Page 1 of 2 Devils and
angels in Taiwan By Stephen A
Nelson
TORONTO - What many had hoped would
be a breath of fresh air from president-elect Ma
Ying-jeou may turn out to be a monsoon that brings
the perfect storm of change.
To find out
what direction the wind is blowing, one needs to
look no further than Ma himself. Although he is
praised as a pragmatist with a flexible attitude,
critics have called Ma "a chameleon on a weather
vane". And that weather vane now indicates that
the "new wind" is a really blast from the past - a
past when Ma's Kuomintang party (KMT) enjoyed
one-party rule.
That's why Taiwan's
current battle over the naming and renaming of
public places and monuments dedicated to
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek is really a battle
to determine Taiwan's future by
determining how people
see its past.
Kowtowing to
Chiang This past weekend, Taiwan celebrated
the traditional Tomb Sweeping Day, a national
holiday during which families visit their
ancestral graves to pay respects to their
forebears.
Coincidentally, it also
happened to be the 33rd anniversary of Chiang
Kai-shek's death. Not coincidentally, Ma - as the
head of the KMT "family" - chose this day to visit
two mausoleums in honor of his political
ancestors: Chiang Kai-shek and his son and
successor, the late president Chiang Ching-kuo.
Together the Chiangs ruled Taiwan for four
decades - most of the time under brutal martial
law. Chiang the elder ruled after the KMT's
Republic of China got control of Taiwan's islands
at the end of World War II. In 1949, after the KMT
lost to Mao Zedong's communists in a civil war on
mainland China, Chiang fled to Taiwan and held it
as the last bastion of his regime.
When
Chiang Kai-shek died in 1975, he was succeeded by
Chiang Ching-kuo. The younger Chiang was, by all
accounts, a more efficient and more brutal leader,
having learned government at the knee of Joseph
Stalin. Chiang Ching-kuo died in 1988.
President-elect Ma Ying-jeou, not
coincidentally, began his political career as
Chiang Ching-kuo's English translator and
secretary. He was promoted by Chiang Ching-kuo to
become the youngest cabinet member in the history
of Taiwan.
That would explain, in part,
Ma's kowtowing to the Chiangs on Tomb Sweeping
Day. And this just one week after his appearance
at another Chiang landmark - the Taipei shrine
formerly known as Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall.
Although Chiang Kai-shek's mausoleum (where Ma
spent Tomb Sweeping Day) is actually outside of
Taipei, it is the towering temple-like memorial
hall in downtown Taipei that is truly Taiwan's
answer to Vladimir Lenin's tomb in Moscow or Mao
Zedong's mausoleum in Beijing. The memorial hall
is set like a glistening jewel in a palatial
public plaza that is Taiwan's version of Red
Square in Moscow or Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
In the main hall of the shrine sits a
giant, bronze statue of Chiang Kai-shek, looking
for all the world like a Ming Dynasty god-emperor.
It is one of the largest bronze statues in the
world, on a scale with the giant statues of Lenin
in Moscow and Mao in Beijing.
In an effort
to demythologize the Chiang legend, the current
government of outgoing President Chen Shui-bian
and his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)
recently renamed the shrine National Taiwan
Democracy Memorial Hall. The name of the
surrounding gardens was changed from Chiang
Kai-shek Memorial Park to Taiwan Democracy Park.
And the great public plaza was renamed Liberty
Square.
The renaming was one of many
controversial moves the DPP has made in the past
year to distance Taiwan from its dictatorial past.
Other moves include the renaming of Taipei's
international airport that was for decades known
as Chiang Kai-shek International Airport. It is
now know as Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.
Critics in the the KMT decried such
changes as blatant political ploys by the DPP to
drum up election support among its core voters by
stirring up hatred of Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT.
But according to the pro-Taiwan Taipei Times, the
anti-Chiang campaign was about something much
deeper than an election victory.
In an
editorial last December titled "Let's feed Chiang
to the historians", the paper said that the
"destruction of Chiang's godlike status and the
redefinition of his place in history are necessary
parts of Taiwan's democratic transition, much like
Spain's ongoing re-evaluation of late dictator
Francisco Franco".
The paper went on to
say that "Election concerns were of course one
component in the government's decision to change
the name Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall to National
Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall ... but these
actions are also a part of the re-evaluation of
Chiang's contributions and faults. These actions
are an essential step in the process of lessening
psychological trauma in this society."
The
changes at the memorial hall have especially
angered the KMT's old guard and their supporters,
many of whom are "49ers" who arrived in Taiwan
with Chiang Kai-shek's troops.
Led by
Chiang Kai-shek's grandson, John Chiang, they have
publicly protested the changes to the Chiang
landmarks. They have complained that Chen - a
democracy-rights lawyer who fought against martial
law - is a dictator. And they say that Chiang
Kai-shek - a dictator who imposed martial law - is
a hero who laid the groundwork for Taiwan's
democracy.
For his part, Ma Ying-jeou has
called the renaming of the memorial hall "illegal"
and promised to revisit the issue when he becomes
president in May. He has said that the name of the
memorial could be changed back - and Chiang
Kai-shek's great status restored - "if that's what
people want". Ma hasn't said which "people" he
means to ask.
But by visiting the tombs of
the Chiangs, Ma has certainly indicated which way
he is leaning. And as usual with Ma, it's an
indication of which way Taiwan's political winds
are blowing.
To most historians, the
Chiangs were ruthless dictators who ruled Taiwan
with an iron fist. In Taiwan, they were
responsible for the deaths of thousands during the
KMT's reign of terror (known as The White Terror)
during the 38 years of martial law in Taiwan. Some
historians compare Chiang Kai-shek with with Adolf
Hitler, Stalin and Mao.
Certainly this is
the view of the outgoing Chen and his DPP - a
politician and a party born from the democracy
movement that opposed the KMT's one-party rule in
the 1970s and 1980s.
But during Ma's visit
to the Chiangs' mausoleums, Ma said that the
Chiangs' actions are "open to discussion" and that
their legacy is "open to different
interpretations". And people are entitled to their
own different views about the Chiangs, he said.
"Their merits and faults can be discussed
by historians but they left behind many important
historical and cultural heritages which should be
preserved," Ma said.
Ma may think that
this is a matter for future historians to decide,
but John Chiang and the KMT's ancien regime have
been emboldened by the party's one-two victories
in the legislative and presidential elections.
They are flexing their muscles by pressing for
changes now.
Taking their cue from John
Chiang, pro-KMT news media - which means nearly
all of them in Taiwan - are polishing the
tarnished image of Chiang Kai-shek and seeking to
restore the damaged legacy of the Chiang dynasty.
They continue to deify Chiang Kai-shek and portray
him as a national hero, one who preserved Taiwan's
freedom and laid the groundwork for economic
miracle.
This version of the story has
been eagerly picked up by foreign news agencies
and repeated around the world. An old proverb
says, "Journalism is the first draft of history."
If that's true, then the revised history of Taiwan
is being written now. And it's a version of
history we've seen before, when the KMT was
writing the history books.
Dictator or
deliverer? So what are future history
students to believe about Chiang Kai-shek? Was he
a dictator or deliverer? A strongman or savior?
"A lot depends on who you ask," said
Taiwan expert Dean Karalekas, a Canadian
journalist who lived and worked in Taiwan. "Was
Chiang a strongman? Yes. But he was our strongman
and it is important that we avoid the temptation
to apply 21st century moral judgements to his
actions," added Karalekas.
"The world was
a different place then, and it operated under
different rules," he said. "I'm not apologizing
for him, but he has passed into history; and as a
former student of history, I am hesitant to start
judging its principal actors, of which Chiang
certainly was one."
Another old Taiwan
hand was less hesitant to judge: "[Chiang] was a
dictator. If he delivered anything, it was a reign
of terror to Taiwan," said Jeff Limburger, a
Canadian who worked in Taiwan's news media for
more than a decade and now works in Singapore.
"Though to be fair, some of the people who were
persecuted in the White Terror were also delivered
by Chiang."
But even if Chiang was a
strongman, was he also - as his supporters claim -
the one who saved Taiwan by protecting it from the
"communist bandits on the mainland"?
"Chiang Kai-shek did not save Taiwan,"
said Jerome Keating, author of several books
including Island in the Stream: A Quick Case
Study of Taiwan's Complex History . "Taiwan,
on the other hand, actually saved Chiang Kai-shek
and the KMT. On the run from Mao Zedong's forces,
they had no place to hide but Taiwan"
What
saved Taiwan from Mao, Keating said, was that - in
the beginning - Mao lacked the naval forces to
cross the Taiwan
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