De-Chiangification & Name Rectification – Page 3

All The King’s Horses, And All The King’s Men

I had to read this story twice to fit it all together. In the Taiwanese port city of Kaohsiung, a statue of Chiang Kai-shek was taken down recently. The mayor of the Taiwanese city of Tahsi requested the statue, but he didn’t want it for HIS town. Instead, he hoped to send it as a gift to the village in China where Chiang was born.

So the trucks rumble into Tahsi sometime before 5 in the morning. I’d like to think that the lead driver was a broad-faced teamster smoking a cheap stogie. Driver steps from the cab and says, "We got your Chiang statue for ya. Just sign right here, mac."

One little problem though. The 8.17 meter statue had been broken up.* Into 200 pieces.

Butterfingers.

Meanwhile, the mayor of Tahsi is in Xikou, China. He’s trying to persuade the Chi-coms of Chiang’s village to accept the statue of their former enemy. And apparently, he’s been making progress. So he gets a phone call, telling him that, y’know that statue you were kinda hopin’ to give away as a gift?

Well, there’s been a little complication.

The China Post reports the mayor was "heartbroken". Having lost a set of dinner plates on my last move**, I know exactly how he feels.

* The statue was 8 meters tall? Just how much did the damn thing weigh, anyway? In defense of the teamsters, it must have been one heck of a job even to load up the broken pieces.

** I didn’t, really. I just made that part up.

UPDATE (Mar 20/07): Looks like the statue was only segmented into 79 pieces instead of 200, and my footnoted questions were appropriate:

[The sculptor of the statue said that] the way the bureau removed the statue was correct given the statue’s size and weight.

Taiwan’s Trade With Denmark At All-Time High

The story’s from a few weeks ago.

Bilateral trade between Taiwan and Denmark
set a new record of US$907.8 million in 2006 thanks to the signing of
a double taxation avoidance treaty between the two countries in
August, 2005, according to Taiwan’s representative to the North
European country.

Those numbers, of course, could easily change – particularly if some Danish newpaper takes it upon itself to publish cartoons of the Prophet Chiang Kai-shek. Peace Be Upon Him.

Was Chiang Kai-shek Really So Bad?

That was the question the China Post‘s Joe Hung posed in his column on Monday. Let me begin by stating that it’s entirely fair for Hung to enumerate the beneficial things Chiang did for Taiwan (though at the same time, some of the things he lists are debatable, even refutable).* And I certainly take his point that historians should endeavor to tell all the facts, not just cherry-pick the ones they happen to like.

But when he says that history isn’t judgment, I confess to being a bit baffled.** Can we now expect the China Post will stop slamming President Chen Shui-bian’s record? Because by definition, Chen’s record IS history, isn’t it? And didn’t Dr. Huang just finish telling us that that’s something we’re not ALLOWED to judge?

By strange coincidence, I ran into a quote during my vacation arguing rather the opposite, by Yale Classics professor Donald Kagan:

Finally, I must explain and defend my use of what has been called "counterfactual history". Some readers may be troubled by my practice of comparing what happened with what might have happened had individuals or groups of people made different decisions or taken different actions. I believe that anyone who tries to write history rather than merely chronicle events must consider what might have happened; the only question is how explicitly he reveals what he is doing. Historians interpret what they recount, which is to say they judge it. They cannot say that an action was wise or foolish without also saying or implying that it was better or worse than some other action that might have been taken – that, after all, is "counter-factual history". [emphasis added] All true historians engage in the practice, with greater or less self-consciousness. Thucydides, perhaps the greatest of historians, does this on many occasions, as when he makes a judgment of Pericles’ strategy in the Peloponnesian War: "such abundant grounds had Pericles at the time for his forecast that Athens might quite easily have triumphed in this war over the Peloponnesians alone." (2.65.13; emphasis added [by Kagan])

I think there are important advantages in being so explicit. A clear statement puts the reader on notice that the assertion in question is a judgment, an interpretation rather than a fact. It also helps to avoid the excessive power of the fait accompli, making clear that what really occurred was not the inevitable outcome of superhuman forces or of equally determined and equally mysterious forces within the historical actors. Instead, what happened was the result of decisions made by human beings acting in a world they [did] not fully control. It suggests that both the decisions and their outcomes could well have been different. I continue this practice in examining the life of Pericles.

– p xiii-xiv of Donald Kagan’s Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy

I perhaps should have underlined Kagan’s claim that all true historians judge history, whether they’re conscious of it or not. Because after making a point of admonishing his readers not to judge history, Hung goes on to do exactly that:

The fact, however, is that despite [the 2-28 Massacre and the White Terror], Chiang was a good autocrat…But for [Chiang’s] defense force and American intervention, Taiwan would have been a province of the People’s Republic of China before the end of 1950.

Now, I happen to agree it was A GOOD THING that Chiang helped prevent Taiwan from falling to the communists, but I also recognize that that sentiment is a JUDGMENT. A judgment with which most Marxists, and more than a few leftists, are liable to disagree.

I’ll close with a story about a friend of mine, a semi-professional videographer. Fellow went down to 2-28 Memorial Park with an interpreter on February 28th to conduct a few interviews with family members of 2-28 Massacre victims. He’s hoping to do a documentary on 2-28 sometime, though he apparently has other projects on the front burner right now. Anyways, instead of a FEW interviews, he was surprised to find that a long line of Taiwanese old-timers began to form, each wanting to tell the wai-guo-ren*** with the camera their story.

Their stories were depressingly similar. "The KMT army came to my house one night and took my father away, and we never saw him again. I just want to know the truth of what happened to him." This my friend heard, over and over.

I wasn’t there, so I don’t know what questions my friend asked of the interviewees. For that reason, I don’t know if it even occurred to him to ask them whether they thought Chiang Kai-shek was "all that bad".

I’ll venture to say though, that they would have scoffed at the notion that that’s something they shouldn’t be allowed to judge for themselves.

* Particularly amusing is Hung’s statement that Chiang’s KMT controlled runaway inflation. While it is true that there was high inflation in Taiwan at the end of World War II, inflation increased – not decreased – during the first few years of KMT administration of the island. The uprising that occurred on February 28, 1947 was in part a reaction against the KMT’s gross economic mismanagement, if not outright thievery.

It takes a bit of nerve for Dr. Hung to praise the KMT for controlling hyperinflation, when in fact it was something they were largely responsible for.

** It should be clear what Hung’s Georgetown professors were driving at. It is indeed a tricky thing to judge those who have gone before us by our own moral standards. The ancient Greeks and Romans lived in a different moral universe from our own, and I don’t see much use in spending a lot of time denouncing them for keeping slaves. The question then, I think, is whether the KMT of Chiang’s time also dwelt in a different moral universe, or whether it was one which more closely resembled our own.

I would argue the latter. I suspect that if one looked carefully enough, one could still find original records of slave sales in ancient Rome. Why would anyone conceal such records, when they were a normal part of the world in which they lived? Contrast that to the KMT’s behavior after 2-28; they concealed evidence, and even attempted to justify their conduct by inventing a cockamamie story about there being 100,000 Japanese troops hiding in the Taiwanese mountains waiting – waiting! – to join forces with the Taiwanese rebels. [note to self: find the link for this later]

100,000 Japanese troops hiding out in the Taiwanese mountains. In 1947. Riiight.

In the world of law, people who commit crimes sometimes try to plea criminal insanity. "I didn’t know what I was doing – I didn’t know what I was doing was WRONG." But such a plea is usually not taken very seriously if it can be proven that the suspect tried to lie or conceal evidence after the fact.

Maybe that’s because the act of hiding evidence is not usually associated with men who are innocent.

*** Mandarin for "foreigner"

UPDATE (Mar 27/07): A good Johnny Neihu piece mostly devoted to this topic. He expresses astonishment that Chiang could not have known what his subordinates were doing in Taiwan around the time of the 2/28 Massacre:

Unaware! Chiang was a control freak who distrusted his subordinates so deeply that he countermanded his generals mid-battle. At one point he held 82 government posts simultaneously, including chief of the government, army and party, plus — rather bizarrely, the presidencies of the Boy Scouts and National Glider Association. To believe that he could have been "unaware of conditions on Taiwan" is pushing it just a little.

I didn’t know that. Though Neihu’s list DID jog my memory about something else – that Chiang’s army was based on Leninist lines, with each unit having both a military and a POLITICAL officer. The job of the latter was to spy on the former, to make certain he was loyal. If it looked like the military officer might be mutinous, the political officer was authorized to put a bullet in his head.

It’s therefore hard to imagine Chiang not being aware of the situation in Taiwan with all of those political officers floating around, each one of them regularly reporting back home.

Going ‘Postal’ Over Name Changes

I confess to being fairly neutral on the issue of "Taiwanizing" names of state-owned enterprises here, so I was somewhat bemused to read the China Post‘s vehement opposition last Sunday:

It seems as if the government of President Chen Shui-bian will never cease to change names and symbols perceived to connect Taiwan with the Chinese nation.

According to reports made public over the past few days, the Cabinet has begun preparations to change the names of several major corporations and institutions that are majority-owned by the state.

These reports say that China Airlines, an international carrier that has operated for some 47 years, will have to change its name to "Taiwan Airlines" or perhaps "Formosa Airlines."

…[in doing so] , a major brand name that has been carefully built up for nearly half a century would be dismantled virtually overnight to satisfy the political correctness of the current lame-duck administration.

I don’t want to be mean here, but you might want to google "China Airlines"+"safety record" to give you some idea about how "carefully" the brand name was built up over the last fifty years. Maybe renaming the company is an act of mercy which might help distance it from its formerly dismal reputation in this arena.

(I say "formerly" for a reason. The paper neglects to inform its readers that it was under the Chen administration that China Airlines began to improve upon passenger safety.)

Taiwan’s China Post mentions a few other name-change candidates as well:

There is also the matter of Chunghwa Telecom, whose name sounds innocuous enough in English, but which translates as "China Telecom".

[…]

There is also…China Steel, as well as Chunghwa Post, the national postal service whose name in Chinese literally means "Chinese Postal Administration."

The paper breezily dismisses the argument that the name changes will avoid confusion, claiming, "these institutions have been working fine for many decades." And for companies that serve local consumers, that’s probably true – for now. No one walks into the local post office and thinks that it’s owned by the Communist Party of China. On the other hand, KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou has promised to allow Chinese firms to operate in Taiwan if he’s elected president in 2008, and if that happens, then local consumers might very well wish to have some way to distinguish between Taiwanese companies that bear the "China" moniker and their Chinese equivalents.

The case is even stronger for companies which serve foreign customers. Surely, not many foreigners can be expected to know that China Airlines is Taiwanese, while Air China is Chinese. There’s a good business reason why Pepsi is Pepsi, and not "Cola-Coca".

It’s called product differentiation.

The claim that such changes remove Taiwan from the Chinese fatherland becomes surreal when one considers that the Taiwanese government has also suggested dropping the Republic of China calendar in favor of the Christian calendar. As a fellow blogger previously observed, how would Taiwan’s adoption of the calendar that Communist China itself uses move Taiwan any further from China?

(I wrote more on this in a post back in February. Scroll down to the March 1st update.)

The China Post objects to these name changes on cost grounds, and I’m not in any position to argue with any of its figures at this time. I do however, doubt that "Formosa Airlines" will have to renegotiate quite as many air service agreements as the Post asserts it will, and I also doubt that the China Post was quite so worried about cost when it was time to change Japanese-era names to Chinese ones.

I understand full well why the KMT said "hang the cost" and renamed things in Taiwan 50 years ago. They were Chinese nationalists, and they they did it because it appealed to their base. And President Chen? Well, he’s a Taiwanese nationalist. It shouldn’t be surprising that he, too, is trying to appeal to HIS base.

Any talk of a "Cultural Revolution" is absurd. The China Post is free to argue against these changes, and none of its owners or writers will EVER be sent to a re-education camp. Moreover, redress is merely A SINGLE democratic election away. If the KMT objects strongly enough to President Chen’s policies, it can always reverse them.

IF it wins the presidency, that is.

The paper closes by bitterly suggesting that President Chen should "direct his subordinates to stop wasting time and money changing names and symbols, and start thinking about how to properly govern the country instead." Here, the Post utterly confuses Chen’s priorities. Chen DID try to "properly govern" the country, only to witness the KMT block most of his legislation. Having dammed the political water from flowing in productive directions, did the KMT really not anticipate it overflowing the banks and running in non-productive directions instead?

UPDATE: Written Wednesday, this post was left unpublished until I could check it for grammar and sentence flow. By Friday, the China Post revealed a name change it DOES support:

Thus, to facilitate its rule of Taiwan if it regains power with Ma [Ying-jeou] assuming the [Taiwanese] presidency in 2008, the KMT should lose no time…[in addressing] the issue of "indigenous consciousness"…[It should consider] changing the KMT of China into the KMT of Taiwan, or at least eliminating the word "China" since, in the present political climate, such a name may mislead people into believing it is a party of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), or an organization closely related to the PRC, thus incurring the charge of national betrayal. [Emphasis added]

Sounds like a Cultural Revolution in the making here. Why, the KMT got along just fine for the last 100 years with its present name! And what of the STAGGERING costs of ordering new letterhead and namecards…

Acts Of Brutality

Well, there goes THAT promise. The one where I was going to wait a few days before commenting on current events here in Taiwan. Let’s just say the devil made me do it.

Actually, it was the China Post, and its claim yesterday that changing the airport’s name from Chiang Kai-Shek to Taiwan Taoyuan International was "a show of brutal power".

Somebody call the International Criminal Court. President "Snidely Whiplash" Chen just renamed an airport. Why, this is the greatest injustice in the history of the world!

Cost

The China Post‘s first objection was the expense. Twenty one million NT dollars ($640,000 US), give or take. That, and the move did nothing to improve the economy.

Which isn’t bad as arguments go. It’s just that I wonder if someone could produce for me an editorial by that paper denouncing the KMT’s renaming of Taiwanese streets, neighborhoods and mountains back in the late ’40s. A great many of THOSE had Japanese names prior to retrocession, and all of them were given Chinese names afterwards.

In the process, I daresay the KMT spent a whole lot more than $21 million NT. And on top of that, post-war Taiwan was in a far poorer position to afford that kind of money than it is today.

So I ask you: Did any of the KMT’s more expensive name changes do anything to improve Taiwan’s economy back then? If they didn’t, where was the China Post‘s outrage?

Cutting the cord

Even more absurd was this statement:

"The name change of Chiang Kai-shek International Airport is but the latest example of [President] Chen’s…all out efforts to cut the umbilical cord between China and Taiwan."

Maybe there are some linguists out there who could help me out a little here. Isn’t the word "Taoyuan" Chinese, or does it originate from some other language, like Swahili or something? Pray tell, how does an airport name change from Chiang Kai-shek (a Chinese PERSON) to Taiwan Taoyuan (a Chinese PLACE*) move Taiwan any further from China? They’re still both Chinese names, or am I missing something?

It’s a bloody Cultural Revolution, is what it is!**

Next, the China Post makes mountains out of molehills. Renaming airports is just like the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and will end up just as badly. President Chen and Chairman Mao are the same, both denouncing and destroying people.

It seems more than a little ironic that on the same page as this bit of hysterical hyperbole was a column about the REAL Cultural Revolution. You know, the one where 11 year-old kids had to denounce their parents after the Red Guards killed them. Re-education camps, that sort of thing.

Try as I might, I found nothing in that column about the survivors objecting to any airport name changes Mao might have made at the time. Though I’m sure the ones he actually DID make must have increased their sufferings immeasurably.

Actually, when you think about it, Chiang’s wholesale renaming of Taiwanese place names and his White Terror period resembles Mao’s Cultural Revolution far more than anything that Chen’s done. Despite that however, the China Post continues to hail Chiang as a "symbol of the Chinese nation and a towering figure in contemporary Chinese history".

As for Chen? Why, six years in office, and he STILL hasn’t killed or imprisoned anyone yet.

Amateur!

A Rose by any other Name, yada yada

The paper closes with philosophical food for thought, asking us, "What’s in a name? A rose smells as sweet if called by any other name."

Which of course, is a testable claim if ever I saw one. Perhaps instead of "Taiwan Taoyuan", the airport should have been named in honor of another "towering figure" in contemporary Taiwanese and Chinese history:

Hideki Tojo (Prime Minister of Japan 1941-1944)

* Please, no objections that Taoyuan is Taiwanese and not Chinese. There’s at least one "Taoyuan" township in northeast China.

** This heading sounds a lot better when read aloud in a Cockney accent.

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Statues For Me, Not For Thee

When it was proposed a few weeks ago that statues of Chiang Kai-Shek be removed from Taiwanese military bases, the KMT’s biggest objection was that doing so would do violence to history and remembrance. Sure, Chiang may have been a dictator, but he was a big part of Taiwan’s past, so his role shouldn’t be minimized or forgotten.

Now, it would seem to me that someone making this argument would quite naturally be in favor of memorials to other controversial individuals or groups in Taiwan’s history – the Taiwanese aboriginal units that fought on the side of the Japanese during World War II being perhaps, a prime example.

Silly me. When Taiwanese aborigines suggested that a monument be built to honor their war dead, the KMT’s intellectual consistency flew out the window. It was perfectly reasonable that Taiwanese military bases house hundreds of statues of OUR guy – the guy behind the White Terror – the KMT said. But somebody in Taiwan wants one – ONE! – memorial to people who fought for Japan?

Why now, that’s just completely beyond the pale!

Thus does the KMT’s carefully-constructed "Stonewall Jackson" argument collapse. The KMT put forward the notion that America tolerates statues to people who fought for the Confederacy on its soil, therefore, Taiwan ought to similarly continue to honor the Chiangs. But surely, aborigines who fought for the Japanese fall into the same category as America’s Confederates. They too, fought and died for a wrong cause.

The entire affair illustrates the kind of tolerance that the KMT demands for itself, but is still unwilling to grant unto others.

(The Taipei Times has a picture of the Taiwanese aborigines defending their honor from the epithets hurled by the pro-KMT press here.)

Rearguard Actions Part III

Imagine for a moment that you’re in the market for a new house, and you’re locked in a heated negotiation with the seller. You make a number of lowball offers, but he doesn’t budge from his initial position. At last, you agree to his price, partly because it’s within your budget, and partly because you REALLY have your heart set on that house.

But then, a funny thing happens. Two weeks after your bargaining session, he calls you with an unexpected offer. He’s gonna give you a break – you cab have the house for a price near your initial offer. Needless to say, you’re left scratching your head.

A very similar thing recently happened regarding statues of former dictator Chiang Kai-Shek in Taiwan. The military proposed removing Chiang statues from bases and military schools. "Never!" cried the KMT. What if we just got rid of old or damaged statues, the military then proposed. "Not a single one goes," answered the KMT. And soon, the KMT got its way. The Taiwanese military agreed to the KMT’s price, and the statues remained in place.

Then, just like in my parable, a funny thing happened. Two and a half weeks after winning the battle over the Chiang statues, a curious editorial appeared in the China Post. Not surprisingly, they defended Chiang’s record as president and general. There was, however, this bit of added criticism:

While in Taiwan, the Gimo had a personality cult started. His defeated army that came with him and the people of Taiwan were taught to worship him as the "savior of China." The Military Academy in Fengshan claims its roots in Whampoa, of which he was the founding commandant. His statues were erected there and in practically every other military installation to perpetuate that leader worship.

We are glad that none of Chiang’s successors have tried to develop a personality cult.

I had something similar to say regarding Chiang’s deification in an earlier post. So what was the China Post‘s proposed solution?

Military installations should remove his statues to put a formal end to his personality cult, but the Military Academy must be allowed to keep its founder’s statue to remember his contribution to the education of the cadre for the Army of the Republic of China.

Now, the reader is suddenly in much the same position as the buyer of my story. Let’s be honest: it isn’t very often that a seller will table his bottom line demands AFTER winning for himself a better deal. Here’s a couple of theories for you to take your pick from:

1) The KMT and the China Post were always willing to be reasonable about removing Chiang statues, but the proposal seemed so radical and arbitrary that it would have been a major loss of face for them to show any signs of initially accepting any part of it. This theory implies that the Chiang supporters would have been more comfortable with a quieter, more slowly-implemented policy. It also implies that the pro-independence parties either badly bungled the handling of the issue by moving too quickly and publicly, or that they deliberately tabled a motion that they knew would get shot down in flames, simply to gin up support from Chiang detractors.*

2) The China Post recognizes that the KMT has won the battle, not the long-term ARGUMENT. Perhaps they realize that the statues of the Chiangs are numbered (see my reasoning here) and are beginning the long process of retreat on the issue.** It was not for nothing that I titled these posts, Rearguard Actions; the entire point of a rearguard action is to fall back to a more defensible position.

* Another possibility should be mentioned, too. The independence parties may have merely wanted to stimulate DEBATE regarding the place of a dictator’s statues in a democratic society, not to actually remove them. Conducting an under-the-radar removal policy would have left the independence parties open to charges of being undemocratic sneaks, and would not have served the purpose of provoking debate on the statues so that some kind of societal consensus on them could be reached.

(It’s times like this that I think it unfortunate that I can’t read Chinese. While expat bloggers have debated the issue at length, I have absolutely no idea of what the quality of the debate has been like in the Taiwanese press.)

** I confess preferring Theory 2 to Theory 1, but admit to being puzzled by the abruptness and scale of the China Post‘s retreat on the issue. If this editorial is to believed, then "the long process of retreat" seems like it may not be quite so long after all. I AM surprised that the China Post arrived at their current, fairly reasonable position without proposing some sort of more incremental, intermediate step.

Albanian Statue Controversy

Finally got around to reading Saturday’s edition of the Taipei Times, and my jaw hit the floor when I saw a one paragraph piece on Albania. WTF? Muslim groups in Albania are opposing plans to erect a statue in honor of their country’s most famous daughter: Mother Teresa.

You heard me. Mother-freakin’-Teresa.

Mother Teresa photo

(Image via Nobelprize.org.)

At this point, I’m thinkin’ it’s one of those April Fool’s Day stories. Gotta be. But no, Reuters reported it as well:

…Muslim groups in [the Albanian city of] Shkoder rejected the local council plan for a Teresa statue, saying it "would offend the feelings of Muslims."

[…]

"We do not want this statue to be erected in a public place because we see her as a religious figure," said Bashkim Bajraktari, Shkoder’s mufti or Muslim religious leader.

…men in one Shkoder bar said they would prefer a monument to an Albanian fighter who blew himself up in order to avoid being captured by enemy Serbs…

So, Muslim clerics are opposed, as are the faithful. At least, the pub-crawling beer-drinkers among them, anyways.

Now, what’s wrong with this picture? Democratic Taiwanese can’t TAKE DOWN down statues of dictators, while Muslim Albanians can’t PUT UP statues of saints?*

This one’s filed under ‘Islamofascism’, although I realize that’s a bit of an exaggeration. What I SHOULD do is create a new category called, "Muslim Lack of Graciousness Towards Other Religions," and put the post there.

But I’m much too lazy to do all that. Sue me.

* My first post on the failed efforts to remove Chiang Kai-Shek and Chiang Ching-Gwoh statues from Taiwanese military bases can be found here. The second is here.

UPDATE: ABC News places a more positive spin on the story, stating that the city’s largest Muslim group has given the proposed bust of the Roman Catholic nun their blessing, despite the objections of three smaller organizations. Still, the other groups ARE busy doing their best impression of communist China, warning everyone that social peace could be shattered by green-lighting the "provocative" memorial.

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Rearguard Actions Part II

During the debate a couple of weeks ago over whether statues of Chiang Kai-Shek and Chiang Ching-Gwoh should be removed from Taiwanese military bases, a couple of arguments were made that merit a bit of scrutiny. The KMT tried to make the case that because Americans honor Dwight D. Eisenhower and Stonewall Jackson in their military academies, the Taiwanese military should continue to similarly honor the dictatorial Chiangs. Let’s take a look at their arguments:

1. Dwight D. Eisenhower

A statue of this general and American president apparently stands in West Point Military Academy. This, the KMT says, is proof that it’s not a violation of military neutrality to have monuments to a political leader in a military school.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

(Dwight D. Eisenhower photo from Wikipedia.)

It should be pointed out that as far as political leaders go, Eisenhower is pretty uncontroversial. You know all those "I Like Ike" buttons? Believe it or not, people wore them because they actually, well, LIKED Ike. They never had to worry that if they didn’t wear them they might be sent to Green Island.*

Sure, intellectuals of the time may have been "Madly for Adlai", but Eisenhower’s domestic policy was to leave the Democrats’ New Deal in place, while promising to administer it more efficiently. If he’d been a Reaganesque figure, his statue in the military academy might’ve (might’ve!) garnered a little more political opposition.

The second point – and how do I put this delicately? – is that Eisenhower was a general who actually won a war. In contrast, Chiang Kai-Shek, by virtue of his military genius, managed to lose VIRTUALLY ALL OF CHINA to the communists. I leave it to the reader to decide which of those two achievements is more deserving of being immortalized in bronze.

2. Stonewall Jackson

A statue of the Confederate general still stands on the grounds of Virginia Military Institute. The KMT believes this demonstrates that monuments to important figures shouldn’t be cast aside just because they happen to be subject to disputes over the rightness or wrongness of their causes.

Stonewall Jackson

(Stonewall Jackson photo from Wikipedia.)

Stonewall Jackson DID fight for the Confederacy, and as such, it must be admitted that he’s a bit more controversial than Ike. The Civil War may have been about Northern tariffs on imported manufactured goods and about the constitutional right to secession, but no one can deny that it was also about slavery. And ultimately, Jackson fought on the wrong side of the latter issue. Bearing this in mind, I’ll make the best case that I can in favor of retaining Jackson’s VMI statue.

The first thing that should be noted is that it’s not Chiang’s cause that most people object to – it’s his actions vis-a-vis his democratic opposition. In our time, we can look at someone like Stonewall Jackson and shake our heads sadly that he died unconsciously serving an unjust cause, despite his own personal goodness and decency. But with Chiang, the situation is reversed: fighting communism was a just cause, but his methods of political repression towards the Taiwanese were thoroughly lacking in decency.

Secondly, Stonewall Jackson is worthy of commemoration because he was one of America’s greatest generals EVER. Even his Northern enemies never gainsaid this. I wonder how many Chiang loyalists, let alone his communist enemies, seriously believe that Chiang Kai-Shek was one of China’s greatest? In addition, Jackson’s military writings have stood the test of time, and are still part of the curriculum at VMI. 150 years after Chiang’s death, will his written works on military matters still be studied by Taiwanese cadets? I’m not an expert, but I’m willing to guess not.

Finally, it should be remembered that Virginia Military Institute is a STATE, not a NATIONAL military academy like West Point (or the Taiwanese military schools). Stonewall Jackson taught at VMI, was one its most illustrious graduates, and is buried nearby. It seems entirely appropriate to acknowledge the historic importance of such a man at the local, not the national, level.

This comes back to the part of my previous post where I wrote a bit about giving a decent nod to history. People don’t usually complain too much if a statue of Ike or Stonewall pops up here or there. Even a "controversial" figure like Reagan can have aircraft carriers named after him without a fight from folks on the other side of the aisle.

The reason for that kind of tolerance is that admiration of great men in democratic countries is usually carried out in moderation. No Ike follower demands a bust of his hero in every barracks, no Stonewall fan expects a photo of his idol to be prominently displayed in every school, and no Reaganite insists that the main drag in every town be renamed the "Ronald Reagan Parkway". If any of them did, their plans would soon encounter significant opposition from people with different values, different outlooks, different heroes.

In a pluralistic society this is a good thing, because if society over-celebrates a handful of men, then other worthy men will end up being overlooked or crowded out. Like it or not, town squares have only a finite amount of space upon which to construct memorials.**

Of course, a very few "heroes by consensus" like George Washington can avoid this fate, but the Chiangs will never be counted among their number. In Taiwan, the Chiangs are controversial figures – controversial being an understatement. At this stage, all the perfumes in Arabia will not sweeten their hands now.

I take it as a given that many leaders are interested in being celebrated by future generations, and if that desire motivates them to leave behind a positive legacy, then it serves a beneficial social function. But democracies have a vital interest too: Democracies need to communicate to their would-be leaders that if they wish to obtain enduring fame and honor, they mustn’t kill or imprison their democratic opponents.

One way of conveying that message is to remove statues exalting those who have.

* Taiwan’s Green Island was used as political prison up until the late 1980s.

** Society not only has a limited amount of resources with which to celebrate great men, but a limited interest in doing so as well. Life goes on, and there are other priorities in life besides paying obeisance to those whose time has passed.

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Rearguard Actions

"I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue than why I have one."

– Cato the Younger (95-46 B.C.)

Sometimes when you procrastinate blogging about something, the issue ends up going away before you get a chance to write about it. On the surface, the March 18th proposal to remove Chiang Kai-Shek and Chiang Ching-Gwoh statues from Taiwanese military bases looks like just such an issue. Not a day had passed before the Ministry of National Defense busied itself trying to mollify KMT outrage by assuring everyone that only worn-out fiberglass statues would be permanently removed. The KMT was left unappeased however, and by March 22nd, even this compromise plan was dead in the water.*

Chiang Kai-shek

(Chiang Kai-Shek image from Wikipedia.)

So, no issue, no post, right? Move along folks, there’s nothing to see here…

Except that the issue really ISN’T dead. In response to the KMT’s statue victory, President Chen on March 25th renamed Taipei’s version of the White House from the clunky "Long Live Kai-Shek Hall" to the terse "Presidential Office". In doing so, he was obviously of the belief that a building should named after the function it serves, rather than after the dictator who once happened to work there. At any rate, more marginalization of Chiang-era monuments is almost certain to happen in the future if Taiwan’s democracy is allowed to mature. Actually, I’ll go even further to suggest that that Chiang statues will someday be discarded, REGARDLESS of democracy’s fate in Taiwan. More on this though, later in the post.

Taiwan Presidential Office. Taipei, Taiwan.

(Presidential Office image by The Foreigner)

One of the main objections that the KMT have to Chiang iconoclasm is that they say it smacks of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Mao’s Red Guards wanted to eliminate traces of a past they didn’t like, and those who would remove the Chiang statues want to do exactly the same thing. President Chen is therefore a modern Maoist madman, QED.

The fundamental difference that they overlook however, is that the Taiwanese State is behaving entirely within constitutional limits. There are no coercive extra-legal groups entering institutions and private homes to destroy Chiang relics. Children are not being encouraged to inform on their parents. There is no violence being used to achieve the goal. Members of the independence party spent time in the Chiang’s political prisons for advocating democracy, and asking them to be grateful to the generalissimo and his son at this stage is asking a little much. Free men do not typically glorify those responsible for freedom’s suppression.

The other thing that they overlook is that Chen’s actions, unlike Mao’s, have democratic legitimacy. I’m unaware of any polls on the issue, so I don’t know the level of public support for removing Chiang statues. But I DO know that Chen was democratically elected, so he at least has the CONSENT of the people. Surely the Taiwanese people knew after electing the head of an independence party TWICE to the presidency that he would carry out at least some of the more symbolic aspects of the party platform. If a member of a reunification party is someday elected, I fully expect him to undertake opposing measures. That’s the way democracy works.

I will agree with the KMT that iconoclasm can be taken too far, and sometimes, it is. Great are the efforts being taken today in certain quarters to transform America’s Columbus Day into a day of sackcloth and ashes. Feminist preoccupation with gender neutral language can border on self-parody. And reversing the L.A. county commissioners’ decision to remove the tiny cross from the Spanish mission on the county seal has become something of a conservative cause celebre. The argument that we shouldn’t erase our past just because we aren’t entirely happy about it is one that I do take seriously. Up to a point, anyways.

Los Angeles county seal, with cross removed from the missionary

Sometimes however, iconoclasm is entirely appropriate. I can recall years ago a communist, er, columnist from my hometown’s daily newspaper lamenting the changes in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Her protests then were similar to the KMT’s today. You Russians were Bolsheviks, she said, and you ought to be proud of your wonderful history. You fought and beat the Nazis. Your collectivist system has given you wonderful social programs. Leave all of your communist-era statuary standing so that future generations can be inspired by the marvelous accomplishments of your magnificent Revolution.

And so on.

I had no blog back in those days, so I’ll respond to that columnist now. Madam, your line of thinking, and the KMT’s, concedes entirely too much to tyrants; it allows them to rename St. Petersberg to Leningrad, but in the name of preserving history, doesn’t permit democrats to do the reverse. It’s not cricket that a megalomaniacal caudillo can plaster every spare wall in a country with portraits of his ugly mug, while his democratic successors are left responsible for their care and upkeep.

Even if you believe that SOME statues of the generalissimo should remain as a matter of giving history its due, the question should be: How many are really needed to perform this function? The China Post last week had a picture of a courtyard containing at least six busts of Chiang Kai-Shek that I could count. There may well have been more outside the camera’s field-of-view. Having six busts of one man in a single place isn’t an example of a decent nod in history’s direction – it’s deification. It’s allowing the dead hand of a dictator to continue ruling from beyond the grave.

It should be stated that Chiang Kai-Shek was no Hitler or Stalin, and that Taiwan was much better off under him than it would have been under Mao T’se Tung. Still, to say that Taiwan’s deceased president wasn’t a Mao or a Stalin is hardly anything to brag about, and it’s not a particularly compelling argument to make in favor of retaining his monuments. To pull down statues of a man like Thomas Jefferson because he had feet of clay would be an act of historical vandalism. Pulling down statues of a strongman who sent Taiwanese to political prisons doesn’t quite fall into the same category.

Ultimately, the Chiang memorials will probably meet with the fate of monuments to another generalissimo: Francisco Franco.** Most of Franco’s statues have been removed slowly over time, but a few still stand here and there throughout Spain. I hope they aren’t destroying the ones they take down, and put them instead into museums. The Russians had a great idea where they crammed all of the communist statues from the entire Soviet Union into one park in a Moscow suburb. To me, that would be poetic justice – leaders so devoted to their own self-aggrandizement should have a single park devoted solely to their egotism, as a sort of cautionary example.

Francisco Franco

(Francisco Franco image from Wikipedia.)

There are a few other arguments I’ve heard in favor of keeping the statues, but I’ll have to discuss them in some other post some other time. What we CAN expect is that the KMT will to fight to the last to protect its symbols from Taiwan’s independence parties. As I’ve outlined, I think they’ll lose the historical battle as democracy entrenches itself further in Taiwan. But what if democracy doesn’t grow stronger? What if the KMT embraces the Chinese Communists, and they manage to pull the country into Beijing’s orbit? What would happen to the statues in Chinese Vichy?

I suspect that their fate would be EXACTLY THE SAME. Communists can be relied upon to twist arms to remove images of men who are symbols of resistance to their rule. Statues of such men might someday inspire men to rebel, and that cannot be permitted. Americans may tolerate Confederate monuments on Southern soil, but the Communist Party of China is not nearly so magnanimous.

Given the recent crop of KMT leaders, I don’t see the modern KMT offering anything more than token resistance, either. The KMT’s recent behavior suggests that they’re perfectly willing to sell their souls and jettison their most beloved symbols in order to curry favor with the Communist Party of China. I offer this as but one example.

Ironic, isn’t it? When the independence parties want Chiang Kai-Shek statues removed, the KMT deride it as an act of historical vandalism. But should the Communist party of China ever call for their removal, watch how swiftly the KMT hail the move as a pragmatic act of reconciliation!***

If you’re still unconvinced, then consider the additional pressure that will come when large numbers of Chinese tourists begin visiting Taiwan. Reflect for a moment upon the grief that Taiwanese businessmen routinely get from pushy Chinese delegations when they try to display ROC flags at product conventions around the globe. Now, just imagine a MILLION Chinese tourists coming to Taiwan each year – a good portion of them stamping their feet and whining about Chiang statues and ROC flags and God knows what else. I’ll bet that a lot of those complainers are going to loudly announce to their tour guides that they’ll never come back, and they’ll threaten not to recommend Taiwan as a travel destination to the folks back home unless "provocative symbols" are removed from sight.

At that point, the KMT will face a choice between principle and pragmatism. Is it the Generalissimo…or the customer, who is always right?

* Or was it "suspended"? "Abolished"? Or has it just "ceased to apply"…

** "Despite Franco’s death and an expected burial tomorrow, doctors say the dictator’s health has taken a turn for the worse." – Chevy Chase

*** If the KMT eventually abandons Chiang Kai-Shek because he serves as an anti-communist symbol, I wonder if Taiwan’s independence parties might not someday adopt him for that very same reason? I don’t think it’s probable, but people with a cause sometimes pick the unlikeliest of people to be their heroes…

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