The central“betrayal, of course, was of the KMT itself. To have witnessed the ferocity of the anti-Lee demonstrations after the 2000 election was to get a sense of just how deep the anger and sense of betrayal was among the Old Guard mainlander faction in the party. What we have subsequently discovered –what Lee has let us see–is that he was precisely what the protesters maintained he was: a pro- independence mole in the very heart of the party, believing in goals that were anathema to the majority of party members. In yet another betrayal, their candidate, Soong, who stood up for Lee in the succession crisis following the death of Chiang Ching-Guo, appears to have had his presidential ambitions foiled forever by the machinations of Lee.
Lee maintained authoritarian rule within the party. He allowed Black Money corruption to flourish in order to ensure the party's success at the polls. And, along the way, he ushered in the first ever genuine democracy with a Han Chinese cultural base. With the patience (and simmering fury) of the Count of Monte Cristo, he concealed his true beliefs and agenda for three decades, as he was advanced as an ineffectual and safe, token native Taiwanese. The mainland Old Guard never knew what hit them.
