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Taiwan’s Statue Wars

4 minute read
Julia Ross

On a lush hillside in northern Taiwan, the late dictator Chiang Kai-shek smiles benevolently—over and over. Here he is astride a horse or brandishing a book; there he stands, extending a fatherly arm to the busloads of visitors that show up daily to see this collection of statuary, located next to the Generalissimo’s mausoleum 40 km southwest of Taipei. Plaques inform inquisitive onlookers where each piece originated, but none of the candy-coated descriptions explain that this collection came into being because these statues are unwanted and have been dismantled from schools, colleges and municipal buildings across the island. The Chiang Kai-shek Statue Park, as it’s known, may as well be called the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Dump.

Eager to put the island’s militarist past to bed, and eager to distance itself further from the Chinese mainland, from which Chiang hailed, Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is in the process of erasing the Generalissimo from public view. Late last year, Chiang’s name was uncoupled from that of the capital’s international airport, and, in February, his statues were removed from all military bases. Then, in a stealthy overnight raid, the DPP-led local government of Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s second city, dismantled a huge Chiang presiding over the city’s cultural center and secreted him away to a warehouse (Taiwan people are waiting to see if the reassembled statue appears among its brethren up north).

But it was last Saturday that the independence-leaning administration of President Chen Shui-bian executed the coup de grace. In an iconoclastic ceremony that took place under the protection of riot police, Chen officially changed the name of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, a massive blue-and-white monument occupying a swathe of central Taipei, to the National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall. Inside, a new exhibition to commemorate Taiwan’s democracy movement, entitled “Goodbye, President Chiang,” was being prepared for unveiling. Outside, scuffles took place between police and several hundred protesters loyal to Chiang’s memory.

By Monday all was quiet, but rearguard actions are being fought. Legislators belonging to the opposition Kuomintang (KMT)—the party Chiang headed for 50 years on both sides of the Taiwan Strait until his death in 1975 at the age of 87—have called the hall’s name change illegal, auguring a protracted courtroom battle. Taipei’s Mayor Hau Lung-bin, also of the KMT, has vowed to fight any moves to dismantle a giant statue of Chiang that stands at the building, declaring it a protected historical site. He is part of a core of KMT politicians—and a surviving handful of military veterans who arrived in Taiwan in 1949 as part of Chiang’s fleeing Nationalist Army—who argue that the dictator paved the way for rapid postwar economic progress and fended off a Communist invasion. Those who suffered under four decades of brutal martial law, along with many younger Taiwan citizens, aren’t shedding tears, however. “Most of those statues were built by the KMT when they were trying to control the thinking of the people,” says Taipei resident Ellen Wang, 25. “It’s ridiculous to have them on every campus.”

Ironically, Taiwan’s Tourism Bureau has hatched a plan to keep the dictator’s memory alive for the one group of people who seem genuinely interested (KMT diehards aside). Chiang-themed tour packages will target mainland Chinese, who are invariably curious about Mao’s nemesis. Perhaps they could include the statue at my local park on the itinerary. In this rendition, a grandfatherly Chiang wears a traditional Chinese tunic and leans on a cane. If ever his legacy needed propping up, it is now.

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