Mixed reviews

The history of any Chinese dynasty is usually written by the one which succeeds it.

Thus it is far too early to know how former Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui eventually will be assessed by those who come after him. Already there is much controversy about his historical contributions to Taiwanese autonomy, and possible independence, and to the greater Chinese nation, however that is defined.

However, an early, clear and unkind verdict from Beijing is already on hand. It holds that Mr. Lee is a traitor to the Chinese people, a "splittist" who opposes national unity and, perhaps, a secret agent of Japan. That is because he was born in Japanese-occupied Taiwan and partly educated in Kyoto, served in the Japanese army during World War II (though not in combat), spoke Japanese before Mandarin and retains a great affinity for Japanese culture.

In Taiwan, the early appraisals, like local politics, are much more divided. Many Taiwanese blame him for destroying KMT (Kuomintang) cohesion. The party was founded along Leninist lines as a political conspiracy against ruling authority, like its sometimes mainland partner, the Communists. The fleeing Chiang Kai-shek brought the KMT to Taiwan and it prevailed for 53 years. The party grew less authoritarian but until the 1990s had little tolerance for rivals. Increasingly wealthy, it spent freely to stay in power.

Most recently, Mr. Lee is blamed for raising tensions needlessly with the mainland, where he has never been. He drove one-time ally James Soong from the party and insisted a colorless vice-president should be the next president; this let the Democratic Progressive Party win the office as 77 percent of voters turned against the KMT.

Yet Mr. Lee is rightfully called "Mr. Democracy". After becoming president in 1988, he began abolishing the KMT's Leninist ways and introduced the free politics which eventually ended its rule. He also presided over a period of unprecedented prosperity as free markets and hi-tech took over.

Thus Mr. Lee deserves credit for many of the good things about Taiwan. Whether Chinese history books ever say so depends on who hires the historians to write them.

-- The South China Morning Post, Hong Kong