Written by Christian Aspalter. Taiwan today has a relatively comprehensive welfare state system due to the work of Lee Teng-Hui and millions of Taiwanese. These citizens pushed the very same man to open and safeguard the process of democratisation back in the late 1980s, and to set up the first major system of the Taiwanese welfare state, the universal National Health Insurance, back in 1996. Lee listened to what people wanted, and that means all of the Taiwanese people, not just the elite, the ancient regime of the Kuomintang (KMT) or the business tycoons. Other leaders behaved quite differently.
Taiwan Insight 