Part of the reason for this dramatic turnabout was that President LeeTeng-hui happened to be on a trip to South Africa at that time. At a banquet held by overseas Chinese, he discovered that 90 % of the 8,000 overseas Chinese in South Africa came from Taiwan.
李總統提到他訪問南非出席僑界餐會時，與會的八千多名僑民中，百分之九十是台灣出去的。