Lee Huan

Lee Huan
李煥
Premier of the Republic of China
In office
1 June 1989 – 1 June 1990
Preceded by Yu Kuo-hwa
Succeeded by Hau Pei-tsun
Personal details
Born 24 September 1917
Hankou, Hubei, Republic of China
Died 2 December 2010 (aged 93)
Taipei, Taiwan
Nationality  Republic of China
Political party Kuomintang
Spouse(s) Pan Hsing-ning (潘香凝)
Children Lee Ching-chung (李慶中)
Lee Ching-chu (李慶珠)
Lee Ching-hua (李慶華)
Diane Lee (李慶安)
This is a Chinese name; the family name is Lee.

Lee Huan (Chinese: 李煥; pinyin: Lǐ Huàn; September 24, 1917 – December 2, 2010) was a politician in the Republic of China. He was Premier of the Republic of China from 1989 to 1990, serving for one year under former President Lee Teng-hui. He was the father of current KMT legislators Lee Ching-hua and Diane Lee. He was born in Hankou, Hubei.

Early life and education

He received his Bachelor of Laws at Fudan University and his Master of Arts in education from Teachers College, Columbia University. Lee also received an honorary doctorate from Dongguk University in South Korea.

Political career

In 1972, Lee Huan was appointed as Director General of the Department of Organization for the Kuomintang (KMT) when Chiang Ching-kuo was Premier. In 1976, then-Premier Chiang Ching-kuo instructed Lee Huan to select several dozen young party leaders for the highest level cadre training program at the party school. Among the 60 individuals chosen for the training, half were Taiwanese,[1] including Lien Chan (a member of the KMT’s Central Standing Committee member and Minister of Foreign Affairs), Wu Po-hsiung (a CSC member and Mayor of Taipei), Shih Ch’iyang (a CSC member and Vice Premier). This opening of the KMT’s cadre program was an unprecedented opening for native Taiwanese, and was an important step in Chiang Ching-kuo’s program of loosening mainlander control of the KMT by integrating native Taiwanese into its leadership.

In 1977, several thousand anti-KMT demonstrators led by Hsu Hsin-liang rallied in the town of Chung-li to protest the use of paper ballots in the upcoming elections, for fear that the KMT would use the ballots to rig the election. When the protesters realized that the KMT had likely carried out the fraud that they had feared, they rioted, ultimately burning down the Chung-li police station. The riot – the first such large-scale protest in Taiwan since 1947 – was subsequently called the Zhongli incident. Taking responsibility for the incident, Lee Huan tendered his resignation, offering no other explanation than to state "The election in 1977 didn't meet my expectations, so I resigned."

After his resignation, he became the president of CTV until 1979. That year he became president of National Sun Yat-sen University. In 1984, he was appointed Minister of Education. In his three years as Education Minister, he abolished restrictions on students' hair length, enabled the establishment of private colleges, established a college of physical education, increased scholarships for graduate students, and established the University Publications Committee.

KMT Secretary General

Chiang Ching-kuo ascended to the presidency in 1978, and in July 1987, he tapped his old confidante Lee Huan to be the KMT’s new Secretary-General. Chiang told Lee that he had three goals he would like Lee to fulfill: reform the KMT, move the ROC towards democracy, and move the ROC towards reunification.[2] In a speech to the KMT’s Kaohsiung headquarters in September 1987, Lee declared that the KMT’s goal was no longer to replace the communist party ruling mainland China, but rather to "push for democracy, freedom of the press, and an open economy in the mainland so as to rid China of Communism and to move it toward a democratic modern state." [3] Many in the KMT’s right-wing claimed the speech betrayed the party’s historic commitment to destroy the communists; Chiang countered by instructing Lee to publish the entire speech in the party’s official journal.[3]

Premiership

Chiang Ching-kuo died on January 13, 1988 and Vice President Lee Teng-hui immediately stepped in and ascended to the presidency. The "Palace Faction" of the KMT, a group of conservative mainlanders headed by General Hau Pei-tsun, Premier Yu Kuo-hwa, and Lee Huan sought to block President Lee's accession to the KMT chairmanship and sideline him as a figurehead. With the help of James Soong – himself a member of the Palace Faction – who quieted the hardliners with the famous plea "Each day of delay is a day of disrespect to Ching-kuo," Lee was allowed to ascend to the chairmanship unobstructed. At the KMT party congress of July 1988, Lee named 31 members of the Central Committee, 16 of whom were native Taiwanese: for the first time, the native Taiwanese held a majority in what was then a powerful policy-making body.

Yu Kuo-hwa retired as premier in 1989, and President Lee named Lee Huan to replace him. However, only one year later, Lee was forced out in favor of Hau Pei-tsun, likely due to strong disagreements between President Lee and Lee Huan on policy and the direction of the democratization of Taiwan.

Despite being forced from office, conservative leaders within the KMT such as Lee Huan, Premier Hau, Judicial Yuan President Lin Yang-kang, and the second son of Chiang Kai-shek, Chiang Wei-kuo, formed a bloc (called the “Non-mainstream faction”) to oppose those who followed President Lee (the "Mainstream faction").

Lee died at the Veterans' General Hospital in Taipei on December 2, 2010.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ The term "Taiwanese" and "native Taiwanese" in this article may refer to the descendants of the Taiwanese aborigines (the original indigenous peoples who first settled the island), and also to the descendants of the those who settled from mainland China before the 1949 Republic of China evacuation as a result of their losing the Chinese Civil War.
  2. ↑ Hu, Taiwan’s Geopolitics and Chiang Ching-kuo’s Decision to Democratize Taiwan, p. 42.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Hu, Taiwan’s Geopolitics and Chiang Ching-kuo’s Decision to Democratize Taiwan, p. 32.

References

External links

Government offices
Preceded by
Zhu Huisen		 ROC Minister of Education
1984–1987 		Succeeded by
Mao Gao-wen
Preceded by
Yu Kuo-hwa		 Premier of the ROC
1989–1990 		Succeeded by
Hau Pei-tsun