Peng Ming-min (Chinese: 彭明敏; pinyin: Péng Míngmǐn; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Phêⁿ Bêng-bín; 15 August 1923 – 8 April 2022) was a Taiwanese democracy activist, advocate of Taiwan independence, legal scholar, and politician.
Arrested for sedition in 1964 for printing a manifesto advocating democracy in his native Taiwan, he escaped to Sweden, before taking a post as a university teacher in the United States.
At the end of the war, in order to avoid the American bombing of Japan's capital, he decided to go to his brother near Nagasaki.
While Peng was a professor and chairman of the Department of Political Science from 1961 to 1962, he attracted the attention of Chiang Kai-shek and other Kuomintang (KMT) leaders.
Bowing to the increasing international pressure, Chiang Kai-shek released Peng from military prison 14 months later, but placed him under house arrest for life with strict surveillance.
[10] He was granted political asylum in Sweden, but despite the freedom he enjoyed in Europe, he decided to pursue an appointment at the University of Michigan.
Both the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party strenuously objected, but the United States granted his request for a visa and Peng arrived in Michigan in August 1970.
[citation needed] While in exile, Peng continued to be a leading figure in Taiwan politics and American foreign policy issues.
With the death of Chiang Ching-kuo in 1988, Lee Teng-hui assumed the presidency and began to reform Taiwanese government.
[13] No longer threatened with arrest, Peng returned to Taiwan on 2 November 1992 to a crowd of 1,000 people at Taoyuan International Airport.
[17] Outspokenly running on a platform of Taiwanese independence,[18] he garnered 21% of the votes, a distant second to the incumbent Lee Teng-hui, who won the election.