Despite having shaped the modern-day destiny of Taiwan, Lee Teng-hui remains somewhat of a mystery to many people outside Asia. The leader of Taiwan between 1988 and 2000, Lee did not assume the presidency until he was 65 years of age. Taiwan Journal contributor Dan Bloom reviews a new biography by Richard C. Kagan that investigates what helped turn Lee from a man into a champion of democracy.

 

Lee Teng-hui, who served as president of Taiwan from 1988 to 2000 and has remained active in national politics since leaving office, is an enigma to much of the international community. He was educated in Japan, received his doctorate in the United States, and came up through the ranks of the Kuomintang as a mayor, provincial governor, vice president, and then as the president who steered Taiwan toward a new sense of freedom and democracy. Just who is Lee Teng-hui and how did he pull off such an amazing transformation?

This is the question that U.S. historian Richard C. Kagan tries to answer in his biography of Lee, titled "Taiwan’s Statesman"–recently published in English by the U.S. Naval Institute Press. The book delves into Lee’s early life and influences, his attraction to Zen philosophy and conversion to Christianity, and his slow climb to the heights of international statesmanship. It is an interesting journey, and one that most people are unaware of. While newspaper headlines carried news of Lee’s exploits in Taiwan and overseas, Kagan fills in the details of what he calls "an intense and muscular … drive to democracy."

Kagan, who studied Mandarin at National Taiwan University in Taipei in the 1960s and wrote a biography of current President Chen Shui-bian when he was mayor of Taipei, visited Taiwan in 2005 to interview Lee for more than 15 hours. Kagan admits that his biography did not cover all of Lee’s life or contributions to Taiwan’s democracy, noting that "future generations will view Lee’s legacy differently [from how] I do" because the former president left an extensive written and spoken record of his life as a statesman.

Subtitled "Lee Teng-hui and Democracy in Asia," Kagan’s book attempts to explain Lee’s life and worldview in terms of psychology, religion, political science and statesmanship. It is an insightful introduction to the life and times of a man some in the West favorably refer to as "Mr. Democracy," but who remains disliked and reviled by the Chinese Communist government.

So, welcome to the world of Lee Teng-hui, a politician who was never really a politician, a Christian convert who never followed any specific denomination, a Zen seeker who was not put off by contradictions in life, and who, as president of Taiwan from 1988 to 2000, led the nation to a new sense of itself. Lee was also, Kagan shows, a member of the long-ruling KMT who was charting a path that was not part of the KMT’s master plan for Taiwan’s future.

Lee, of course, is best known as a statesman and national leader, but he was also many things to many people, grappling with questions of Taiwanese national identity and self during his entire life. And it is these characteristics and identities that Kagan tracks in his 170-page biography, filling the reader in on many aspects of Lee’s private life that have never been widely revealed before.

For example, when Lee was studying for his doctorate at Cornell University in the 1960s, he was nicknamed "Mr. Steak" by his classmates. Why? "He was known for hosting meat barbeques," according to Kagan’s sources.

In addition, Lee’s time at Cornell corresponded with the era of student unrest at many American universities, including the Ivy League school’s picturesque campus in rural New York, and it was at this time that the future president of Taiwan saw and heard first-hand what student protests and demonstrations were like–memories that would serve him well when dealing with student protests in Taiwan in March 1990.

The death of Lee’s son, Lee Hsien-wen, of cancer in 1983, when the young man was just 25 years old, had a powerful and lasting effect on him, according to Kagan. Lee said in one conversation at the time that "his faith in God had given him great solace [at this tragic time], and that he resolved to transform his grief into strength, and serve his people and country."

Kagan interprets this to mean that Lee transferred his deep love and support for his son to the people of Taiwan, stressing the Christian concept of love to describe his affection for Taiwan, writing: "Like George Washington, Lee considered his constituency to be his children and family. His love for them was the guiding force underlying his sense of mission and sacrifice."

A sense of mission and sacrifice. These two words sum up Lee’s life as a human being and as a statesman perhaps best of all. Kagan’s use of personal anecdotes and interviews he conducted with Lee two years ago in Taipei make his book something future biographers will be reading for years to come.

Kagan’s book was been well-received by reviewers in the West and in Taiwan, and a Chinese-language translation is in the works for the Taiwan market. Readers in China, unfortunately, will not have a chance to read a book that one observer called "a valuable addition to the understanding of Taiwan’s democratization."

Jerome Keating, a Taipei-based political scientist and newspaper pundit who gives Kagan’s work high marks, noted that the book details how "the obstacles [that former President Lee] had to overcome and the minefields he had to negotiate were formidable and numerous, yet democracy did come to Taiwan."

Dennis Hickey, another longtime observer of Taiwan’s evolution as an island nation, has called Lee "one of the most complicated and controversial figures in East Asian politics" and lauded Kagan’s biography as being an important contribution to scholarship.

Lee did not become president until he was 65 years old, so understanding what the first six decades of his life were like is pivotal to understanding the man.

The son of a police officer, he became one of the leading lights of Asia. The father of a son who died early of cancer, he transformed his grief–which almost prompted him to retire completely from public service and become an academic again–into something positive for the entire nation of which he himself was part. As a busy, Ph.D.-track husband, it was Lee’s wife, Tseng Wen-hui, who steered him toward the Christian faith and instilled a love of culture and people that contributed to the gradual transformation of Taiwan into a more international country.

In examining Lee’s life, Kagan has produced a series of anecdotes, quotes and recollections by people that show how Lee was able to reinvent himself at pivotal times in his career. He furthers the theory that in the end, historians should look upon Lee as a self-made man who did not rely on the power of the personality cult, as some other Asian leaders have done, but instead used his driven and stubborn personality to forge a new road for Taiwan in the international arena.

Noting that the Japanese colonial era (1895-1945) in Taiwan gave the young Lee a chance to experience newfound freedoms–by introducing him to fresh ideas and traditions that his parents had never enjoyed–Kagan notes that Lee was born precisely in the year that Japan started its policy of assimilation in Taiwan: 1923.

It was through these new freedoms and intellectual horizons, says Kagan, that Lee was able "to invent himself" and later in life to use "this self-made identity to create a new Taiwan that he would encourage to take advantage of the future and not dwell on the parochial life of the past."

Lee came of age in an era of huge international shifts, and he was able to learn from various cultures and belief systems while forging an identity for both himself and the nation that he would someday lead to a new frontier.

Readers will notice that Kagan’s biography of Lee was published by the Naval Institute Press, the publishing arm of the private U.S. Naval Institute that was originally established as a society for sea professionals and others who share an interest in naval and maritime affairs. So one might wonder why a book about Lee Teng-hui would be produced by this kind of publishing house.

A quick look at the cover of the book shows a photograph of Lee, taken in Taipei in 2004, with two navy ships of the USS Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group sailing in the Pacific Ocean. Perhaps the editors of the book were trying to show Western readers that the waters of the Taiwan Strait that separate Taiwan from China remain choppy indeed, and that Lee played an important role over the years in trying to define Taiwan’s national sea borders. It is food for thought.

While Kagan’s book covers Lee’s life in positive terms, readers will remember that Lee was also denounced by Communist China’s foreign ministry officials as "the sinner of all millennia," "a rat running across the street" and "a deformed test-tube baby" who was destined for the "dustbin of history."

Near the end of the book, Kagan wonders if his subject will someday receive the Medal of Freedom from the White House, writing: "Lee surely rates the medal of freedom from the U.S. government. This decoration would signal to the world that Lee has led a life that can be praised and emulated. It would also make more Americans aware of the characteristics of Lee’s democratic spirit and its meaning for people in Asia and the world."

After reading this book, one can see the merit in Kagan’s call. Lee Teng-hui, no matter how he is viewed or judged by history, was surely a statesman of the first order who steered the ship of state of Taiwan in a new direction. Receiving a U.S. Medal of Freedom from the White House someday would surely be a crowning achievement.

Source: http://taiwanjournal.nat.gov.tw/