Return To Taiwan
With the death of Chiang Ching-kuo in 1988, Lee Teng-hui assumed the presidency and began to reform Taiwanese government. In 1992, he promulgated a revision of Article 100 of the Criminal Code, which not only allowed Taiwanese to advocate independence without being charged with sedition, but also granted amnesty to political prisoners and ended the overseas blacklist. No longer threatened with arrest, Peng returned to Taiwan on November 2, 1992 to a crowd of 1,000 people at Taoyuan International Airport. He had been in exile for 22 years.
On September 28, 1995, after an arduous two-tiered nomination process involving 49 public debates around Taiwan, the Democratic Progressive Party nominated Peng as their candidate for Taiwan’s first presidential elections. Outspokenly running on a platform of Taiwanese independence, Peng garnered 21% of the votes, second only to incumbent Lee Teng-hui, who won the election.
In 2001, after the DPP presidential candidate Chen Shui-bian was elected, Peng was appointed a Senior Advisor to the Office of the President. In 2009, Peng's A Perfect Escape (逃亡), was published in Chinese, revealing the details of his dramatic escape in 1970. He continues to contribute to political discourse in Taiwan.
Read more about this topic: Peng Ming-min
Famous quotes containing the words return to and/or return:
“I find very reasonable the Celtic belief that the souls of our dearly departed are trapped in some inferior being, in an animal, a plant, an inanimate object, indeed lost to us until the day, which for some never arrives, when we find that we pass near the tree, or come to possess the object which is their prison. Then they quiver, call us, and as soon as we have recognized them, the spell is broken. Freed by us, they have vanquished death and return to live with us.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“A tree may grow a thousand feet tall, but its leaves will return to its roots.”
—Chinese proverb.