Statues of former Taiwanese dictator Chiang Kai Shek at Cihu Memorial Sculpture Park south of Taipei. For years, Taiwan has moved statues of its first president to the park.Steven Chase/The Globe and Mail
For years, unwanted statues of Taiwan’s first president Chiang Kai-shek, a brutal dictator to his critics, have found a new home at a leafy lakeside property southwest of the island’s capital.
There are groups of Chiangs standing in circles, facing each other. There are Chiangs reading books, talking to children and riding horses.
Organizers at Cihu Memorial Sculpture Park appear to have given up trying to artfully arrange all the statues that were relocated here after being removed from their original locations across Taiwan. In some cases, dozens of renditions of Chiang have been left standing in clusters at the park. In some areas, they are cheek by jowl, like soldiers lined up for parade inspection.
The Asian democracy, in an effort to rid itself of symbols of Taiwan’s authoritarian past, has for years tried to remove statues and portraits and to rename streets – but then run into opposition or inertia from quarters of society that still venerate Chiang.
There are now hundreds of Chiang statues at Cihu park, 40 kilometres from Taipei, near Chiang’s mausoleum. In some areas, they are tightly packed or lined up like soldiers for parade inspection.
Steven Chase/The Globe and Mail
After losing the Chinese civil war to the Communists, Chiang’s Nationalist forces retreated to the island of Taiwan where he ruled as an autocrat until his death in 1975. Thousands died under his brutal regime and many more were jailed as he sought to root out dissidents.
There are now hundreds of Chiang statues at Cihu park, 40 kilometres from Taipei, near Chiang’s mausoleum. Taiwan peacefully transitioned to democracy in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
But about 500 statues still remain where they were first installed across Taiwan: on school grounds, on government properties or in other public places, government records show.
Of 769 statues, only 159 have been removed in recent years.
This April, the government of newly elected President Lai Ching-te said it will make another effort to strip Taiwan’s public places of these remaining statues.
It makes sense this island of 24 million, whose government rejects authoritarian China’s wish to annex Taiwan, should want to demonstrate to its own citizens that there is no room for dictator worship here.
About 500 statues still of Chiang remain where they were first installed across Taiwan. Of 769 statues, only 159 have been removed in recent years; many have ended up at the park.
Steven Chase/The Globe and Mail
Fan Yun, a democratic activist turned legislator, who supports this effort, said she remembers as a teenager in high school donating some of her own money to help school authorities erect one of these statues.
She said she’s disappointed at the slow progress. “More than 36 years after the lifting of martial law, we still cannot deal with our past wrongdoings,” Ms. Fan said.
Taiwan ended almost four decades of martial law across most of its territory in 1987, and the first full elections for the Legislative Yuan, its parliament, were held in 1992. The country’s first democratic presidential election was in 1996.
Ms. Fan said it’s disheartening that in the heart of the capital Taipei there is still a massive public space named Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall where a statue of the dictator sits.
It’s not just statues, she said. Nearly 340 streets across Taiwan are named in honour of Chiang, often in the centre of cities or towns.
The Transitional Justice Commission, struck in 2018 to investigate Taiwan’s authoritarian past, also recommended in its final report that the image of Chiang be struck from Taiwan’s currency. This hasn’t happened.
Asked for comment, Taiwan’s Ministry of the Interior said statues removed from public places won’t automatically go to Cihu park in the future. That would be up to the local government.
It said in a statement that it will continue trying to build a consensus for disposal of authoritarian symbols. Taiwan has even offered subsidies for the removal of statues.
Yeh Hung-ling, a Taiwanese activist who served on the Transitional Justice Commission, said most of the people in Taiwan have mixed feelings about Chiang. “We are very divided,” she said, adding Taiwanese still struggled with how to best remember their history.
Ms. Yeh said three government departments that have resisted removing Chiang statues are veterans’ affairs, national defence and education. So has the Kuomintang, Chiang’s party.
People in Taiwan have mixed feelings about Chiang and three government departments have resisted removing Chiang statues, as well as the Kuomintang, Chiang’s party.Steven Chase/The Globe and Mail
A 2020 poll by British firm Redfield & Wilton Strategies found 43 per cent of Taiwanese respondents viewed Chiang as a dictator, with only 10 per cent disagreeing. A further 38 per cent neither agreed nor disagreed.
Back in July, the Taiwan government announced a small step: a changing-of-the-guard ceremony would no longer occur in front of a massive statue of Chiang. Instead, it would be moved outside of the memorial hall, Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture reportedly said, to avoid “worshipping authoritarianism.”
Taiwan’s undertaking – to exhume the ghosts of its martial-law past through the commission – is distinctly different from the way in which mainland China has shied away from confronting its own recent history, from the catastrophic Great Leap Forward and the ensuing famine that killed tens of millions to the chaos of the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square massacre.
China still regards Taiwan as a breakaway province, even though the Chinese Communist Party has never ruled the island.
Ms. Fan said she’s worried young Taiwanese with no memory of martial law aren’t being properly educated on how bad an authoritarian society would be as Taiwan faces constant pressure to accept annexation by Beijing.
“If the younger generation doesn’t understand the cost of losing democracy, I think it’s also very dangerous for Taiwan’s future.”