FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — When University of Arkansas history professor Shih-shan Henry Tsai began writing his biography of Lee Teng-hui, Taiwan’s first popularly elected president, he concluded that the leader’s life reflected the huge transitions and transformations that Lee’s country had experienced.

Tsai’s seventh book, “Lee Teng-hui and Taiwan’s Quest for Identity,” recently published by Palgrave Macmillan, provides not only a chronicle of a leader’s life, but a description of the evolution of a country of key interest to the global economy as Taiwan made the transition from a Japanese colony, a Leninist party-state dictatorship and finally an American-inspired fledgling democracy.

Today, Taiwan is an economic powerhouse, a small island with 23 million people, nearly 3.7 percent of the world’s gross domestic product and over $375 billion in foreign reserves. The history of how Taiwan became what it is today is tied up in the figure of Lee Teng-hui, who served as mayor of Taipei, governor and vice president of Taiwan, and finally president of Taiwan for 12 years.

“He was a person who went through tremendous transitions,” Tsai said. “I use him as a metaphor to tell the history of Taiwan.”

Lee was born in 1923, while Taiwan was under the rule of the Japanese. He grew up speaking a Taiwanese dialect at home and with his friends, but Japanese in school. During World War II, he served in the Japanese military as a second lieutenant.

The Nationalist Chinese took over the country in 1945, when he was 22 years old. He resumed college after the war, where all his classes were now taught in Chinese instead of Japanese, and received a degree in agricultural economics. At this point, he went through what Tsai calls the “re-making of his Chineseness,” a reference to the fact that before Japanese rule, China maintained a feeble and precarious footing in isolated parts of the island until 1895. Lee joined the communist Nationalist Chinese Party, known as Kuomintang, and served for several years as minister in charge of agricultural economics.

He came to the United States in 1968 to get a doctorate at Cornell University, a time period that was crucial to the future history of his country.

“He absorbed a lot of American democracy, a lot of the American style of government,” Tsai said.

 “Up until 1988, Taiwan was under tight Chinese control,” Tsai said. People who disagreed with the government often disappeared. Slowly, cautiously and methodically, Lee began to change directions for the country, in what Tsai calls the “un-making of his Chineseness.”

“He began to be critical of Chinese politics and culture,” Tsai said. Although Chinese and Taiwanese cultures share certain characteristics, the Taiwanese have their own dialect and a maritime culture unique to the island, and Lee began to emphasize these differences.

Taiwan is key to the world’s economy because as an island nation it is vital to controlling imports and exports through the sea lanes. Despite Taiwan’s current democracy, China still claims sovereignty over Taiwan. But neither the 48-nation peace conference with Japan held in San Francisco in 1951, nor a separate peace treaty signed between Japan and the Nationalist Chinese government in 1952, provide for a transfer of sovereignty of Taiwan to the People's Republic of China. Because the island nation generally shares American values and also provides an important strategic position in the West Pacific, the United States wants to keep Taiwan from being swallowed by communist China. Against this backdrop, Tsai’s book gives great insight into the present difficulties of U.S.-China-Taiwan triangular intricate relationships.

As for Lee, Tsai tries to answer a few questions about his protagonist, whom some have accused of being an opportunist interested only in self-preservation, while others have celebrated him as a hero who propelled Taiwan into a new era and constructed a new identity for its people. The tremendous transitions Lee underwent — from Japanese to Chinese to Taiwanese — made the search for his identity challenging.

“I 'lived’ with him for five years and it was a tortuous journey,” Tsai said.

But in the end, Tsai concluded that despite his flaws, Lee redeemed himself, that as the leader of Taiwan he finally was able to speak from his heart of hearts.

“At times I give him credit, but as a historian I have to make judgments,” Tsai said.