Thu, Jan 23, 2003 page8

• Taiwan's history is being distorted

  • By Wu Kuan-Yu 吳崑玉
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  There was much hustle and bustle in the run-up to the 15th anniversary of late president Chiang Ching-kuo's (蔣經國) death. Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) released a book; Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wrote articles; the KMT held events commemorating him; and the media conducted extensive public opinion polls. But their interpretations of his legacy were nauseatingly divergent.

  How does this kind of behavior differ from attempts by imperial-era intellectuals to manipulate history in order to smear the reputations of previous dynasties and create legitimacy for themselves?

  History has been a political tool ever since those days. Everyone in power wants to give it a facelift so that it fits his or her own political needs and values. Can history still be called history when it is saturated with the intellectual equivalent of silicon and botulism toxins?

  What is history? History is a true record of people's life experiences in each period of time. Who discovered chocolate? Who took it to Europe? How did it become popular? This is history.

  Whether chocolate is good or bad for the body is not within the scope of history. The fact that sweet foods are not good for the body is no cause for anyone to stress that chocolate was a food of South American peoples and yet ignore the fact that even the queen of France had a cup of chocolate every day.

  It is exactly such intertwining of rise and fall, right and wrong, order and chaos, or light and darkness that makes history so human, that endows it with the capacity to make us reflect on the past and identify mistakes.

  Without these factors, history is tasteless. History that is always politically correct does not have much of a propaganda effect because the process of distorting history is itself a kind of historical record, which sooner or later gets put straight.

  When Chiang was in power, did he think about how history would portray him? Did he think hard about having his historical standing surpass that of his father? Everyone uses fragmentary statements from Chiang Ching-kuo's life to defend himself or herself, but ignores the fact that Chiang stressed that he was "just an ordinary person." He simply said that the times were changing and that we too must change.

  All his accomplishments lie in his pragmatic solutions to Taiwan's grassroots problems, his response to the voice of the Taiwanese people and to the changing times. He did not scramble to ask historians to record his achievements.

  He knew what wrongs the KMT had committed but would not allow it to repeat them, hence his emphasis on clean government. He knew that the minority mainlanders could not hold on to political power forever, hence his gradual opening to "nativization," which allowed exchanges and harmony between the different ethnic groups.

  People who use Chiang Ching-kuo to attack those holding opposing views are not really praising Chiang. In fact they are insulting him because he knew that looking forward and enabling everyone to improve their lives was the most meaningful thing to do during his presidency. This is exactly what the people remember about him.

  When the KMT trumpets the clean government of the Chiang Ching-kuo era, why doesn't it think about the corruption during his days in China? US General Albert Wedemeyer, despite being a good friend of China, found such corruption intolerable, as evident in his 1947 report.

  Former president Lee talks about how the Japanese developed Taiwan. Didn't he notice how they undertook a thorough destruction of Taiwan's temples and historic sites? How they turned large numbers of farmers into sugarcane-growing serfs?

  People who attempt to prove their political correctness by distorting history walk into the trap of historical determinism believing that history has a direction and an objective -- just as Karl Marx said that history progressed inexorably from capitalism to communism -- and "we therefore stand on the same side as history."

  If this is truly the case, then God has written a plan and is keeping it a secret to the very end. Why should we do anything except lie down and wait for the old man to issue his order? What's the point of having a big brain? The more we do, the more mistakes we will make and the more we will jeopardize the old man's grand plan.

  In fact, humanity has grown continually by developing its understanding of nature, the environment and itself. History is merely a record of this process. This, indeed, is precisely the criticism of thinkers who espoused historical determinism, including Plato, Hegel and Marx.

  Since history is a mirror, why don't we put it to the best possible use: to learn about the mistakes of our forebears so that we may not repeat them? Only a society that knows how to learn from history and avoid mistakes can continue to grow and make progress.

  Only people with no self-confidence use their forebears, who can no longer respond to what they say, as proof of the validity of their policies and values.

  Wu Kuan-yu is a legislative assistant.

  Translated by Francis Huang
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