Lee's brilliant stroke, Soong candidacy both good for Taiwan

By Edward Neilan
Special to World Tribune.com

TOKYO--No one blinked when longtime Kuomintang politician James Soong announced last week that he would defy party elders and run independently for president of the Republic of China on Taiwan in the March 2000 elections.

Soong, 57, made his announcement on Friday July 16, but the news flow was clogged with Beijing's angry response to President Lee Teng-hui's earlier declaration that China must deal with Taiwan on a state-to-state basis and in America with the search for the missing plane of John F. Kennedy Jr., son of the former U.S. President.

In the first place, the touch-all-bases move by Lee was brilliant in its conception, execution and timing. Lee's statesment not only immobilized the domestic opposition and put Beijing and the U..S. in the position of being made to think for a change, but also solidified his place in history.

Among East Asia specialists, Lee's move was a surprise only by its timing.

The move by Soong also had been expected but was hyped in importance by its timing in a chain of events that saw U.S. President Bill Clinton phoning Chinese President Jiang Zemin to reiterate Washington's stand on the "one China" policy and hearing Jiang's insistence that China had not ruled out the use of force to settle the Taiwan issue.

The overall winner will be democracy. The election demonstration will be, in effect, what many in Taiwan have been seeking all along: a referendum.

Opinion polls have shown Soong well ahead of the likely Nationalist candidate, Vice President Lien Chan, and the top opposition, challenger, former Taipei Mayor Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party, which has advocated independence.

A recent poll conducted by the China Times showed Soong had 36 percent of the public's support, against Chen's 22 percent and Lien's 15 percent.

Soong said he sought his own candidacy because the Nationalist Party had failed to come up with what he considered a fair way to nominate the party's candidate to replace Lee.

Aloof and colorless Lien represents Taiwan and KMT "old money" and as Lee's preferred successor is expected to win the nomination at a party congress on August. 21.

Late President Chiang Ching-kuo, son of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, ended martial law and set Taiwan on a major reform movement toward democracy.

Part of Chiang's talent was in choosing leaders for the future. Chiang personally tapped a group of young people all with Western and Japanese educations, to become the core of Taiwan's and KMT's leadership after he was gone. The result has been his enduring legacy. His choice of Taiwan-born Lee Teng-hui (Kyoto, Cornell) as his successor was a master stroke.

Others in the group were Lien Chan (Chicago), Soong( Cal-Berkeley and Georgetown), former Foreign Minister and Speaker of the National Assembly Fredrick Chien(Yale), Director of Institute of International Relations and former Government Information Director-General Shaw Yu-ming (Tufts, Chicago), Foreign Minister Jason Hu (Oxford), Secretary-General of National Security Council Ding Mou-shih (Paris), former Mainland Affairs Council head Chang King-yuh(Columbia), Mayor of Taipei Ma Ying-jeou (Harvard), KMT Secretary-General John Chang(Georgetown), former Mainland Affairs Council chief Vincent Siew (New York) and Minister of State Shirley W.Y. Kuo (Kobe).

Soong was Director-General of the Government Office when he led me into an interview with President Chiang up a red-carpeted stairway in the grand Japanese-built Presidential office building in December of 1982.

The interpreter for that session was Ma Ying-jeou, just returned from Harvard to be a presidential secretary. Now 49, Ma has been Minister of Justice and is now Mayor of Taipei. Some believe a Soong-Ma ticket in 2000 would be unbeatable though improbable.

Chiang in that 1982 interview sketched plans for reform that began to be realized with the lifting of martial law in 1987 and setting Taiwan on a democratic course. The rest is history including the 1996 election of President Lee, the first freely-elected Chinese President.

Edward Neilan (eneilan@crisscross.com) is a veteran journalist, based in Tokyo, who covers East Asia and writes weekly for World Tribune.com.