Despite his close relationship with late president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) has never accepted the idea of "one China" according to US historian Richard Kagan.
Kagan, a professor of Asian history at Hamline University in Minnesota, made the comments in a biography of Lee he has recently completed.
Son of dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), Chiang Ching-kuo took over the presidency in 1978 and remained in power until his own death in 1988.
Although Chiang Ching-kuo ended the 38-year long Martial Law era in 1987, authoritarian rule persisted under his tenure. Lee served as Chiang Ching-kuo's vice-president from 1984 until 1988, when he took over the presidency after Ching-kuo's death.
Lee pursued an open policy in politics and played an important role in the nation's democratization.
During an interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times' sister newspaper), Kagan said he observed Lee from various perspectives as he wrote the biography.
Writing for the general public rather than academics, Kagan gathered most of the information for his book through interviews, taking three years to complete the work, he said.
Greatly influenced by the zen concept of "floating," Lee often uses indirect language and is therefore sometimes seen as unpredictable, Kagan told the Liberty Times.
He said he believed that even during Lee's early political career as a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) member, his views on Taiwan's democracy and geography were completely different from those of the mainlanders in the ruling class and that he seemed to want to create a Taiwan-oriented culture, Kagan said.
He said because Lee acquired most of his knowledge on China from Japanese teachers and friends, he does not have a favorable opinion on Chinese culture.
Lee even believes that China's possessive attitude toward Taiwan comes from stagnancy in Chinese culture, Kagan said.
Kagan writes extensively about the relationship between Lee and Chiang Ching-kuo in his book and says that Lee seems to consider Chiang Ching-kuo as a mentor but not a hero.
Chiang Ching-kuo worked with secret service head Wang Sheng (王昇), who suppressed Taiwanese democracy activists and Lee never agreed with this, Kagan said.
Nevertheless, Kagan said he did find many similarities between Lee and Chiang Ching-kuo.
For example, both have a love of learning, both faced the conservative followers of Chiang Kai-shek, both were against corruption and both were willing to be close to the people.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Taiwan’s population last year shrank further and births continued to decline to a yearly low, the Ministry of the Interior announced today. The ministry published the 2024 population demographics statistics, highlighting record lows in births and bringing attention to Taiwan’s aging population. The nation’s population last year stood at 23,400,220, a decrease of 20,222 individuals compared to 2023. Last year, there were 134,856 births, representing a crude birth rate of 5.76 per 1,000 people, a slight decline from 2023’s 135,571 births and 5.81 crude birth rate. This decrease of 715 births resulted in a new record low per the ministry’s data. Since 2016, which saw
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
China’s newest Type-076 amphibious assault ship has two strengths and weaknesses, wrote a Taiwanese defense expert, adding that further observations of its capabilities are warranted. Jiang Hsin-biao (江炘杓), an assistant researcher at the National Defense and Security Research, made the comments in a report recently published by the institute about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) military and political development. China christened its new assault ship Sichuan in a ceremony on Dec. 27 last year at Shanghai’s Hudong Shipyard, China’s Xinhua news agency reported. “The vessel, described as the world’s largest amphibious assault ship by the [US think tank] Center for Strategic and International
RSS