The Taiwanese government has pledged to remove nearly 800 statues of Chiang Kai-shek.
In 2018, the government established a transitional justice commission to investigate the rule of the former generalissimo, who served as president in China and Taiwan until his death in 1975. Thousands of statues.
Cabinet official Shipu said in a speech at Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan on Monday that the Ministry of Interior would quickly evacuate the 760 remaining. The pledge comes in response to criticism that the government is not moving quickly enough.
Taiwan is dotted with statues of Chiang Kai-shek, and for years the government and society have debated what to do with them, especially the largest one in Taipei’s Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall. Many have left – usually to a park in northern Taipei now famous for the thousands of Chiang Kai-shek portraits that line it.
Shi said Monday that the military has been particularly slow to accept subsidies designed to incentivize the removal of statues.
“The Department of Defense said military tradition needs to be considered,” Shih told the legislature.
According to the South China Morning Post, the defense minister said last week that commemorating Chiang Kai-shek, who established training schools in mainland China and Taiwan, was a military tradition in the Republic of China and that he considered military sites to be private property.
There have been calls for progress on a decision on a statue of Chiang Kai-shek in Taipei that is more than six meters high and protected by a gendarmerie guard of honor, ahead of a commitment to remove the remaining statues.
The debate over Chiang Kai-shek’s legacy is largely divided along party lines, with the ruling Democratic Progressive Party advocating for an end to ongoing tributes and the Kuomintang, now opposed to Chiang, accusing them of wanting to erase history.
Chiang Kai-shek’s legacy has long been a focus of political debate in Taiwan. When the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949, Chiang Kai-shek, the Kuomintang and millions of their supporters were defeated and fled to Taiwan. He established the Republic of China’s government-in-exile and ruled the people of Taiwan with brutal martial law for decades until his death in 1975, when power was transferred to his son. By the end of martial law in 1987, an estimated 140,000 people were imprisoned and another 3,000 to 4,000 executed for actual or perceived opposition to the Kuomintang.
But some in Taiwan say Chiang’s achievements must be weighed against the odds, noting that he also oversaw Taiwan’s path to economic prosperity, fought the Communists and the Japanese and founded Taiwan’s military academies. The KMT still exists as a major political party.
The Democratic Progressive Party faces accusations of “de-Sinicizing” Taiwan for its push to end Chiang Kai-shek commemoration events. The party holds a pro-Taiwan sovereignty stance, which contrasts with the KMT’s continued support for Taiwan’s historical and cultural ties with China. The Nationalist Party has also expressed its opposition to the Transitional Justice Commission and its unfavorable findings.
Xu Yujian, assistant director of international affairs of the Kuomintang, said that Taiwan is a diverse society and the DPP should not “impose itself on others.” [its] Thought”.
“We think it’s important that the current government thinks more about the historical memory of different groups of people.”
