Lee Teng-hui

Who is Lee Teng-hui?

Lee Teng-hui was born in Sanzhi, Taiwan, under Japanese colonial rule and trained as an agricultural economist, earning a doctorate from Cornell University in the United States. He entered government as a technocrat, joined the Kuomintang, and was appointed vice president under President Chiang Ching-kuo in 1984. Upon Chiang's death in 1988 he became the first Taiwan-born head of state, inheriting a one-party authoritarian system still operating under decades-old martial-law-era emergency provisions. Through the late 1980s and 1990s he steered a sweeping and largely peaceful democratic transition, ending the Temporary Provisions that had suspended constitutional rule, allowing direct elections to the National Assembly and Legislative Yuan, and overseeing Taiwan's first direct presidential election in 1996, which he won. His years in office also saw growing international attention to cross-strait tensions with mainland China. After leaving the presidency in 2000 he remained an outspoken, sometimes controversial voice on Taiwanese identity and self-determination until his death in 2020. He is widely credited as a principal architect of Taiwan's transformation into a full democracy.

Sources: Richard C. Bush, Untying the Knot: Making Peace in the Taiwan Strait (2005) · Wikipedia, "Lee Teng-hui" · BBC News, "Lee Teng-hui: Taiwan's 'father of democracy' dies aged 97" (2020)