Lee Teng-hui - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Lee was born to a Hakka family in the rural farming community of Sanzhi (Sanshi-kyō), Taipei County (Taihoku, now New Taipei City), Taiwan. As a child, he often dreamed of traveling abroad, and became an avid stamp collector. Growing up during the Japanese rule of Taiwan, he developed a strong affinity for Japan. His father was a middle-level Japanese police aide, and his brother joined police academy and soon volunteered as for the Imperial Japanese Navy and died in Manila. Lee—one of only four Taiwanese students in Taipei high school class—graduated with honors and was given a scholarship to Japan's Kyoto Imperial University. During his school days, he learned kendo and busido. A lifelong collector of books, Lee was heavily influenced by Japanese thinkers like Nitobe Inazo and Nishida Kitaro in Kyoto. In 1944 he too volunteered for service in the Imperial Japanese Army and became a second lieutenant officer of an anti-aircraft gun in Taiwan. He was ordered back to Japan in 1945 and participated in the clean-up after the great Tokyo firebombing of March, 1945. Lee stayed in Japan after the surrender and graduated from Kyoto Imperial University in 1946.

After World War II, after the Republic of China took over Taiwan, Lee enrolled in the National Taiwan University, where in 1948 he earned a bachelor's degree in agricultural science. Lee joined the Communist Party of China (CPC) in September 1946, apparently briefly. He participated in the 228 Incident during this time. According to Wu Ketai, who inducted Lee into the Communist Party, the KMT was aware that Lee had been a Communist, but deliberately destroyed the records when Lee was promoted to the vice-presidency to protect his image. In a 2002 interview Lee himself admitted that he had been a communist. In that same interview Lee said that he has strongly opposed communism for a long time because he understands the theory well and knows that it is doomed to fail. Lee stated that he joined the Communist out of hatred for the KMT.

In 1953, Lee received a master's degree in agricultural economics from the Iowa State University in the United States. Lee returned to Taiwan in 1957 as an economist with the Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction (JCRR), an institution sponsored by the U.S. and aimed at modernizing Taiwan's agricultural system and at land reform. During this period, he also worked as an adjunct professor in the Department of Economics at National Taiwan University and taught at the Graduate School of East Asian Studies at National Chengchi University.

In the mid-1960s Lee returned to the United States, and earned a PhD in agricultural economics from Cornell University in 1968. Lee's doctoral dissertation, Intersectoral Capital Flows in the Economic Development of Taiwan, 1895–1960 (published as a book under the same name) was honored as the year's best doctoral thesis by the American Association of Agricultural Economics and remains an influential work on Taiwan's economy during the Japanese and early KMT periods.

Lee encountered Christianity as a young man and in 1961 was baptised. For most of the rest of his political career, despite holding high office, Lee has made a habit of giving sermons at churches around Taiwan, mostly on apolitical themes of service and humility.

Lee speaks Mandarin, Taiwanese, Japanese and English.