Lee Teng-hui

Biography

Lee Teng-hui was born in 1923 in Taihoku Prefecture under Japanese rule. He studied agriculture at Kyoto Imperial University and served in the Imperial Japanese Army before returning to Taiwan, where he graduated in agricultural economics from National Taiwan University in 1949. In his student years he briefly joined the Chinese Communist Party. He earned a master's degree at Iowa State University in 1953 and a doctorate at Cornell University in 1968, whose dissertation on capital flows in Taiwan's development won a national award.

Lee taught at National Taiwan University and worked as an economist for the Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction. Chiang Ching-kuo brought him into government: he joined the Kuomintang in 1970, became a minister without portfolio for agriculture in 1972, mayor of Taipei in 1978 and governor of Taiwan Province in 1981. Elected vice president in 1984, he became president when Chiang died in January 1988, the first Taiwan-born holder of the office, and soon after chairman of the Kuomintang.

As president Lee led Taiwan's democratisation. He met students of the 1990 Wild Lily movement and backed their call for direct elections, and in 1996 he won Taiwan's first direct presidential election; his 1995 visit to Cornell had triggered the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis. He promoted a Taiwanese identity and late in his presidency described cross-strait ties as a special state-to-state relationship. After leaving office in 2000 he backed the Taiwan Solidarity Union and was expelled from the Kuomintang in 2001. He died in 2020.