Richard C. Bush - A Lee Teng-hui Sympathizer

If anyone needed a sympathetic account of Lee Teng-hui, he/she need look no further than Richard C. Bush's book titled Untying the Knot Making Peace in the Taiwan Strait.

In the book, Bush made it clear that Lee was not a separatist and that the former Taiwan President had benign intentions in moves which Beijing interpreted as largely calculative, if not devious.

For instance, Bush argued that Lee's attempt in seeking more international space was linked to the need to forge a stronger Taiwanese national identity, as Lee had argued that "if Taiwan's identity is not completely clear to its people, how can we deal with mainland China?"

This need to give the island a stronger bargaining position vis-a-vis China, according to Bush, was the reason why Lee had tried to revise textbooks and reopen cases of the then ruling Nationalist Party's repression of the Taiwanese people in 1949, as well as making it clear that the people of Taiwan shared a common fate.

In another example cited by Bush, Lee reportedly did not have questionable intentions when he compared himself to Moses, a claim which suggested that he was going to lead the people of Taiwan out of China.

In his defence of Lee, Bush noted that Lee's remarks had been exaggerated by Beijing, adding that even though there was a change in Lee's tone, it did not represent a new direction in Lee's substantive thinking.

Bush added: "(Lee) saw himself as leading the people of Taiwan out of past repression, not out of China ... those in China wanted to see the worst in his intentions and did not bother to read carefully."

The rest of Bush's book were interspersed with similar defences of Lee and while Bush's approach was refreshing initially, it becomes predictable, one-sided and even tiresome after a while.