Obituary | Lee Teng-hui, a controversial figure hailed as Taiwan’s ‘father of democracy’
- The island’s first democratically elected president, whose long career spanned the political spectrum, has died aged 97
- Taiwan was still under Japanese rule when Lee was born in a rural community near Taipei in 1923
His efforts to promote Taiwanese identity and Taiwan’s statehood in the last five years of his presidency saw him widely reviled by Beijing, which maintains that Taiwan is part of the mainland and subject to eventual reunification.
He also served as a junior officer in the Imperial Japanese Army late in World War II and remained a vocal defender of Japanese interests, resulting in criticism from Beijing and other Asian governments.
But political pundits in Taiwan said that, although he was controversial, nobody could deny Lee’s achievement in promoting democratic reforms in Taiwan, which eventually saw him dubbed “Mr Democracy” and the “Father of Taiwan”.
“As a top strategist, Lee proved to the West that democracy could still be practised in an evolutionary instead of a revolutionary way in Taiwan,” said Wang Kung-yi, a political scientist at Chinese Culture University in Taipei.