On 22 May 1995, the United States, in a reversal of a 16-year ban on United States visits by high ranking R.O.C. officials, granted a visa to President Lee Teng-hui for a 6-day “private” visit to his alma mater, Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York. This prompted a crisis in both China–United States relations and cross-strait relations.

Since the United Nations shifted its recognition from the R.O.C. to the P.R.C. in 1971 and the United States followed suit in 1979, Taiwan has been working hard to break its diplomatic isolation. In May 1994, the Clinton Administration refused Lee a visa to visit the United States, but allowed him a refuelling stop in Hawaii on his way to Central America, restricting him to the airport grounds in Honolulu while his plane was being refuelled. Lee landed at the airport in Honolulu but refused to disembark from the plane in protest. However, this did not deter his efforts to return to the United States.

In 1991, the Taiwan alumni of Cornell contributed US$1 million for an academic chair. This was followed by the establishment of the Lee Teng-hui Professorship of World Affairs at Cornell University in 1994 through a US$2.5 million endowment provided anonymously by Lee's friends in Taiwan. In early 1995, the university invited Lee to be the main speaker at its June alumni observance. During a rally in April 1995, described as the largest political gathering of Asian students ever at Cornell, the “Taiwan Speak-Up Committee” collected more than 2,000 signatures urging Clinton to grant Lee a visa to visit the university. In order to ensure that the visa was issued, a Taiwan think-tank, headed by Lee's right-hand man, Liu Tai-ying, hired the Washington lobbying firm of Cassidy & Associates in 1994 for US$4.5 million and a promise of a large bonus if Congress voted in favour of Lee's visa.

Traditionally, Taiwan's allies in the United States have been conservative Republicans.