CHIANG KAI-SHEK may once have been revered as a near-god on Taiwan, where he led his Chinese Nationalist regime after being defeated by Mao Zedong's Communists on the mainland in 1949. But almost a third of a century after his death, the memory of the old dictator is being effaced, with the removal of the generalissimo's statues and the renaming of many streets and even Taipei's international airport.This has provoked a political row, which this week engulfed Taiwan's defence minister, Lee Jye. He was expelled from the Kuomintang (KMT), Chiang's former ruling party, for allowing statues of the old nationalist to be removed from Taiwan's military bases.
Chiang's legacy has never been properly examined in Taiwan. Arguments about the past are also fights over what the island should be in the future: a part of China (the view of Chiang Kai-shek and his political heirs), or an independent nation with a distinct, non-Chinese Taiwanese identity.
The current government of President Chen Shui-bian, whose Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) leans towards independence (but which appointed a KMT man as defence minister), intensified its campaign against the generalissimo as the island marked the 60th anniversary of the “228 Incident”—the KMT's violent suppression of protests against its rule on February 28th 1947. An estimated 28,000 were killed.
Blaming the massacres on Chiang and the “outside” regime of the KMT, the DPP announced plans to rename the giant Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei as the “Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall”, and tear down the sanctuary's perimeter wall. The central government dropped “China” from the names of many state enterprises last month. There is talk of removing Chiang's portrait from Taiwanese coins.
DPP leaders may be politicking ahead of parliamentary elections in December, and presidential polls next March. But there is more at stake. By casting the 228 Incident as a clash between Taiwanese and KMT “outsiders”, the DPP has not only opened old wounds in Taiwan but also created anxiety in Beijing. China's Communists may have been at odds with the generalissimo. But they fear that Taiwan, by breaking with Chiang's legacy, may also be breaking away from the Chinese mainland.
