Peng Ming-min fought for the idea of “one China and one Formosa”

WHEN HE WAS a boy, few would have singled out Peng Ming-min as a future firebrand. Born in 1923 in Taiwan, then widely known as Formosa, he was bookish and other-worldly, with his main extra-curricular passion being baseball not politics. But by the time he had become a successful academic, four decades later, Taiwan’s peculiar and unhappy international position had virtually forced him into taking a political stand—one that was to lead him to jail, escape into exile and, eventually, a job as a presidential adviser, after a failed run at the top job himself.