The Father of Taiwan Democracy is CKS’s son. He selected Lee.
A great piece. Taiwan needs more of these kind of write-ups by those who might have “made it”, but didn’t, but were still there from the early years of Japan-controlled and then KMT-takeover (not the so-called “winners” view).
PMM covered everything and gave, to me at least, a rather neutral presentation of what he saw throughout those years from university to just a few years ago.
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Lest we forget, CCK was the architect of White Terror. Nice of him to declare on his deathbed though that he’d become “Taiwanese.”
Guy
Peng was born in 1923—the same year as Lee Teng-hui—and is now well into his 90s. Sadly most of his published pieces over the past decade have been incoherent junk. At least he pulled this one off to try to figure out Lee—someone I suspect he never could quite figure out.
Guy
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Taipei Times has an unfortunate reading- under heading of “Most Popular”, it lists
#1-“Former president Lee Teng-hui dies”.
(Yes, I know “Most Popular” means “Most Read”; still, it’s kind of startling when you first see it.)
I thought that was Marcos…or did they both say it?
Both- LKY was much more honest and efficient, but he definitely believed in “Asian-style democracy” i.e. the elite make the decisions and the masses follow.
East vs. West
In the 1990s, several prominent East Asian leaders argued that human rights are culturally relative to Western societies.
At the forefront of the so-called ‘Asian values’ debate is Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the prime minister of Malaysia, and the former prime minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, along with several other public intellectuals in the region.
Although their arguments vary, advocates of Asian values maintain that there are clear and often sharp differences between the values and traditions in the East and in the West.
They argue that Asians tend to value community and Westerners value the individual. Whereas Asians appreciate order and harmony, Westerners appreciate personal freedom.
Other so-called ‘Asian values’ include saving and thriftiness, insistence on hard work, respect for leaders and family loyalty.
Dr Mahathir and Mr Lee argue that the supposedly universal human rights documents and treaties actually privilege Western values to the detriment of Asian values.
I have a right to... | BBC World Service
And many more; search “Asian values Lee Kuan Yew”.
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J Michael Cole at Taiwan Sentinel pays tribute to Lee, characterizing his life as “the incontestable refutation of the belief that history is merely an impersonal force, that people have little, if any, ability to alter the course of history. Chance partly guided Lee to the pinnacle of power in Taiwan, while his decisions reverberate with us to this day.”
Guy
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