Ch’en Ch’eng would have had me arrested if he had become the president.” See Chang and Myers, eds., Memoir of Ch’en Li-fu, 220–221. Human Rights Education Foundation, Green Island Human Rights Memorial, 142. Sina Net, 9/3/2002. In a recent symposium on “Taiwan’s Democratic Development during the 20th Century,” sponsored by ROC’s Academia Historica in late September 2003, Wu Nai-teh, an Academia Sinica scholar, characterizes Chiang Ching-kuo as a “dictator.” Wu’s remarks quickly drew reactions from KMT stalwarts who defended Chiang and accused Wu of smearing Chiang and of ignoring Chiang’s contributions to the democratic development of Taiwan. Sina Net, 9/25/2003. Taylor, The Generalissimo’s Son, 259–260. Kamisaka Fuyuko, Kokono souto, 88–89. Interview of Ch’en Hsi-huang, in Wen-hsuen Magazine Publishing, Hsin-hsing, chih-hui yu hsing-tung, 70–73. ROC government, A Pictorial History of Republic of China, 380–381. For information regarding U.S. military assistance to Taiwan, see U.S. Senate, Republic of China Military Relations, 1971, Vol. 1, 918–1146. Mark Mancall, Formosa Today, 21; cf, Cheng-hsin hsin-wen pao [Truth Searching News],11/16/1962. Human Rights Education Foundation Green Island Human Rights Memorial, 144–147. Ibid., 147. Ibid., 148. Interview with Mr. Ts’ao Ch’in-jung on the Green Island, 10/20/2002. Ts’ao was the Chairman of the Planning Committee of the Green Island Human Rights Memorial Park. Hsu Chieh-lin, Tai-wan shi-chi, VI, 338. Newsweek, Vol.127, Issue 21, 5/20/1996, 38.

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51. Human Rights Education Foundation, Green Island Human Rights Memorial, 130. 52. The Chinese and foreign media, as well as the Taiwanese people, generally give credit to Lee Teng-hui for coining the “New Taiwanese” identity. The truth is that this denouement for resolving Taiwan’s conflicting multiple identities— Taiwanese versus mainlander Chinese, or independence versus unification— actually originated with the author. See Shih-shan Henry Tsai’s key note speech at the “Association of Chinese Professionals” Conference in Houston, Texas, on May 26, 1996. Portion of Tsai’s speech was reported by Shih-chieh jih-pao [The World Journal], May 29, 1996 on the “Texas News” page.

5

Lee Teng-hui’s Conversion to Christianity and Kuomintang

1. Long Stream Taiwan History Commission, ed., Tai-pei li-shih sheng-tu lue-you, III, 6–7. 2. For more on religions in Taiwan, see Thompson, Chinese Religion: An Introduction, 56–66; Clart and Jones, eds., Religion in Modern Taiwan: Tradition and Innovation in a Changing Society. 3. Newsweek’s interview with Lee Teng-hui, 5/20/96, Vol. 127, Issue 21, 38. 4. For more on this Quemoy crisis, see Tsou Tang, The Embroilment over Quemoy: Mao, Chiang, and Dulles. 5. Interview with Lee Teng-hui, 10/16/2002. 6. HWHJ, 201, 4/30/1989, 5–6. Lee would stay with this congregation until 1979 when he switched to a Presbyterian church on Chi-nan Road. 7. Chang Yue-yun, “Hui-shou lai-shih-lu” [Looking back where we came from], collected in Lee Teng-hui, Tai-wan ti tsu-chang, 299–300. Chang was married to Lee Teng-hui’s son Li Hsien-wen who died of cancer in 1982. 8. Peng Ming-min, A Taste of Freedom, 120–163. 9. Ibid., 174; also Taylor, The Generalissimo’s son, 271, 280. 10. Interview of Ch’en Yue-erh, in Wen-hsun Magazine Publishing, Hsin-hsing, chih-hui yu hsing-tung, 98–99; ⬍http//www.cornell. edu⬎; also HWHJ, 220,12/30/1990, 9. 11. Blaine Friedlander, “Memories of Lee Teng-hui at Cornell” ⬍http:www.news. cornell.edu//campus/Lee, 6/27/2001⬎. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 14. Carman, “Lee Teng-hui: A Man of the Country,” 33. 15. Ibid. Also see HWHJ, 220, 12/30/1990, 11. 16. Kamisaka Fuyuko, Kokono souto, 101. 17. Douglas H. Mendel Jr., “American Relations With The Republic of China,” in Chay, ed., Problems and Prospects of American-East Asian Relations, 85. 18. Figures and percentage come from columnist Jack Anderson and a report in Business Week, 5/17/1982, 24B. 19. Taiwan Tribune, 8/4/1981. For more, see Wei-der Shu, “Who Joined the Clandestine Political Organization? Some Preliminary Evidence from the

236

20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43.

44. 45. 46.

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Notes

Overseas Taiwan Independence Movement,” in Corcuff, ed., Memories of the Future 47–65. Nixon, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, 556–557. See Wu Cho-liu’s Ya-hsi-ya te ku-erh. See, e.g., Newsweek, 5/17/1982, 73. For more see, Mendel, The Politics of Formosan Nationalism, 171–195. For more on Lee’s political views on China and the United States, see Lee Tenghui and Nakajima Mineo, Ajia-no-chiryaku, part one, “How to Get Along with China and America?” Lee Teng-hui’s Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Lecture at Cornell University Alumni Reunion, 6/9/1995. In his irrigation investment paper, Lee Teng-hui describes Taiwan’s 16,000-meter irrigation canals and their contributions to the island’s agriculture and economy. Lee Teng-hui, Intersectoral Capital Flows in the Economic Development of Taiwan, 1895–1960, 141–142. Ibid., x–xi, 1–6. Kamisaka Fuyuko, Kokono souto, 100. Interview with Lee Teng-hui, 10/16/2002. Carman, “Lee Teng-hui: A Man of the Country,” 33. Lee Teng-hui, Tai-wan ti tsu-chang, 301–302. Kamisaka Fuyuko, Kokono souto, 106. Lee Teng-hui, Tai-wan ti tsu-chang, 302. Ibid., Lee Teng-hui never really divulged the details of his interrogation at the Garrison Command, but the process is well documented by Peng Ming-min and others. See Peng Ming-Min’s A Taste of Freedom, 141–143; also Kamisaka Fuyuko, Kokono souto, 105. Lee Teng-hui, Tai-wan ti tsu-chang, 302. Ibid., 303. Wakabayashi Masahiro, Shou-Keikoku to Ri-Tohki, 118–119. For more on Yen Chia-kan’s background, see Wu Mi-ch’a, ed., Tai-wan-shih hsiao shih-tien, 185. Taylor, The Generalissimo’s Son, 272. Of the 86 Taiwanese members in the Legislative Yuan, 74 were elected and the others were appointed as at large or overseas representatives. For more see, Tien Hung-mao, Political and Social Change in the Republic of China, 146. For more on Taiwan’s central government, see Robert G. Sutter, Taiwan Entering the 21st Century, 8–9. Immanuel C.Y. Hsu, The Rise of Modern China, 750. Tien Hung-mao, Political and Social Change in the Republic of China, 89. For more on Chiang Kai-shek’s control of both the party and the state, see Lumley, The Republic of China under Chiang Kai-shek. Tien Hung-mao, Political and Social Change in the Republic of China, 73. Lee Teng-hui, Intersectoral Capital Flows in the Economic Development of Taiwan, 189–190. Kamisaka Fuyuko, Kokono souto, 108–109.

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47. Interview with Lee Teng-hui, 10/16/2002. 48. Tien Hung-mao, Political and Social Change in the Republic of China, 68–69. 49. Information on the KMT recruitment procedure and the ceremony for its new members was provided by a KMT member who was on the faculty of National Taiwan University at the time of Lee Teng-hui’s political conversion. Also see Wang Tso-jung, Yu Teng-hui lao-you hua-chia-chang [Chatting with old friend Lee Teng-hui], Taipei: Tien-hsia yuan-chien Publishing [World vision]: 2003, 34–36. 50. Ibid. 51. Kamisaka Fuyuko, Kokono souto, 111. 52. Sina Net, 1/14/2003.

6


1. Clough, Island China, 250. 2. Nixon, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, 570–571. 3. Two-way trade with Japan quickly resumed. In fact, by 1989, Taiwan sold more than $2.38 billion dollars worth of agricultural goods to Japan. That constituted over 60% of Taiwan’s agricultural products, which also included frozen pork, poultry feathers, processed eels, and various kinds of shrimps. 4. Ch’en Ku-ying, “The Reform Movement among Intellectuals in Taiwan since 1970,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars ( July–September 1982), 34–45. 5. Itoh Kiyoshi, Ri Tohki shinden, 69. 6. On Taiwan’s agricultural development in the 1960s, see K. T. Li, The Experience of Dynamic Economic Growth on Taiwan, 386–392. 7. Lee Teng-hui, Tai-wan ti tsu-chang, 60–61. For more see T.C. Wu, “The Role of Administrative Support for Agricultural Development in Taiwan,” Industry of Free China, Vol. 54, No. 2 (1980), 14–27. 8. Ibid., 61. For more on the Taiwan’s agriculture, see Jack Williams, “Vulnerability and Change in Taiwan’s Agriculture,” 25–44. 9. HWHJ, 176, 1/31/1988, 29–30. 10. But not even Lee Teng-hui could foresee the rapid urbanization of Taiwan because by the early 1990s, only 13% of Taiwan’s work force was involved in agriculture and agriculture accounted for only 4% of Taiwan’s GNP. 11. Itoh Kiyoshi, Ri Tohki shinden, 70. 12. HWHJ, 187, 2/29/1988, 23. Taiwan’s agricultural missions also helped Jordanians increase their vegetable yield and taught Thai farmers how to improve fruit production, as well as establishing a hatched freshwater shrimp culturing program in Honduras, etc. 13. Chung-hua jih-pao, 2/27/1975 and Chung-yang jih-pao, 3/5/1976. For more see also Hung Chin-chu, “Sino-Japanese War: A Long, Long Way to Go,” in FCR (October 1995), 54–57. 14. The New York Times, 1/30/1977. Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves continued to climb until it reached $76 billion in 1987, only next to Japan and West Germany. By the end of 2003, the figures had reached the $200 billion mark, only next to Japan and China.

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15. Tai Kuo-hui, T’ai-wan chung-ti-hsiang, 183. Also see, K. T. Liu, “Population Distribution and the Quality of Life in the Taiwan Area,” Industry of Free China, part I, 60, 3: 1–24; part II, 60, 4: 17–31. 16. Wen Ch’ung-yi, “Tai-wan ti kung-yueh-hua yu she-hui-pien-ch’ien” [Industrialization versus social transformation in Taiwan], in Tai-wan ti-ch’u she-hui pien-ch’ien yu wen-hua fa-chan [Social transformation and cultural development in the Taiwan area]. Taipei: Chung-kuo lun-t’an-she [China forum], 1985, 7. 17. Clough, Island China, 80; King-yuh Chang, “Partnership in Transition: A Review of Taipei-Washington Relations,” Asian Survey ( June 1981), 603–621; Anthony Y. C. Koo, “Economic Development of Taiwan,” in Paul Shih, ed., Taiwan in Modern Times, 397–433. 18. Douglas H. Mendel, Jr., “American Relations with Republic of China,” in Chay, ed., Problems and Prospects of American-East Asian Relations, 92. 19. Clough, Island China, 27–28. 20. Tai Kuo-hui, T’ai-wan chung-ti-hsiang, 181–182; also Tien Hung-mao, Political and Social Change in the Republic of China, 33–34. 21. Wei Yung, “T’u-p’o yuen-lan hai-wai jen-ts’ai te p’ing-ching” [Breaking through bottlenecks in recruiting overseas talents] in Tien-hsia tsa-chih [The Commonwealth] ( June 1983), 29–30. 22. Jane Winn, “Not by Rule of Law: Mediating State-Society Relations in Taiwan through the Underground Economy,” in Rubinstein, ed., The Other Taiwan: 1945 to the Present, 183–211. 23. “Protest against Taiwan’s ‘Youth Goodwill Mission’ to Visit University of Georgia,” in Independent Taiwan, 6/28/1976, 16. 24. Frank S. T. Hsiao and Mei-chu W. Hsiao, “Direct Foreign Investment and Economic Development—the Taiwan Experience,” North America Taiwanese Professors’ Association Bulletin (December 1984), 7–12. 25. Jack F. Williams, “Vulnerability and Change in Taiwan’s Agriculture,” 25–44. For more on air pollution versus agricultural production, see W. W. Heck, et al., “An Assessment of Crop Loss from Ozone,” Journal of Air Pollution Control Association, Vol. 32 (1982), 353–359. 26. Lee Teng-hui, Tai-wan ti tsu-chang, 92. 27. Interview with Lee Teng-hui, 10/26/2002. Also see Lee Teng-hui’s TV speech, 2/25/1996, which was collected in Selected Political Speeches of Lee Teng-hui (published by Kuomintang Cadet Training School, n.d.), 46. 28. HWHJ, 186, 1/31/1988, 29. 29. Interview of Ch’en T’un-chu, in Wen-hsuen, ed., Hsin-hsing, chih-hui yu hsingtung, 190–193. 30. Interview of Li Cheng-kuang, in ibid., 122–130. 31. Interview of Eng Hsiu-kung, in ibid., 167–168. Eng was a native of Changhua county and a graduate of Tainan Seminary. 32. Carter, Keeping Faith, Memoirs of a President, 190–91. Ambassador Unger later recalls that the State Department gave him only two hours to prepare Chiang Ching-kuo for the shock, because Carter’s brain trust was concerned that if Taiwan had too much time to prepare for the president’s television announcement,

Notes

33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 40.

41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

53.

54.

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Taiwanese authorities might have asked the powerful Senator Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina) to block Carter’s scheme. For more, see Chou Yu-k’ou’s article, “Today’s Early Dawn—Ten Years Ago,” in Lien-ho pao [The United Daily News], 12/16/1988. Taylor, The Generalissimo’s Son, 335–337. Harding, China and the U.S.: Normalization and Beyond, 10. Taylor, The Generalissimo’s Son, 338–339. Harding, China and the U.S.: Normalization and Beyond, 2. U.S. Public Law 96–8, April 10, 1979, 96th Congress. For more, see John Copper, “The Taiwan Relations Act: A Ten-Year Record,” in Chang King-yuh, ed., ROC-US Relations Under the Taiwan Relations Act: Practice and Prospects, 3–6. Ibid., 6–14; also David Chou, “ROC-US Political Relations as Seen from the Implementation of the Taiwan Relations Act,” in ibid., 14–22. Wolff and Simon, eds., Legislative History of the Taiwan Relations Act, 262. Office of Treaty Affairs, U.S. Department of State, Treaties in Force, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1987, 1/1/1987; also Federal Register, 51, January 14, 1986, 1558–1559. According to Professor June T. Dreyer of University of Miami, Dixie Walker and Ray Cline, both strong friends of Chiang Ching-kuo and of Taiwan, urged Chiang to declare Taiwan independent—because they “saw the handwriting on the wall” of U.S. de-recognition of the Republic of China. However, Chiang refused because he felt he could not delegitimize the KMT and Taiwan’s “waisheng-jen,” which would happen if he declared independence. Chang and Myers, Memoir of Ch’en Li-fu, 243–244. For more see Mab Huang, Intellectual Ferment for Political Reforms in Taiwan, 1971–1973. Lin Cheng-chieh and Chang Fu-chung, Hsuan-chu wan-shui, 240–279. For more on Taiwan election, see Lerman, Taiwan’s Politics: The Provincial Assemblyman’s World. J. Bruce Jacobs, “Political Opposition and Taiwan’s Political Future,” Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs ( July 1981), 27. Sina Net, 2/28/2003. Ibid. Formosa Weekly (the American-based successor to the 100,000-circulation banned Formosa), 9/6/1980, 4 and 9/13/1980, 15. Kamisaka Fuyuko, Kokono souto, 147. Hiroo Mukooyama, “Taiwan Independence Movement,” in Independent Taiwan, 6/28/1976, 22. Time (U.S.), 8/10/1981, 19. The Washington Post, 5/10/1982, A21. For more on U.S. arms sale to Taiwan and China–U.S.–Taiwan triangular relationships, see Harding, A Fragile Relationship: The United States and China since 1972, 383–390. Since his retirement from the Presidency, Lee Teng-hui has on many occasions openly proclaimed that he and many other high Taiwanese officials were “bought off ” by Chiang Ching-kuo to serve the KMT exogenous regime. Kamisaka Fuyuko, Kokono souto, 148.

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7

Governor and Vice President, 1981–87

1. Chen Shui-bian, “A Review of Tangwai Movement,” 26; also Far Eastern Economic Review, 11/20/1981, 10. 2. Jim Hwang, “From Day One . . . ,” FCR (October 1999), 21. 3. Ho Chen-fen, “Sheng yi-yuan hsuan-ch’ing fen-hsi” [An Analysis of electoral campaigns for the provincial assemblymen], in Lien-ho yue-k’an [United Monthly] (April 1985), 26. 4. Interview of Huang Ta-chou, in Wen-hsuen, ed., Hsin-hsing, chih-hui yu hsingtung, 110–112. 5. Interviews of Yu Yu-hsien and Ch’en Hsin-you, ibid., 92,114–115. 6. Tien Hung-mao, Political and Social Change in the Republic of China, 132–133. 7. Fu-yuan Cultural Publishing, ed., Chang-tse ti chun-chih, 164. 8. HWHJ, 159, 10/31/1985, 4–5. 9. Arrigo, “Economic and Political Control of Women Workers in Multinational Electronics Factories in Taiwan,” 19. 10. Ibid., also HWHJ, 159, 10/31/1985, 6–7. 11. Ibid., 8–10. For more on Taiwan’s social and economic changes in the 1970s and 1980s, see Robert G. Sutter, Taiwan Entering the 21st Century, 18–44. 12. After Lee Teng-hui’s retirement from the presidency, a few hostile media in Taiwan and Hong Kong repeatedly vilified Lee’s alleged involvement in an unsavory stew of murky business deals and rampant bribery. On June 8, 2003, Lee Teng-hui’s former KMT treasury czar, Liu Tai-ying, was indicted with 12 counts on kickbacks, corruption, embezzlements, among other crimes. In fact, Lee was called to testify during Liu’s trial in November 2003. 13. Interview of Chiang Ch’ing-hsiang, in Wen-hsuen, ed., Hsin-hsing, chih-hui yu hsing-tung, 138–39. 14. Interview of Yu Yu-t’ang, ibid., 148–151. Yu Yu-t’ang was the brother of Yu Yu-hsien and was then serving as the deputy superintendent of Taichung Police Bureau. 15. Jeffrey H. Mindich, “Intractable River Pollution,” FCR (October 1991), 12, 16. 16. On Lee Teng-hui’s Musical and Cultural Life, see Wen-hsuen, ed., Hsin-hsing, chih-hui yu hsing-tung, 190. 17. For more on the problems of the Tamsui River, see Jeffrey H. Mindich’s “Intractable River Pollution,” 4–19. 18. Interview of Yang Li-hua, in Wen-hsuen, ed., Hsin-hsing, chih-hui yu hsing-tung, 202–203. 19. Interview of You Kuo-chien, ibid., 206–210. 20. Chung-hua min-kuo nien-chien [Republic of China yearbook]. Taipei, 1978, 140. 21. Taylor, The Generalissimo’s Son, 379–380. The KMT government had since 1947 outlawed the Taiwan Independence Movement and branded its leaders as “agents of foreign powers,” “Communist collaborators,” “ambitious separatists,” and “traitors of the Chinese nation.” 22. The Overseas Torchlight Weekly, 10/21/1983.

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23. Taylor, The Generalissimo’s Son, 379. 24. Interview with Lee Teng-hui, 10/16/2002. Lee told the author that, during his tenure as the vice president between May 20, 1984 and January 13, 1988, he took notes at every meeting he had with President Chiang Ching-kuo. 25. Fu-yuan Cultural Publishing, Chang-tse ti chun-chih, 168–169. 26. Ibid., 169–170. 27. Ibid., 170–172. 28. The New York Times, 2/11/1985. 29. Taylor, The Generalissimo’s Son, 391–393. 30. For more see, Robert G. Sutter, Taiwan Entering the 21st Century, 63. 31. The Taiwanese Collegian (November 1985), 14. 32. The Overseas Torchlight Weekly, 9/7/1984. 33. The Taiwanese Collegian (July 1985), 20. 34. In launching his liberalization, Chiang Ching-kuo first removed General Wang Sheng from his position as the director of the General Political Warfare Department in the Ministry of Defense in May 1983, then appointed him ambassador to Paraguay in September of the same year. For more on political opposition and democratic changes, see Yun-han Chu, “Social Protests and Political Democratization in Taiwan,” 65–88. 35. The Washington Post, 10/7/1986. 36. The Overseas Torchlight Weekly, 6/29/1984. 37. Chen Shui-bian, “A Review of Tangwai Movement,” 27. 38. HWHJ, 173, 12/31/1986, 12–13. 39. Ibid., 14–15. 40. Ibid., 9. 41. Chung-kuo shih-pao, 11/3/1988. 42. Ibid., 16/1/1988. Both Tien Hung-mao and Murray A. Rubinstein cite the lifting of martial law on October 15, 1986. See Tien’s Political and Social Change in the Republic of China, 111–12, and Rubinstein, “Political Taiwanization and Pragmatic Diplomacy,” in Rubinstein, ed., Taiwan: A New History, 447. 43. Interview with Lee Teng-hui, 10/16/2002. 44. HWHJ, 186, 1/31/1988, 3–5. 45. KMT official chroniclers list Chiang Kai-shek as a five-term president—first term (1948), second term (1954), third term (1960), fourth term (1966), and fifth term (1972). Yen Chia-kan who served as Chiang Kai-shek’s fifth term vice president (1972–1975), was listed also as the fifth term president from 1975 to 1978. Subsequently, Chiang Chiang-kuo followed Yen as the sixth term (1978) and seventh term (1984) president. Thus, Lee Teng-hui was also considered the seventh term president when he succeeded Chiang Ching-kuo in 1988. Lee served out the seventh term presidency in 1990. He was then reelected by the National Assembly as the eighth term president of the Republic of China. 46. Interview with Lee Teng-hui, 10/16/2002.

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8

The Presidency of Lee Teng-hui, 1988–93

1. Swaine, Taiwan’s National Security, Defense Policy, and Weapons Procurement Processes, 36–38. 2. For more on Taiwan’s presidential powers, see “Government,” in Republic of China Yearbook––Taiwan 2002, from http://www.gio.gov.tw. 3. For instance, in the first quarter of 1988, U.S. refrigerator imports jumped 163%, imports of U.S. color TV sets increased by 197%, U.S. washing machine sales rose 130%, and imports of U.S. cars increased by 800%. 4. HWHJ 188, 3/31/1988, 4–16. 5. Kamisaka Fuyuko, Kokono souto, 160–161. 6. Interview with Lee Teng-hui, 10/16/2002. 7. Tien Hung-mao, Political and Social Change in the Republic of China, 86, cf. Wen Man-ying, “Ts’ung-cheng Kuomintang ku-fen yu-hsien kung-szu” [Reorganize the Kuomintang, Inc.] Yuan chien (Vision Monthly) (March 1988), 15–18. 8. Lee Teng-hui, Tai-wan ti tsu-chang, 267–268. 9. HWHJ, 192, 7/31/1988, 4–5, 6–10. 10. Ming Pao (of Hong Kong), 5/20/1988. 11. HWHJ, 191, 6/30/1988, 7. 12. Sheena H.Y. Chang, Lee Teng-hui tse-cheng shih-er-nien, 22. 13. Ibid., 21–22. 14. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of China Diplomatic Yearbook, 1998, Taipei: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1998, 587. For more on Taiwan’s economic strength and Lee’s flexible diplomacy, see Sutter and Johnson, ed., Taiwan in World Affairs and a review article of the anthology by Richard R. Vuylsteke, “The Road Less Traveled,” FCR ( July 1995), 52–57. 15. L.H. Chang, “Flexible Diplomacy,” FCR (May 1989), 6–7; Seah Chee Meow, “Relations the Taichi Way,” ibid., 12–13. 16. The Strait Times (of Singapore), 3/10/1989. 17. Shirley Kuo was a first cousin of the Taiwanese independence movement leader Peng Ming-min. For more see HWHJ, 202 5/31/1989, 11–15. The Japanese writer Kamisaka Fuyuko reports a brief interview with Shirley Kuo in her Kokono souto, 166–168. 18. Lee Teng-hui and Nakajima Mineo were later to coauthor Ajia-no-Chiryaku. 19. U.S. State Department decoded archives Part 4, no. 16, 1989, 48–51; also Lardy, Integrating China into the Global Economy, 10. 20. In chapter 9 of his recently published reminiscences, Wai-chiao shih-chi, Qian Qichen, former PRC foreign minister, recalls his “difficult negotiations” with the Bush administration during and immediately after the Tiananmen Square Massacre. 21. HWHJ, 192, 7/31/1988, 16–17; 196,11/30/1988,17; 231, 11/30/1991, 26. 22. Ibid., 204, 7/31/1989, 48–51. 23. Ibid., 202, 5/31/1989, 26. 24. For more on the elections of 1989, see Free China Journal, 11/30/1989, 12/7/1989, and 12/11/1989. Free China Journal, subsequently renamed the

Notes

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45.

46.

47.

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243

Taiwan Journal, is an English-language newspaper published by the Government Information Office of Taiwan twice weekly. Wu Hsiang-hui, Hsuan-chu-hsueh, 135. Sheena H.Y. Chang, Lee Teng-hui tse-cheng shih-er-nien, 45–46; Wakabayashi Masahiro, Shou-Keikoku To Ri-Tohki, 198–199. Chung-yang jih-pao international edition, 2/4/1988. Kamisaka Fuyuko, Kokono souto, 174. HWHJ, 233, 1/31/1992, 4–20; 234, 2/29/1992, 4–7. A quote from Lee Teng-hui’s confidant Su Chih-ch’eng in Sheena H.Y. Chang, Lee Teng-hui tse-cheng shih-er-nien, 46. For more on Lee’s early rule, see Lin Chialung, “Path to Democracy: Taiwan in Comparative Perspective,” Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1998. HWHJ, 227, 7/30/1991, 6–7. Free China Journal, 6/28/1990. Huang Hsin-hua, Lee Teng-hui tsu-cheng yi-lai ti liang-ang kuan-hsi, 344. Ibid., 346–47. On May 30, 1991, Minister of State Huang Kun-hui replaced Vice Premier Shih as the head of the Mainland Affairs Council. Mainland Affairs Council, Cross-Strait Economic Statistics Monthly, No. 83 (Taipei: Executive Yuan, July 1999), 26; HWHJ, 189, 4/30/1988,17–24; 234, 2/29/1991,16. Also see, Tzu-li wan-pao, 4/18/1991. See Hsu Chieh-lin, Tai-wan shih-chi, 72–74. For the entire text of the NUC guidelines, see HWHJ, 221, 1/31/1991, 6–7. For more about the amendments, see HWHJ, 225, 5/30/1991, 18–19. It is noteworthy that 12 years earlier, on January 1, 1979, Marshal Xu Xiangqian, China’s minister of defense, ordered his troops in Fukien to stop the shelling of Kinmen (Quemoy) and other offshore islands. HWHJ, 242, 10/31/1992, 43. Ibid., 240, 8/31/1992, 6–9. Ibid., 243, 11/30/1992, 63. Ibid. The Spratly Islands are a group of some 250 small islets and coral reefs in the South China Sea. Their ownership is hotly disputed between China, which has occupied 7 of the islets, Vietnam (21), the Philippines (7), Malaysia (3), and Taiwan (2). On June 30, 1989, Taiwan’s ministry of the interior erected a huge stele on Spratly’s largest island called Taiping, (or Itu Aba), which is about 1,500 kilometers away from Kaohsiung harbor. This chronological itinerary was made known by Presidential Spokesman Cheyne Chiu. See ibid., 223, 3/30/1991, 6–7. In practicing his flexible diplomacy, Lee Teng-hui frequently invited high-profile foreign figures to visit Taiwan, such as Mikhail Gorbachev in January 1991, Margaret Thatcher in September 1992, etc. Ibid., 241, 9/30/1992, 8–9; Newsweek, 4/1/1996, 31; also U.S. Department of Defense, “Report to Congress Pursuant to the FY 99 Appropriation Bill,” Defense LINK, 3/4/99, 8. Tzu-you shih-pao, 3/13/96; Sina Net, 3/2/2003.

244

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Notes

48. The dollar figures were first reported by the KMT-owned paper, Chung-yang jih-pao and reprinted in HWHJ, 201, 4/30/1989, 7; 242, 10/31/1992, 19. 49. Hsu Chieh-lin, Tai-wan shih-chi, 229. For more on James Lilley’s career as a covert agent and diplomat in the Far East, see his 417-page autobiography, China Hands, published by Public Affairs in 2004. Due to the opposition of Berkeley’s “liberal faculty,” the Chiang Ching-kuo Memorial Library was never built. 50. Interview with Lee Teng-hui, 10/16/2002. Since DPP’s Chen Shui-bian assumed the ROC presidency in 2000, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation has gradually increased its funding for Taiwan-oriented research projects. 51. James Carman, “Lee Teng-hui: A Man of the Country,” 35; also HWHJ, 256, 12/31/1993, 15–16. 52. Ibid., 244, 12/31/1992, 4–14; also Wu Hsiang-hui, Hsuan-chu-hsueh, 30; Niou et al., “Issue Voting in the Republic of China on Taiwan’s 1992 Legislative Yuan Election,” 13–17. 53. For more on the significance of the 1992 Legislative Yuan elections, see Tien Hung-mao, ed., Taiwan’s Electoral Politics and Democratic Transition: Riding the Third Wave, Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996. 54. HWHJ, 254, 10/31/1993, 34–35. For more see, James McGregor, “Taiwan Ruling Party’s Many Businesses Are Beginning to Be an Embarrassment,” Wall Street Journal, 7/22/1988. 55. Sina Net, 1/22/2003. The dollar figures were revealed during Liu Tai-ying’s trial for bribery. 56. For more on the 2000 presidential campaign, see Clark, “Taiwan’s Elections in 2000,” Asia Society Briefing Paper. On October 22, 2003, Lee Teng-hui gave testimony in a Taipei prosecutor’s office for a judicial investigation against James Soong’s alleged embezzlement of up to NT$1 billion of KMT funds. 57. Ts’ai-hsun [Financial Intelligence], Taipei, May 1991 issue. Also see, Chang Cheng-hsiu, Ch’uan-chen Lee Teng-hui, 125–134. 58. Sina Net, 1/22/2003. 59. Ibid., 11/12/2003. 60. HWHJ, 251, 7/31/1993, 6. 61. For more on the prospect of China-Taiwan relations, see Herschensohn, ed., Across the Taiwan Strait: Democracy, the Bridge between Mainland China and Taiwan. 62. Even Lee Teng-hui acknowledged that 85 percent of the government money spent on public works in Taiwan involved fraud of some kind.

9 1. 2. 3. 4.

Leading Taiwan to Democratic Consolidation

HWHJ, 258, 2/28/1994, 4–8. FCR (July 1995), 48–49 and (September 1995), 6–35. HWHJ, 261, 5/31/1994, 4–13. As of September 2003, Taiwan had tried 11 times to reenter the United Nations, but due to Beijing’s strong opposition, all failed. 5. HWHJ, 271, 4/30/1995, 10–15.

Notes

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245

6. Richard R. Vuylsteke, “Taiwan in World Affairs, The Road Less Traveled,” FCR ( July 1995), 56. 7. Free China Journal, 1/6/1996, 7. For more on China’s policy toward Taiwan, see Nathan and Ross, The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress: China’s Search for Security, chapter 12. 8. Hsu Chieh-lin, Tai-wan shih-chi, IV, 229; also Sheena H.Y. Chang, Lee Teng-hui tse-cheng shih-er-nien, 120–121. 9. Time (USA), 6/5/1995, 34. For insight on Chinese reactions, see chapter 9 of Qian Qichen’s reminiscence, Wai-chiao shih-chi. 10. HWHJ, 273, 6/30/1995, 6–7. 11. The entire text of Lee’s speech can be found in “Always in My Heart,” FCR (August 1995), 4–7; also ⬍www.news.cornell.edu//campus/Lee/ Lee_Speech.html⬎. 12. HWHJ, 267, 12/31/1994, 4–11. For more on the 1994 elections, see John Fuhsheng Hsieh, Dean Lacy & Emerson M.S. Niou, “Economic Voting in the 1994 Taiwan Elections,” American Asian Review (Summer 1996), 51–70. 13. Free China Journal, 12/8/1995; Far Eastern Economic Review, 12/14/1995, 14–15. For more on Taiwan’s later twentieth century politics, see Schafferer, The Power of the Ballot Box: Political Development and Election Campaigning in Taiwan. Before the KMT tapped Vincent Siew to run against Trong R. Chai, Siew told the author that there was no one in Chiayi City who could beat the popular legislator Chai. Interview with Vincent Siew, 7/22/1995 in Taipei. 14. Free China Journal, 12/15/1995. 15. Ibid., 1/26/1996; also HWHJ, 275, 8/31/1995, 6–9. 16. For a complete account of the 1995 DPP presidential primaries, see Chuang Ch’i-ming et al., Tai-wan chung-t’ung. Also see James A. Robinson, “How Parties Chose Top Candidates,” in Free China Journal, 10/6/1995. 17. The author attended one huge KMT-sponsored rally on the suburb of Taipei, one DPP-sponsored rally in Taichung City, plus several others in central and southern Taiwan. 18. Despite the charges made by Lee’s opponents, ROC Ministry of Justice indicted 1,212 officials with election-related bribery in 1994. It also indicted 1,179 officials, including the mayor of Taichung City, under anticorruption laws during the first 11 months of 1995. See Far Eastern Economic Review, 1/25/1996, 16–21. 19. Transcripts from the February 10, 1996 televised presidential debate, sponsored by the China Times, and the March 9, 1996 debate broadcast live on Chinese Television System. 20. Far Eastern Economic Review, 1/4/1996, 23. 21. For a comparison of military forces between China and Taiwan, see David L. Shambaugh’s interview with Richard R. Vuylsteke in FCR (March 1996), 55–59. 22. The Washington Post, 3/10/1996; The Los Angeles Times, 3/18/1996; and Associated Press, 3/17/1996. 23. The Los Angeles Times, 3/11/1996.

246

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Notes

24. On February 27–28, 1996, AIT Chairman James C. Wood came to the University of Arkansas to dedicate the issuance of the Senator J. William Fulbright’s memorial stamp. During a private conversation with the author, Wood said that China’s military threats were meant not just to intimidate Taiwan, but also to divert attention from the mainland’s internal problems. 25. Associated Press, 3/12/96, 3/13/1996, 3/23/96. 26. Lien-ho pao, 3/24/1996. 27. In its 3/26/1996 issue, Newsweek called Lee Teng-hui “Mr. Democracy.” 28. Tsu-you shih-pao, 3/14/1996. 29. FCR (March 1997), 32–33; Taipei Times, 3/1/2000. For more on NDC see also, Joong-huh Huang and Chilik Yu, “Evaluation of the National Development Conference by the Intellectuals,” Public Opinion Research Quarterly (April 1997), 87–116. 30. HWHJ, 289, 3/25/1997, 6; 290, 6/27/1997, 24; 296, 5/15/1998, 6. 31. HWHJ, 291, 9/30/1997, 4–7. 32. FCR (February 1999), 26. 33. Wu Hsiang-hui, Hsuan-chu-hsueh, 59–61. 34. FCR (February 1999), 26; also Richard Halloran, “The Clinton-Jiang Summit, Who Calls the Tune?” FCR (September 1998), 40. 35. In his At Cross Purposes: U.S.-Taiwan Relations Since 1942, Richard C. Bush offers his insights into the complex world of diplomacy. 36. HWHJ, 299, 11/20/1998, 4–6. 37. Professor Dreyer of the University of Miami related her conversation with Lee to the author on January 9, 2004. 38. HWHJ 303, 5/15/1999, 30–32; 304, 9/18/1999, 4–6. Also see FCR (February 2000), 54. 39. Statistics of casualties and losses come from ROC Fire Prevention Bureau, Ministry of the Interior as of December 14, 1999. 40. Lee Teng-hui, “Relief Work Diary,” 9/26/1999; 9/27/1999. 41. ROC Central Election Commission. 42. For more see Cal Clark, “Taiwan’s Elections in 2000,” Asia Society Briefing Paper, 2000. 43. Li Ching-yi, Chin-hsieh Lee Teng-hui, 12. 44. Ibid., 43–44, 70–71, 178–182, 209–217. Also Cornell Chronicle ⬍www.news. cornell.edu⬎, 7/12/2001.

10

Epilogue

1. Burke, Reflections On the Revolution in France, 110. 2. For more see Gold, State and Society in the Taiwan Miracle. 3. In a 2003 public opinion poll, 36 percent of Russians considered Joseph Stalin a good leader. In the same vein, despite of the Reign of White Terror, a great number of Taiwan’s population continues to believe that Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo were good leaders as well.

Notes

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247

4. Hughes, Taiwan and Chinese Nationalism, 5, 12. On Mao’s support for Taiwan and Korea independence, Hughes quotes Edgar Snow’s Red Star Over China (New York: Penguin, 1978), 128–129. 5. Thomas B. Gold, “Factors in Taiwan’s Democratic Transition,” in FCR (Nov., 1995), 49. For more on the controversial legacy of Lee Teng-hui, see a review essay by June Dreyer, “History Will Be the Judge,” on Dickson and Chao, eds., Assessing the Lee Teng-hui Legacy in Taiwan’s Politics in Taiwan Review ( June 2003), 40–43. 6. Quoted from the 2003 Cynthia P. Robinson Memorial Lecture, titled, “CrossStrait Relations: Past, Present, Future,” delivered by Cheng Chien-jen in Washington, DC on February 21, 2002. 7. Arkansas Democrat Gazette, 6/4/03. In his The New Chinese Empire, Ross Terrill traces China’s imperial modes and legacy, and warns of Chinese imperial goals. 8. Cited from William Drozdiak’s article, “Avoiding a Breakup,” Oregon Quarterly (Summer 2003), 23. 9. For more on public opinion surveys in Taiwan, see John Hsieh’s “Whither the Kuomintang,” 909–922; also The Wall Street Journal, 12/12/2003. 10. In his Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order (New York: Knopf, 2003), Robert Kagan argues that Americans and Europeans do not have a common heritage, nor share a common view of the world. 11. The Wall Street Journal, 2/26/1996.


Glossary of Chinese and Japanese Characters

A

ben-sheng-jen Bushido

Chiang Ching-kuo Chiang Ch’un-nan Chiang Hsiao-wu (Alex) Chiang Hsiao-yun (Eddy) Chiang Kai-shek Chiang Wei-kuo Chiayi Chien Fu (Frederick) Chiu Chuang-huan Choshu-ryo Chou Ching-yu Chu Chao-yang

C

D

Chang Chun-hung Chang Yueh-yun Changhua Ch’en Ch’eng Chen Din-nan Chen Li-an Chen Shui-bian Ch’en Wen-cheng Ch’en Yi Cheng Ch’eng-Kung (Koxinga) Chiang A-tsai Chiang Ching

Den Kenjiro DPP (Democratic Progressive Party)

Abe Jiro Ah-shan-ah Aizu Wakamatsu Akashi Motojiro Ando Rikichi Atsugi

B

E Eng Hsiu-kung

F Feng-lai hsien-tao Feng-lai-mi Fukien

250

●


G

K

Goto Shimpei

Kabayama Sukenori Kamisaka Fuyuko Kanagawa K’ang Ning-hsiang Kao Yu-jen Kao Yu-shu Kaohsiung Karatsu Karuizawa Katsura Taro Kawakami Hajime Kawamura Takeji Keelung Kinmen (Quemoy) Kodama Gentaro komin-ka Komin Hokokai Koo Chen-fu Kobayashi Seizo Ku Hsien-jung Kuan-yin-shan Kuniaki Koiso Kuo Wan-jung (Shirley) Kuomintang Kurata Hyakuzo Kyushu Goto

H Hakka Hasegawa Kiyoshi Hau Pei-tsun Ho Chi-ming Hung-mao-zheng Hsieh Chang-ting (Frank) Hsieh Hsueh-hung Hsieh Tung-ming Hsinchu Hsu Ch’ing-chung Hsu Hsin-liang Hsu Jung-shu Hsu Shui-teh Hualien Huang Hsin-chieh Huang Kun-hui Huang Ta-chou Hu Shih Hualien

I Ilan Ito Kiyoshi Iwanami Shoten Iwasato Masao (Lee Teng-hui) Iwasato Takenori (Li Teng-ch’in) Iwasato Tatsuo (Li Chin-lung)

J Jiang Zeming Jaw Shau-kong

L Lee Huan Lee Yuan-tse Lee Teng-hui Lei Chen Li Anna Li Annie Li Ch’ien-ts’ung Li Chin-lung Li Ch’ung-wen Li Hsien-wen Li Kun-yi

Glossary of Chinese and Japanese Characters Li Teng-Ch’in Li Ts’ai-sheng Li Yuan-tsu Liao Wen-yi (Thomas) Lien Chan Lin Hsien-t’ang (Rin Kendo) Lin Yang-kang Lin Yih-shyong Liu Tai-ying Lu Hsiu-lien (Annette)

M Ma Ying-jeou Mankah Maoli Matou Matsu Mito Moji Motoori Norinaga

N Nakajima Mineo Nantou Natsume Soseki Nishida Kitaro Nitobe Inazo Nogi Maresuke Nozaka Sanzo

O Ohkawa Kazushi

P Pan Yin-kwei pao-chia

Peng Ming-min Penghu (Pescadores) Pingtung

Q Qian Qichen

S Saga Sakuma Samata Sanchih Santaro Nikki Shen Tsung-han Shiba Ryotaro Shih Chi-yang Shih Ming-teh Shiomi Kaoru Siew Wan-chang (Vincent) Soong Chu-yu (James) Sun Chen Sun Li-jen Sun Yat-sen Sun Yun-hsuen Su Chih-ch’eng

T Taichung Taihoku (Taipei) Taihoku Koto Gakko Tainan Taitung Taiwan Bunkakyokai Taiwan Kiko Taiwan Minshuto Taiwan Seinen Tamsui tang-wai Taoyuan

●

251

252

●


Taroko Touliu Tsai Pei-ho (Sai Baika) Tsai Chien Tsai Hsiao-chien Tsai Tung-jung (Trong Chai) Tseng Wen-hui Tsiang Yen-si Tu Ch’ung-ming

U Uraga (Port)

W wai-sheng-jen Wakabayashi Masahiro Wang Sheng Wang Tso-jung Wang Te-lu Wang Yung-ch’ing

Wei Tao-ming Wushe Wu Den-yih Wufeng Wu K’e-tai Wu Kuo-chen

Y Yanaihara Tadao Yang Shangkun Yang Ting-chien Yang Ting-I Yang-ming-shan Yao Chia-wen Yasukuni Shrine Yen-shui-kang Yi-min-miao Yoshida Shigeru Yunlin Yu Kuo-hua Yu Yu-hsien

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Abbreviations FCR Free China Review (changed to Taipei Review on 4/1/2000, then Taiwan Review on 3/1/2003). HWHJ Hai-wai hsueh-jen [The Overseas Scholars] (published by Taiwan’s Ministry of Education), 1980–1999. Newspapers, Periodicals, and Internet Sites Ames Daily Tribune, 10/11/1988. Arkansas Democrat Gazette, 6/4/03. Asahi Shimbun (Tokyo), 5/6/1994. Associated Press, 3/12/1996; 3/13/1996; 3/17/1996; 3/23/1996; 9/6/2003. Business Week, 5/17/1982. Cheng-hsin hsin-wen pao [The Truth Searching News] (Taiwan),11/16/1962. Chung-hua jih-pao [The China Daily News] (KMT publication), 2/27/1975; 8/8/1979. Chung-kuo shih-pao [The China Times] (Taipei), 11/3/1988. Chung-yang jih-pao [The Central Daily News] (KMT mouthpiece), 3/5/1976; 2/2/1999. Chung-yang jih-pao [The Central Daily News] international edition, 2/4/1988. Far Eastern Economic Review, (Hong Kong), 11/20/1981; 12/14/1995; 12/28/1995; 1/4/1996; 1/25/1996. Formosa Weekly (the American-based successor to the100,000-circulation banned Formosa), 9/6/1980; 9/13/1980. Free China Journal (in English, ROC government publication), 11/30/1989; 12/7/1989; 12/11/1989; 6/28/1990; 10/6/1995; 12/15/1995; 1/6/1996; 1/19/1996; 2/9/1996. Lien-ho pao [The United Daily News] (Taipei), 12/16/1988; 3/24/1996. Los Angeles Times, 3/11/1996; 3/18/1996 New York Times, 2/11/1985. Newsweek (USA), 5/17/1982; 3/26/1996; 4/1/1996.

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Index

Academia Sinica, 165, 190 Africa, 195 Agricultural Development Act (1973), 115–16 Agriculture of Taiwan, 59, 78, 107, 122, 141 Ah-shan-an, 62–3 Akashi Motojiro (1864–1919), 16 American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), 128, 174, 204 Ando Rikichi (1884–1946), 47, 54, 231n15 Asian Development Bank, 173 Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS), 180 Austronesian-speaking Aborigines, 5, 25, 27 Bank of Taiwan, 14 Bellocchi, Natale H., 196, 204 ben-sheng-jen, 73, 78, 167 “black and gold” politicians, 147, 191 Britain, Great in Tamsui, 6–7, 54 war with China, 8 Burton, William Kinninmond, 13 Bush, George H., 98, 128, 174, 184 Bushido, 38, 45 Cairo Declaration (1943), 54 camphor, 6, 15 Carter, Jimmy, 126–8, 211 Cassidy & Associates, 196–7

Central American summit, 211 Central Daily News, 159, 189 Chai Trong R., 97, 187, 200 Chang Ch’ang-hung, 183 Chang Chun-hung, 131–2, 137 Chang Hsu-ch’eng (Parris), 97, 187 Chang Jung-fa, 143, 151 Chang Wen-huan (1909–78), 17 Changhua, 8, 17 Chekiang, 62, 80 Ch’en Ch’eng (1897–1965) garrison commander, 73 governor, 72–3 premier, 75 vice president, 84–5, 103 Ch’en Chin (1907–98), 32 Chen Din-nan, 198 Ch’en I-te (Edward), 18 Chen Li-an, 201–5 Ch’en Li-fu, 82, 129 Chen Shui-bian, 133 mayor of Taipei, xiii, 198–9, 204 president of ROC, 212–14 wife of, 153 see also DPP Ch’en Tung-shan, 97, 187 Ch’en Wen-cheng, 134–5 Ch’en Yi (1883–1950), 54, 62–5, 69 Cheng Ch’eng-kung (Koxinga) (1624–62), 2–3, 7, 45 Cheng-chih University, 222 Chiang Ching, 21–2, 29, 56

264

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Index

Chiang Ching-kuo (1910–1988) arrival in Taiwan, 74 assassination of, 97 biography of, 95, 151 “Carter Shock” and, 127 chairman of KMT, 122 childhood of, 80–1 death of, 84, 159–60 defense minister of ROC, 95 director of Youth Corps, 82–3 economic policy of, 114, 118–19, 120–1 health of, 129–30, 150 Lee Teng-hui and, 106–7, 118, 122, 149–50 mainland policy of, xi, 158 political liberalization of, 154–6 premier of ROC, 110, 116–17 president of ROC, 122, 127–8, 148–9, 154–5 Soviet Union and, 81 Taiwanization scheme of, xiv, 104–7, 110, 130, 133–4 White Terror and, 84–5, 88–90 Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, 186–7, 244n50 Chiang Hsiao-wu (Alex), 151 Chiang Hsiao-yun (Eddy), 159 Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975) February 28 (1947) Massacre and, 64–7 cult of, 83 death of, vi, x, 122 Memorial Park of, 170, 207 president of ROC, 75, 241n45 retreat to Taiwan, 72, 74 wife of, 91, 166, 168 Chiang Wei-kuo, 166, 177, 188 Chiang Wei-shui (1891–1931), 6 Chiayi, 8, 34, 64, 200 Chien Fu (Frederick), 127 Ch’ien Yi, 10–11 China Ch’ing (Manchu) dynasty, 3–4, 7–8 early attitudes toward Taiwan, 2–4

exploitation of Taiwan, 62–3, 69 Ming dynasty, 1–3 war with France, 4 war with Great Britain, 8 war with Japan, 8, 33, 61 also see People’s Republic of China and Republic of China China Youth Corps, 82–3 Chinese civil war, 72–3 Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 60, 81 Chinese refugees, 71–3 Chiu Chuang-huan, 67, 160 Choshu-ryo, 51–2 Christopher, Warren, 127, 203 Chu Chao-yang, 51–2, 86 Chungli Incident, 131 Clinton, Bill, 197, 204, 210 Control Yuan, 104 Coordination Council for North American Affairs (CCNAA), 129 Cornell University, xiv, 95–6, 100 Lee Teng-hui’s speeches at 197, 214 Costa Rica, 194 Coyet, Frederick (1620–81), 3 Cross-strait relations, 179–80, 182, 196 Cross-strait talks, 190, 210–11 Dalai Lama, 207 DeLay, Tom, 222 Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) election gains (1995) of, 200 first national election by, 156–7 formation of, 154 founding members of, 133 out-polled KMT by, 209 presidential primary of, 201 Den Kenjiro (1855–1930), 16 Dodd, John, 6 Dole, Bob and Elizabeth, 211 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor (1821–81), 58 Dreyer, June Teufel, 211 Dulles, John Foster (1888–1959), 77

Index education in Taiwan college, 55–6, 120 elementary, 16, 19, 23–4, 120 secondary, 28, 30–3, 36, 38, 120 Eisenhower administration, 86–7 elections of governor and mayors (1994), 198–9 legislators (1986), 156–7 legislators (1995), 199–200 legislators and mayors (1998), xiii, 210 local governments (1977), 131, 209 nationwide offices (1989), 176 nationwide representatives (1981), 137 new Legislative Yuan (1992), 187–8 president (1996), xi, 25, 200–5 president (2000), 212–13 Eng Hsiu-kung, 126 Environmental Protection Administration, 145 ethnicity of Taiwan, see Autronesian, ben-sheng-jen, Hakka, Hoklo, and wai-sheng-jen Examination Yuan, 104, 164 Executive Yuan, 104–5, 164 February 28 (1947) Massacre, 62–8 redress of, 89, 190 Feng-lai hsien-tao, 7–8, 25, 217 flexible diplomacy of Taiwan, 171–5, 193–6 foreign trade of Taiwan, 119–20, 194, 242n3 Formosa (Mei-li-tao), 132–3 Formosan Association for Public Affairs (FAPA), 154 Formosan Club of Japan, 117 Fort Santo Domingo, see Red Fort France, 4, 6, 94, 185 Fu Su-nien, 70 Fuji Club, 80 Fukien, 1, 4, 7, 19, 62

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265

Garrison Command, see under Taiwan Garrison Command “Go South” policy, 171–2, 193–4 Gold, Thomas B., 218, 221 Goto Shimpei (1857–1929), 12–16 Green Island, 88–90 Hakka, xii, 5, 12, 19, 21–2, 31 half-mountain, 148, 168 Harris, Townsend, 6 Hasegawa Kiyoshi, 37 Hau Pei-tsun chief of general staff, 163, 170 defense minister, 171 premier, 178, 188 vice presidential candidate, 200–5 Havel, Vacla, 197 Helms, Jesse, 154, 197 Hirohito, Emperor, 11, 35, 50 Ho Chi-ming, 53, 56, 64–5 Hoklo, xii, 7, 21–2 hoko system, 13, 22, 35, compare pao-chia system Hong Kong, 40, 158, 179–80 Hsieh Chang-ting (Frank), 133, 201, 210 Hsieh Shen-chung, 95 Hsieh Tung-ming, 104, 148, 152 Hsu Ch’ing-chung, 56, 59, 102 Hsu Hsin-liang, 131–2, 156–7 Hsu Shui-teh, 168, 188 Hua-hsia Enterprise, 189 Hualien, 12 Huang Hsin-chieh, 131–2, 137 Huang Kun-hui, 123 Huang Ta-chou, 123, 140, 198–9 Huang Wen-hsiung (Peter), 96–7, 99 Human Rights Education Foundation, 90 Hung-mao-zheng, see Red Fort Indonesia, 172, 193–4 Iowa State University, xiii–xiv, 79–80 Iwanami Shoten, 39–40 Iwasato Masao (Lee Teng-hui), 34, 53

266

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Index

Iwasato Takenori (Li Teng-ch’in), 34 Iwasato Tatsuo (Li Chin-lung), 34 Japan China and, 8–9, 35, 98, 111 colonial economy of, 14–15 cultural assimilation policy of, 16, 33–5 expedition to Taiwan (1874) by, 6 governors-general in Taiwan, 10 Imperial Diet of, 17–8, 31, 61 investments in Taiwan by, 14–15, 121 partisan insurgence against, 10–12 Shinto shrines in Taiwan, 16, 34, 229n16 trade with Taiwan, 112, 119, 121 World War II defeat of, 47–50 Japanese Communist Party, 52, 59 Jaw Shau-kong, 192, 198–9 JCRR, see Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstrcution Jiang Zeming, 196–7, 210 Jordan, 195 Judicial Yuan, 104, 178 Kabayama Sukenori (1837–1922), 9–10 Kamisaka Fuyuko, 35, 64, 109 K’ang Ning-hsiang., 131–2, 138 Kao Chun-ming, 133, 135 Kao Yu-jen, 138, 160 Kao Yu-shu (Henry), 104–5 Kaohsiung, 11, 74 February 28 Massacre in, 63–4, 67 Formosa Incident in, 132 naval base at, 48 Katsura Taro (1847–1913), 11 Kawakami Hajime (1879–1946), 43, 59, 230n34 Kawamura Takeji (1871–1955), 24 Keelung, 53 fort at, 1, 6 February 28 Massacre in, 63–4

Kennedy, Edward, 97 Kerr, George H., 4 Kinmen, see Quemoy Kissinger, Henry A., 98, 197 Kobayashi Seizo, 33 Kodama Gentaro (1852–1906), 12 komin-ka, 16, 33–4 Konoe Fumimaro (1891–1945), 33 Koo Chen-fu, 62, 179, 190, 210 Korean War, 76–7 Koxinga, see Cheng Ch’eng-kung Ku Hsien-jung, 11, 62 Kuan-yin (Goddess of Mercy), 31 Kuniaki Koiso (1880–1950), 45, 230n39 Kuo Wan-jung (Shirley), 164, 168, 173 Kuomintang (KMT) Central Standing Committee of, 123, 168 enterprises of, 188–9 Fifteenth Congress (1997) of, 208 Fourteenth Congress (1993) of, 135, 190, 200 membership of, 107–9, 167, 188 opposition of, see tang-wei organization of, 82, 105 party-state of, 105, 117–18 presidential nomination process of, 177 recruitment procedure of, 108 Thirteenth Congress (1988) of, 167–8 Kyoto University, 41–4 Kyushu, 47 Lafayette warship scandal, 185 Lai Ho, 17 land reforms in Taiwan, 75–6 Leach, Jim, 97, 135 Lee Huan, 107, 164, 175, 177–8 Lee Kuan Yew, xvi, 172 Lee Teng-hui (Ri Toh-ki) (1923– ) ancestors of, 19–22 birthplace of, 20–1

Index character of, xiv, 6, 23, 29, 58, 144 childhood of, 22–4 Christian faith of, 31, 92–3, 134, 223 diplomacy of, 171–5, 193–6 DPP and, xv, 134, 192, 213–14 early education of, 23–4, 29–30, 32–6 family of, 41–2, 92, 100–1, 126 February 28 (1947) Massacre and, 63–8 first term president of, 159–61, 163, 167 governor of Taiwan, 138, 140–8 graduate training of, 78–80, 95–7, 100 higher education of, 36–41 human rights and, 89–90 as KMT chairman, 161, 167–8, 190, 208, 213 KMT conversion of, 108–9 at Kyoto University, 41–5 legacy of, 218–24 lifting martial law, 75 Marxism and, 40–1, 43, 51–2, 59–61, 85 as mayor of Taipei, 49, 123–7 military service of, 45, 47–50, 117 as minister of state, 110–11, 113–18 at National Taiwan University, 55–7, 71–2, 85–6, 95, 100 “9.21 Quake” and, 211–12 reconstituting Taiwan by, 182–4, 206 retirement of, 213–15 second term president of, 177 stance on PRC, 99, 148, 166, 179–80, 203, 222 Taiwan Solidarity Union and, xv, 214–15 third term president of, 205–13 unification with PRC, 191–2, 202 as Vice President, 149–53, 155, 158–9 views on Chinese culture, xi-xii, 41, 57–8

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267

White Terror and, 101–2 wife of, see Tseng Wen-hui see also Iwasato Masao Lee Yuan-tse, 190 Legislative Yuan, 103–4, 163 reform of, 208 Lei Chen, 85, 89 Li Anna, 100 Li Annie, 86, 100 Li Ch’ien-ts’ung, 19, 21 Li Chin-lung, 21–3, 28–9 Li Hsien-wen (1950–82), 43, 100, 126 Li Teng-Ch’in, 22–3, 40, 42, 48, 57 Li Ts’ai-sheng, 13, 21, 41–2, 56 Li Ying-yuan, 183 Li Yuan-tsu, 169, 177 Liao Wen-yi (Thomas), 76 Lien Chan cabinet member, 168 KMT chairman, 213 premier, 188 presidential candidate, 212–13 vice president, 200 Lien Ya-t’ang (1878–1936), 3–4 Lin Hsien-t’ang (Rin Kendo) (1881–1956), 6, 17, 35, 62, 70, 76 Lin Shao-mao, 11 Lin Yang-kang, 148–9, 177, 200–5 Lin Yih-shyong, 132–3, 135 Liu Tai-ying, 188–9, 196 Liu Yi-liang (Henry), 151–2 Lo Fu-hsing, 12 Lu Hsiu-lien (Annette), 132, 182 Ma Ying-jeou, xiii, 66, 158 MAAG (US military assistance advisory group in Taiwan), 78 MacArthur, Douglas (1880–1964), 47, 50–1, 78 Mackay, George Leslie (1844–1901), 5, 27, 30 MacMillan, Hugh, 27, 30 Mainland Affairs Council, 179 Malaysia, 194

268

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Index

Mancall, Mark, 87–8 Mandala, Nelson, xvi, 194–5 Manila, 40 Mankah, 8 Mao Zedong, 221 maritime culture of Taiwan, xii, 5–6 martial law rescinding of, 158–9, 182–3 Taiwan under, 72–4, 155 Massacre of (1947), see February 28 Massacre Miaoli, 12 Moji, 42, 47 Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801), 38–9 Myers, Ramon H., 65, 221 Nagoya, 49–50 Nakajima Mineo, 173–4 Nantou, 64, 140, 205 National Affairs Conference, 179 National Assembly of ROC, 103, 177 constitutional amendments by, 207–8 reform of, 170, 178 National Security Council of ROC, 164 National Taiwan Normal University, 36, 73–4, 190 compare Taihoku Koto Gakko National Taiwan University (Taita), 17, 70, 113, 190 colleges and students at, 55–6, 70 Dept of Agricultural Economics at, 56, 72, 86 Natsume Soseki (1867–1916), 39–40 Netherlands, the, 2–3, 24 New Party, 192, 199, 202, 205–6 New Taiwanese, xii–xiii, 90, 235n52 newspapers in Taiwan, 17, 33, 54, 63, 159, 207 Ni Wen-ya, 163–4 Nicaraqua, 194 Nimitz, Chester (1885–1966), 42, 48 Nitobe Inazo (1862–1933), 38–9 Nixon, Richard M, 98, 111–12 Nogi Maresuke (1849–1912), 11 Nozaka Sanzo (1892–1993), 52

Ohkawa Kazushi, 79 “One country, Two systems”, 158, 166 Pan Yin-kwei, 23–4, 123 pao-chia system, 8, 14, compare hoko system Peng Ming-min (1923– ), 77, 105, 109 court martial of, 94–5 education of, 45, 56, 94 presidential candidate of, 201–5 returning from exile, 183 views on 2.28 (1947) Massacre, 64–5 Penghu (Pescadores), 2, 6, 74, 86 People’s Republic of China (PRC) admittance to UN, 98 military threats against ROC, xi–xii, 198, 203 Tiananmen Square Massacre in, 173–4 US recognition of, 126–7 see also China Perry, Matthew C., 6 Philippines, xvi, 45, 47, 193–4 Pickering, William Alexander, 5 Pingtung, 15, 64 Po Yang, 84, 89–90 Political Cadres Academy of ROC, 82, 107 political parties, see under DPP, KMT, New Party, Taiwan Solidarity Union population of Taiwan (early decades), 1 (18th century), 7 (1897), 9 (1905), 11 (1940–4), 34, 36 (1950), 139 (1979), 128 (1989), 175 (1993), 190 Powell, Colin, 207 Psalmanazar, George (1679–1763), 4 Qian Qichen, 197, 242n20 Quemoy and Matsu Islands, 86, 92, 182

Index Rankin, Karl Lott, 69 Reagan administration, 135, 152, 184 Red Fort, 6–7, 27 religion in Taiwan, 31, 91–2 Republic of China (ROC) constitution of, 103–4, 150, 165–6, 207–8 multiple names for, 181–2, 191 office of the president of, 163–5 US de-recognition of, 127, 238n32, 239n41 see also Taiwan Republic of Formosa, 76 retrocession of Taiwan, 61–2 Rhodes, Frank H. T., 187, 197 rice production in Taiwan, 15, 21, 107, 141 Roosevelt, Franklin D. (1882–1945), 56 Rusk, Dean, 77, 94 Ryukyu Islands, 6 Sakuma Samata (1844–1915), 12 Sanchih, xiii, 19–22, 34, 57 Santo Domingo Fort, see Red Fort Saudi Arabia, 172, 195 Schultz, Theodore W. (1902–1998), 79, 115 secret police of KMT, 61, 65, 70, 85, 88, 94, 99 Shanghai Communique, 111–12 Shen Chang-huan, 166, 169 Shih Chi-yang, 168, 179 Shih Ming-teh, 89, 132–3 Shiomi Kaoru, 40–1, 43 Siew Wan-chang (Vincent), 193, 200, 208–9 Singapore, 40, 172–3, 190 Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction (JCRR), 78 Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT), 86, 92, 112, 127 Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty, 54 society of Taiwan during (1940s), 69 (1970s), 124

●

269

(1980s), 141–3 (1990s), 191, 206–7 Solarz, Stephen J., 157 Soong Chu-yu (James), 127 governor, 188, 198 KMT secretary-general, 167, 175 Lee Teng-hui and, 206, 208 presidential candidate, 208, 212–13 scandal of, 189 South Africa, Republic of, 150, 195 Southern Manchuria Railway, 14, 37, 41 Spain, 2, 24 “Special state-to-state” relationships, xi–xii, 179, 211 Spratlys, 184, 243n44 state nationalism, xi–xiii, xvi, 221, 223 Strait Exchange Foundation (SEF), 179 street protests in Taiwan, 169–70 Su Chih-ch’eng, 180–1 sugar production in Taiwan, 2–3, 14–15 Sun Ch’en, 188 Sun Li-jen (1900–1990), 75, 84 Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925), 62, 88, 108–9 Sun Yun-hsuen, 122, 148–9 Ta-chia River, 144 Taichung, 15, 64, 140 Taihoku Imperial University, 55; see also National Taiwan University Taihoku Koto Gakko, see under Taipei Higher School Tainan, 2, 7, 12, 64 Taipei city government of, 104–5, 123 February 28 (1947) Massacre in, 63–4 mayoral races of, 105, 183, 198–9 occupied by Japanese, 10, 21 Peace Memorial Park in, 67 Shinto shrine in, 16 site of ROC, 73, 87 transformation of, 13, 124–6

270

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Index

Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, 204, compare with CCNAA Taipei Higher School, 36–41 Taita, see National Taiwan University Taiwan Americanization of, 205, 222 central government organization of, 103–4 Ch’ing rule of, 4–8 counties of, 139 diplomatic setbacks of, 98, 111–12, 127 Dutch rule of, 2–3 earthquakes of, 211–12 foreign reserves of, 118–9, 166, 196, 237n14 frontier culture of, 4–5, 8–9 geography of, 1–2, 4, 139 home rule movement of, 17 international status of, 77, 171, 196 Japanese colonial rule of, 8–19, 33–5, 54 Koxinga’s control of, 3–4, 7 land reform in, 75–6 land survey of, 13–14 military strength of, 112, 184–5, 190, 209 per capita income of, 175, 190 Spanish rule of, 2 trade with PRC, 179–80 US academicians and, 186–7 World War II and, 33, 37, 47–8 see also Republic of China Taiwan Agricultural Specialist Corps, 116, 237n12 Taiwan Communist Party (TCP), 59–61 Taiwan Cultural Association (Bunkakyokai), 6, 17–18 Taiwan Democratization Steering Committee, 154 “Taiwan Experience,” 114, 118, 122, 197

Taiwan folk songs, 146 Taiwan Garrison Command, xiv, 74, 88, 101–2, 134 abolition of, 182–3 power restricted at, 159 compare with White Terror Taiwan Governor’s Office, 16, 73, 230n6 Taiwan independence movement, 66, 97–9, 130–1, 148 Taiwan People’s Party (Minshuto), 18 Taiwan Provincial Assembly, 104, 131, 138, 147 Taiwan Provincial Government (TPG) abolition of, 206–8 jurisdiction of, 138–40 site of, 139 structure of, 104–5 Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), 128–9, 184, 203 Taiwan Solidarity Union, xv, 214–15 Taiwan Youth (Seinen), 17, 227n40 Taiwanese Americans, 97–9, 135, 146, 197 Taiwanese Communist Youth League, 60 Taiwanese dissidents, 113, see tang-wai movement Taiwanese Presbyterians, 27, 134–5, 149 Tamsui, 15, 27 British consulate in, 6 Common School of, 24, 28 Fort of, 2, 6, 54 Middle School of, 27, 30, 32, 51 Tamsui River, 6, 8, 63, 144–5 Tanaka Kakuei (1918–1993), 111 tang-wai movement, 130–4, 137–8, 153 Taoyuan, 19, 131, 157, 207 Tapani Incident, 12 Taroko, 12 Taylor, Jay, 85, 95, 152 Thailand, 193–4 “three-legged” Taiwanese, 57

Index

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271

“Three Nos” policy, 158, 166, 210 Tiananmen Square Massacre (1989), 173–4 Tojo Hideki (1884–1948), 45 Tokyo University, 38, 45 Touliu, 10 Truman, Harry S. (1884–1972), 73, 76–7 Tsai Chien, 8 Tsai Hsiao-chien, 60–1 Tsai Pei-ho (Sai Baika) (1889–1983), 17–18 Tsai Tung-jung, see Chai Trong R. Tseng Wen-hui (Fumi), 71–2, 85, 96, 100, 102, 123, 140, 160 Tsiang Yen-si, 156, 181 Tu Ch’ung-ming (1893–1986), 17, 70 “Two Chinas” policy, 77, 87, 94, 128, 174, 184

Wei Tao-ming, 69–70, 72 White Terror, 65, 84–5, 87–9, 218 Wild Lily Movement, 170, 179 Wood, James C. Jr., 204 World Anti-Communist League, 86 World Trade Organization (WTO), 173–4 World United Formosans for Independence (WUFI), 130, 154 World War II, 33, 37, 41, 45, 47–50 Taiwanese conscripts during, 53 Taiwanese soldiers during, 37, 45, 52, 117 Taiwanese Youth Corps, 34–5 Wu Den-yih, 67, 198 Wu K’e-t’ai, 60 Wu Kuo-chen (1904–1984), 75, 84 Wufeng, 17, 104 Wushe, 12

Unger, Leonard, 127, 238n32 United States of America aids to Taiwan, 78 China policy of, 112, 126–7, 174, 209–10 early interest in Taiwan, 6 military alliance with ROC, 86–7 military defense of Taiwan, 76–8, 203–4 recognition of PRC by, 126–7 sale of weapons to ROC, 119–20, 135, 152, 184–5 trade with Taiwan, 119–20

Yang Li-hua, 146 Yang Mei, 21 Yang-ming-shan (Mt.), 19, 80, 167 Yang Shangkun, 180 Yang Ting-chien, 51–2 Yang Ting-i, 51–2, 60 Yao Chia-wen, 132, 137, 179 Yasukuni Memorial Shrine, 52 Yen Chia-kan (1905–1992), 103, 122, 166, 172 Yi-min-miao, 5 Yoshida Shigeru (1878–1967), 77 Youth Corps, 82–3 Yu Ch’ing-fang, 12 Yu Kuo-hua, 164, 168, 175 Yu Yu-hsien, 140 Yung-cheng (Emperor) (r. 1723–1735), 7 Yunlin, 10, 169

wai-sheng-jen, xii, 25, 73, 158, 180 Wang Daohan, 190, 210–1 Wang Sheng, 107, 109, 113, 127, 241n34 Wang Te-lu (1770–1841), 4 Wang Tso-jung, 106–8 Wang Yi-t’ao, 56, 123 Wedmeyer, Albert C., (1897–1989), 63

Zhao Ziyang, 151, 160, 173 Zhou Enlai, 98, 111

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