Chiang Ching-kuo died in January 1988 and Lee succeeded him as president. The "Palace Faction" of the KMT, a group of conservative mainlanders headed by General Hau Pei-tsun, Premier Yu Kuo-hwa, and Education Minister Lee Huan, as well as Chiang Kai-shek's widow, Soong Mei-ling, were deeply distrustful of Lee and sought to block his accession to the KMT chairmanship and sideline him as a figurehead. With the help of James Soong—himself a member of the Palace Faction—who quieted the hardliners with the famous plea "Each day of delay is a day of disrespect to Ching-kuo," Lee was allowed to ascend to the chairmanship unobstructed. At the 13th National Congress of Kuomintang in July 1988, Lee named 31 members of the Central Committee, 16 of whom were "bensheng ren": for the first time, "bensheng ren" held a majority in what was then a powerful policy-making body. On March 20, he ordered to release the political prisoner, Gen. Sun Li-jen from 33 years of house arrest. In August, he listened to the aboriginal legislator Tsai Chung-han's advocacy in the General Assembly of Legislative Yuan and the journalism reportage of Independence Evening Post on the human rights' concern to release the remaining survivors of the civilian Tanker Tuapse free after 34 years in captivity.