Lee Teng-hui, the first Taiwanese-born president of this island state whose thorny relationship with China and his unwavering passion for self-government set the tone for every leader he followed, died in a hospital in Taipei. He was 97 years old.
Active until the end of his life, Lee died around 7:30 pm Thursday at Taipei Veterans General Hospital of septic shock and multiple organ failure, the hospital said. He had been in his care since February with pneumonia, but his health worsened rapidly over the past week, and current President Tsai Ing-wen visited Lee at the hospital on Wednesday.
“It is very sad that President Lee Teng-hui has passed away,” Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said in an emailed statement Thursday night. “The world will remember him as Mr. Democracy, the architect of Taiwan’s modern liberal democratic system, which allows the country to stand out on the world stage.”
Few political figures in Taiwan have cast a shadow as long as Lee. He oversaw the end of martial law, loudly rejected Beijing’s quest to unify China and Taiwan, and led an ambitious foreign policy aimed at winning allies around the world. For years, China infuriated its provocations.
President for 12 years from 1988, Lee took the world stage in 1996 when he suggested that Taiwan adopt a “special state-to-state relationship” with China, the antithesis of Beijing’s prized goal of unification. In response, China flexed its muscles by testing missiles off the coast of Taiwan, letting that dramatic display signal its sentiments about Lee’s pursuit of democracy.
Lee’s idea of an autonomous Taiwan took hold when he grew up during the oppressive Japanese colonial rule of his homeland, said Anna Chou, departmental director of the Taiwan Solidarity Union political party, who considers the former president her “spiritual leader,” although He was not a member or founder of the group.
Under Tokyo rule from 1895 until the end of World War II, Taiwanese were prohibited from advancing in government to the level of their colonizers. Local militias and other small Taiwanese gangs rebelled but lacked the resources to overthrow the Japanese.
The Nationalist Party, or KMT, which had ruled all of China before it was dominated by Mao Zedong’s revolutionary communist troops, regrouped in Taiwan in the 1940s and kept the island under martial law until Lee took office. Subsequent presidents in Taiwan have followed Lee’s lead in self-government, particularly Tsai, who routinely despises China’s advances.
KMT elders came to resent Lee for rejecting his goal of uniting with China and blamed him for his losses in the 2000 presidential election. Opposition politicians also sought and sometimes received his support.
Lee was born on January 15, 1923 in Sanchih, an agricultural town an hour north of Taipei. He became interested in Japan, then colonizer of Taiwan, while his father worked in the Japanese-led police force. Lee studied Japanese martial arts at the school and eventually became a second lieutenant in the Japanese Imperial Army in charge of an anti-aircraft unit in Taiwan. In high school, he won a scholarship to Kyoto Imperial University, where he graduated in 1946.
Lee initially joined KMT political operations in the 1970s as minister of agriculture. The party finally named him president, then vice president, and finally, in 1988, president.
As president, he eventually rejected the KMT’s authoritarian government and its goal of uniting with China. The party kicked him out after 2000, when his nominee lost the presidential race against the relatively new Progressive Democratic Party.
“Lee worked within this system to get to the top, but eventually turned his back … supporting some democratic reforms and emphasizing Taiwan’s worth for individual statehood,” said Denny Roy, principal investigator at the institution of East-West Center research in Honolulu. “His description of Taiwan and China having a ‘special state-to-state relationship’ is as good as any bumper sticker principle anyone has offered to capture Taiwan’s point of view.”
The Progressive Democratic Party, which is in power today, advocates a cautious and distant relationship with China. Beijing still insists on eventual unification, by force if necessary.
President Lee Teng-hui is congratulated on his reelection at a celebration rally in Taipei, Taiwan in 1996.
(Vincent Yu / AP)
KMT’s current predecessor, Ma Ying-jeou, a KMT member, opened a dialogue with China but promised not to join the country during his eight-year term.
Ma’s predecessor Chen Shui-bian spoke about declaring China’s legal independence, the highest consecration of self-government, during his own eight-year term. His words inflamed Beijing and shook the United States, which at the time advocated a stable relationship between China and Taiwan.
Lee typically viewed Washington as an ally in resisting China’s aggression. In 1995, he became the first President of Taiwan to visit the United States, where he spoke at an alumni meeting at Cornell University, where he earned his doctorate.
He appealed to the United States by speeding up the democratization of Taiwan by meeting with pro-democracy protesters in 1990 and then by forcing parliamentary elections that gave seats to more native Taiwanese rather than supporters of China’s KMT.
“As the first president to visit the United States, Lee opened a new chapter in relations between the United States and Taiwan,” said Yun Sun, senior associate for the East Asia Program at the Stimson Center expert group in Washington. “Chen and Tsai inherited some of their thoughts, but have taken Taiwan’s independent identity further.”
His appearance at Cornell is what inspired former United States Secretary of Defense William Perry to speak out against China’s perceived interference in Taiwan’s 1996 presidential race, said Parris Chang, professor emeritus of political science at Taiwan at Pennsylvania State University.
Lee also restored diplomatic relations with several countries that had abandoned him in favor of China. After leaving office, he kept China on the edge with his visits to Japan, which he respected culturally, even if he was not a colonizer. On a particularly eye-catching trip in 2015, he visited the Japanese Parliament.
His three successors in Taiwan have sought closer political, military, and economic ties to the United States and Japan. Tsai and Chen competed with China for diplomatic recognition of small, impoverished nations in Africa, America, and the South Pacific. Those countries speak for Taiwan at the United Nations, while Washington sails on warships near Taiwan as a warning to China.
Lee’s most common nickname among Taiwanese remained “Mr. Democracy” throughout his life.
“The general public in Taiwan has great respect for President Lee,” said ruling party legislator Lo Chi-cheng. Lee, he said, “played an important role in the process” of reversing authoritarian rule.
Lee is survived by his wife, Tseng Wen-hui; two daughters, Anna and Annie; and several grandchildren. His son Lee Hsien-wen died of cancer in 1982.
Jennings is a correspondent for the Times.
