The Strait Scoop: Farewell, Mr. Democracy

["Sherman David Cheung" <sdc8874@hotmail.com>]

Column by Bevin Chu of Antiwar.com

Written by: Fung Hu-hsiang, Ph.D.
Professor of Philosophy at National Central University
Member of the Legislature of the Republic of China, New Party
Translated by: Bevin Chu
R.A., Texas

Farewell, Mr. Democracy

MR. DEMOCRACY VS. THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS
Lee Teng-hui, lame duck president of the Republic of China, is no champion 
of democracy. Lee’s ludicrous "Mr. Democracy" label was the result of 
wishful thinking by embarrassingly naive reporters for Newsweek magazine 
with almost zero understanding of what they were writing about.

China-haters and Taiwan "independence" fellow travelers, usually one and the 
same, suffer from selective amnesia. They conveniently forget just how Lee 
Teng-hui became president of the ROC

Lee did not rise through the ROC political hierarchy "democratically," the 
way Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan rose through America’s. Lee’s presidency 
was conferred upon him. The late Chiang Ching-kuo conferred the ROC 
presidency on Lee, the same way Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek conferred the 
ROC presidency on Chiang Ching-kuo, the same way Deng Xiaoping conferred the 
PRC presidency on Jiang Zemin.

Lee became president of the ROC not by means of democracy, but by imperial 
succession. The only difference is Lee put a democratic face on his 
ascension to the throne by holding a direct election, after the fact. 
Exploiting advantages conferred upon him by an imperial presidency, 
including a state-controlled media and an inexperienced, gullible 
electorate, Lee ensured his own "democratic" victory.

Unfortunately for Lee, this was a gambit he could use only once. Had "Mr. 
Democracy" been eligible for another term, and chose to run, he would have 
been trounced, but good, by James Soong.

MR. DEMOCRACY VS. TERM LIMITS
Lee could not legally run for another term, not without yet another 
constitutional amendment. Mr. Democracy has had the ROC Constitution amended 
five times in nine years for two reasons. One, to increase his personal 
power and two, to pave the way for Taiwan independence.

Previous amendments systematically raised the threshold for impeachment so 
high Lee is now virtually an elective monarch. Another amendment would mean 
six amendments in ten years.

It is widely rumored the only reason Lee has not demanded another amendment 
and another term, is our own US State Department secretly confronted "Mr. 
Democracy" with an ultimatum, "Step down, or else."

MR. DEMOCRACY VS. CHIANG CHING-KUO
Chiang Ching-kuo earnestly believed Lee would carry on Chiang’s program of 
political liberalization, of glasnost and perestroika. Chiang was wrong. New 
Party legislator and vice-presidential candidate Fung Hu-hsiang, who once 
served as Chiang’s executive secretary recalls how Chiang did so many things 
right. He lifted martial law. He abolished media censorship. He legalized 
opposition political parties. He promoted "native" Taiwan political talent 
to higher office. If anybody deserves the title "Mr. Democracy," it’s Chiang 
Ching-kuo, not Lee Teng-hui.

Unfortunately the one thing Chiang messed up, he messed up royally, his 
choice of successor. He inflicted the despotic Quisling Lee Teng-hui on the 
people of the ROC, for twelve long years. Such is the downside of 
"benevolent despotism." One never knows if the next guy in line is another 
"Mr. Democracy."

MR. DEMOCRACY, MEET MR. MANN
In an article entitled "Taiwan President Taking a Bad Rap" (Wednesday, March 
22, 2000 Los Angeles Times) columnist Jim Mann wrote:

"Taiwan’s president [Lee Teng-hui] is being charged with secretly wanting 
the opposition DPP to win the election. Lee, so this argument goes, is an 
ardent Taiwanese nationalist who sympathizes with the DPP’s past support for 
the cause of independence for Taiwan... Are these accusations against Lee 
valid? ... did Lee actually work behind the scenes against Lien and the KMT 
, his own party? There’s little evidence to support such a charge... "

LITTLE EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT SUCH A CHARGE?
In August 1994, Liu Tai-ying, Chairman, Business Affairs Committee, 
Kuomintang, met with then Democratic Progressive Party Chairman Shih 
Ming-teh, and offered to pay the cost of the DPP’s new headquarters 
building. Liu Tai-ying freely admits this event took place but claims that 
President and KMT Party Chairman Lee Teng-hui knew nothing of the offer. 
Skeptics consider this even less believable than Hillary Clinton not knowing 
about the White House Travel Office firings. Liu Tai-ying also offered to 
underwrite the DPP’s entire annual budget, to the tune of $4.3 million U.S.

Mann must be kidding.

MR. DEMOCRACY VS. MA YING-JEOU
Mann wrote:

"The argument that Taiwan’s president wanted his own party to lose ignores 
what he said and did during this campaign and previous campaigns. Two years 
ago, when the DPP’s Chen was running for reelection as mayor of Taipei, 
there were similar charges that the president secretly wanted him to win 
because Chen was Taiwanese and his opponent, Ma Ying-jeou, was from mainland 
China. Instead, Lee campaigned vigorously for Ma, who proceeded to win."


Text-only printable version of this article

Bevin Chu is an American architect of Chinese descent registered to practice 
in Texas. Currently living and working in Taiwan, Chu is the son of a 
retired high-ranking diplomat with the ROC (Taiwan) government. His column, 
"The Strait Scoop," now appears Fridays at Antiwar.com.


Archived Columns

Farewell, Mr. Democracy
3/31/00

Taiwan’s Fraudulent Election
(3/21/00)

Taiwan’s Day of Decision
(3/17/00)

One China, Two Systems
(3/10/00)

Taiwan’s Pseudo-Democracy
(3/3/00)

Taiwan Independence and the 2-28 Incident
(2/25/00)

The Least of Three Evils
(2/18/00)

A New Millennium, Really
(2/11/00)

Taiwan Independence Beats a Retreat
(2/4/00)

Hollywood's Tibet: Tinseltown's Sacred Cow
(12/17/99)

International Trade and National Security: Back to Basics
(12/10/99)

Tibetan-Chinese Are Not American Indians
(12/3/99)

American China Policy versus Common Sense
(11/26/99)

Letter to an American Patriot
(11/19/99)

The Myth of Casualty Aversion
(11/12/99)

Gary Bauer's Un-American Values
(11/5/99)

The Dalai Lama's Politics of Race
(10/29/99)

A Republic, Not an Empire: The Conventional Wisdom is Wrong, Dead Wrong
(10/22/99)

All Politicians are Essentially Actors: Al Pacino, Ronald Reagan and Lee 
Teng-hui
(10/15/99)

Playing Politics with Taiwan's Quake Victims
(10/8/99)

Taiwan's Great Earthquake and the Mandate of Heaven
(10/1/99)

Taiwan's Little Emperors
(9/24/99)

Globocops With Guillotines
(9/17/99)

Taiwan Independence and the Stockholm Syndrome
(9/10/99)

Taiwan Independence and Free Lunches (8/31/99)

Inside the Taiwan Political Scene (8/19/99)

American Values in Dire Straits (8/10/99)


AS JOHN McLAUGHLIN SAYS: "WRONG!"
For starters Lee discouraged Ma’s nomination. When Ma was nominated by the 
KMT hierarchy in spite of Lee’s wishes, because nominees John Chang and 
Jason Hu lacked the charisma to beat Chen, Lee refused to attend Ma’s 
rallies. Finally, a week or so before election day Lee relented.

Ma did not win because Lee campaigned "vigorously" for Ma, because Lee did 
NOT campaign "vigorously" for Ma. Lee campaigned grudgingly, half-heartedly 
for Ma. Getting Lee to campaign for Ma was like pulling teeth. Ask KMT 
"non-mainstream faction" members who drafted Ma to be their party’s nominee.

MR. DEMOCRACY VS. THE NEW PARTY
Ma won because New Party members sacrificed their own better qualified 
candidate Wang Chien-hsuan, in order to block the separatist Chen’s path to 
the ROC presidency. What they did was referred to as "qi Wang, bao Ma" or 
"dump Wang, save Ma." Ask DPP members registered to vote in Taipei. You’ll 
be subjected to an earful of angry profanity directed at "mainland pigs." 
Two years later they still resent Chen’s loss, and place the blame squarely 
on the pro-reunification New Party.

MR. DEMOCRACY VS. LIEN CHAN
Mann wrote:

"In recent months, Lee publicly denounced Chen as unreliable. And he 
declared that, if the DPP came to power, there would be instability between 
Taiwan and China. These don’t seem like the actions of a DPP cheerleader. 
They look more like the actions of a leader who hoped his own KMT would win 
so that he would retain a degree of power after he was no longer president."

Wrong! Recent months? Try recent DAYS. Again Lee reluctantly went through 
the motions of supporting his own party’s candidate for appearance’s sake. 
But he did so only after he was reasonably confident his strategy of "qi 
Lien, bao Bian" had taken effect.

MR. DEMOCRACY AND THE ORDER OF LENIN
Jim Mann just doesn’t get it.

The KMT, like the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) is a Leninist political 
party. For that matter, so is the "opposition" DPP. KMT tradition mandates 
that whoever is president is also automatically party chairman, and 
vice-versa. That’s right. Just like the "Communists" in Beijing.

If Lien Chan were elected, Lee would be forced to step down as party 
chairman. Besides, by Lee’s lights Lien is not sufficiently committed to 
Taiwan independence. That’s why many pro-reunification KMT members supported 
Lien against Chen. Rightly or wrongly, they believe Lien to be a closet 
advocate of reunification.

If on the other hand, Chen were elected, Lee could argue he needed to retain 
the chairmanship in order "to rescue the party in its hour of need."

No. Lee did NOT hope his own KMT would win so that he would retain a degree 
of power after he was no longer president. Instead Lee hoped Chen Shui-bian, 
whom Lee compared to Joshua and himself to Moses, would win. Lee hoped after 
he conferred the ROC presidency on Chen Shui-bian, that Lee would at least 
be able to retain his own party’s chairmanship.

MR. DEMOCRACY VS. JAMES SOONG
During the election Lee Teng-hui marshaled the entire resources of the KMT 
party machine to smear James Soong with false accusations of embezzlement. A 
subsequent Control Yuan investigation cleared Soong of any and all 
wrongdoing. The damage however had already been done. Soong never fully 
recovered in the polls. See "The Least of Three Evils."

MR. DEMOCRACY TO A-BIAN’S RESCUE
On the other hand, Lee Teng-hui ordered evidence that Chen Shui-bian 
defrauded a wealthy Chinese-Malaysian tycoon out of a fortune in a phony 
lottery scheme suppressed until after election day. Prosecutors have since 
announced that the handwriting on a sheaf of incriminating documents match 
Chen’s handwriting samples. Too late. Chen is already president-elect, soon 
to be president, with full executive immunity. Chen meanwhile, has openly 
declared his intention to cover for benefactor Lee Teng-hui. Who says 
there’s no honor among thieves?

L.A. CONFIDENTIAL
The Academy Award winning film LA Confidential painted a riveting portrait 
of Los Angeles during the 1950s, on two levels. On the surface, the mythical 
Los Angeles of Jack Webb’s police drama Dragnet, viewed through Eisenhower 
era rose-colored glasses. Beneath the surface, beneath the Tinseltown glitz, 
a Dark City of Rodney King police brutality and Heidi Fleiss sex scandals 
which persists even today.

JUST THE FACTS, MANN, JUST THE FACTS
Mann wrote:

"The conspiracy theory of Taiwan’s election is too simplistic to bear 
scrutiny. Chen didn’t win because the Taiwan president secretly supported 
him... Lee Teng-hui looks above all like King Lear, an elderly ruler in 
decline... His downfall is the stuff not of conspiracy but of tragedy and 
pathos."

What is too simplistic to bear scrutiny is Mann’s glib but irrelevant King 
Lear analogy. Misleading literary allusions are a sorry substitute for hard 
facts. Newsweek in 1996, and the Los Angeles Times in 2000 have presented us 
with a Pleasantville version of Taiwan’s "democracy" akin to the sanitized 
Los Angeles Jack Webb depicted in Dragnet.

MR. DEMOCRACY, BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR
The iconoclastic Li Ao recently suggested that Chen Shui-bian will sell out 
Taiwan independence for personal political advantage. According to Li AO, 
Chen Shui-bian is actually an unprincipled opportunist wolf in Taiwan 
independence sheep's’ clothing.

If Li AO is right, and Li AO ought to know, having known Chen for twenty 
years, then Lee Teng-hui may have outsmarted himself by turning the reigns 
of the ROC government over to someone who will wind up making a deal with 
Beijing and relegate Taiwan independence to the dustbin of history.

If Li AO’s prediction proves correct, Chen Shui-bian’s election will prove 
an ironic and unexpected benefit to both sides of the Taiwan Strait. The 
fact is Deng Xiaoping’s, and now Jiang Zemin’s intention, was never to 
overrun Taiwan in order to impose doctrinaire "communism" on the island, but 
merely to prevent the loss of sovereign Chinese territory.

Beijing is perfectly happy to permit Taiwan an extraordinarily high degree 
of local autonomy, even to keep its own armed forces, as long as Taiwan 
remains part of China. A pragmatic deal struck between the Chen regime in 
Taipei and the Jiang regime in Beijing would be a win/win proposition for 
America, for mainland China, and for Taiwan.

The only losers would be Robert Kagan and William Kristol of the Weekly 
Standard. These Armchair Warriors, these Profiles in Courage would be 
instantly deprived of their newest and most likely candidate for Son of Evil 
Empire. Better luck next time, fellas.

Appendix:
Taiwan’s Newest Export: KMT Corruption
An Abbreviated Chronology of Liu Tai-ying’s Influence Peddling

Liu Tai-ying’s official title is "Chairman, Business Affairs Committee, 
Kuomintang" (or KMT), the ruling party of the Republic of China (Taiwan). He 
is the man President Lee Teng-hui has entrusted with Taiwan’s most notorious 
overseas export: political influence peddling. He is the prime suspect 
behind the 15 million dollar bribe to Clinton and the Democratic National 
Committee. In short, he is Lee Teng-hui’s Ambassador of "Checkbook 
Diplomacy."

The Kuomintang is reputed to be the world’s wealthiest political party. 
Americans may be surprised to learn that unlike their own political parties 
which are required by US law and custom to avoid even the appearance of 
impropriety, the KMT openly owns and operates a wide range of highly 
lucrative business enterprises, from which it competes unfairly by 
exploiting its status as ruling party of the R.O.C.

What follows is a paper trail, thoroughly documented and a matter of public 
record, of Liu Tai-ying’s long and sordid history of illegal and unethical 
influence peddling at home and abroad.

Liu Tai-ying’s Paper Trail

1. In August 1994, Liu Tai-ying met with then Democratic Progressive Party 
Chairman Shih Ming-teh face to face, and offered to pay the cost of the new 
DPP Headquarters building. Liu Tai-ying freely admits this event took place 
but insists that President and KMT Party Chairman Lee Teng-hui knew nothing 
of the offer. Skeptics consider this even less believable than Hillary 
Clinton not knowing about the White House Travel Office firings.

2. On the same occasion Liu Tai-ying offered to underwrite the DPP’s entire 
annual budget, to the tune of $4.3 million US Both building and budget 
offers were turned down, but considering that the DPP is the largest 
pro-independence party in Taiwan, they cast more than a little doubt on Lee 
Teng-hui’s public expressions of support for reunification with the 
mainland.

3. Liu Tai-ying’s boss, KMT Party Chairman Lee Teng-hui not long ago 
declared his intention to offer the United Nations $1 billion US for a seat 
in the General Assembly. This brazen attempt to bribe the world body was 
ignored, but reveals the "anything is for sale" world view of the KMT 
leadership.

4. On behalf of Lee Teng-hui, Liu Tai-ying engaged the high-powered public 
relations firm of Cassidy and Associates for the astronomical sum of $4.5 
million US in order to smooth the way for his politically-motivated 
"private" 1995 Cornell University trip.

5. Cornell University admits that they received a $2.5 million US donation 
from a "friend" of Lee Teng-hui after Lee’s trip.

6. In February 1994, Liu Tai-ying paved the way for Lee Teng-hui’s 
Indonesian state visit by making a $100 million US contribution to 
Indonesian president Suharto.

7. In April 1995, Liu Tai-ying prepared the way for Lee Teng-hui’s Mideast 
trip with generous contributions to Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

8. In April 1995, Liu Tai-ying attempted to bribe Israel with an offer 
ranging between $250 and $400 million US to allow a state visit by Lee 
Teng-hui. Israel turned him down.

9. In 1994 Liu Tai-ying arranged for the sale of the Hong Kong Times office 
building at the bargain basement price of $190 million H.K. The building was 
resold only three months later for the sum of $580 million H.K. Why was the 
spread so great? Who pocketed the profit? These and other troubling 
questions remain unanswered.

10. Liu Tai-ying arranged for the purchase of an office building in Japan at 
the exorbitant price of 13.9 billion Yen. The building has been appraised as 
having a market value of only 6.5 billion Yen. Who pocketed the 100% profit? 
Did it pay for Lee’s Japan visit? These are reasonable questions.

11. Liu Tai-ying’s annual salary of $700,000 US exceeds that of R.O.C. 
President Lee Teng-hui, which in turn exceeds that of US President Bill 
Clinton. Liu’s bar-hopping lifestyle compares with that of Clinton advisor 
Dick Morris, as does his ego. He boasts of having single-handedly raised 
$800 million US for the KMT over a period of three short years, without 
apology for the unethical means by which he did so.

12. Liu is well connected with the heads of Taiwan’s "Four Big Enterprises," 
namely Evergreen, China Trust, the Cathay Group and Formosa Plastics. It was 
Liu who introduced Mark Middleton, President Clinton’s Special Assistant to 
the "Four Big Enterprises." That Evergreen was subsequently fined by the 
State of California for making an illegal $890,000 US campaign contribution 
does little to dispel suspicion about Liu’s involvement in the latest 
Clinton bribery scandal.

CONCLUSION

Liu Tai-ying and his boss Lee Teng-hui are of course responsible for their 
misdeeds and must answer for them. Nevertheless our overview is not intended 
as an indictment of Liu and Lee as individuals, but rather of endemic, 
systemic corruption. Lee Teng-hui’s "corruption as a way of life" must be 
rooted out before the Republic of China can become a democracy in more than 
name only. It is only when clean government has been reestablished at home 
that the R.O.C. will cease to be an exporter of corruption abroad.





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