The Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee has reportedly found Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) diaries that record his appointment of his son Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) as head of the China Youth Corps, as well as of his meetings to discuss the organization’s name and structure with the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Central Standing Committee.
People searching through the diaries, which have been preserved at the Academia Historica, are attempting to find evidence that the corps is an affiliate organization of the KMT directly controlled by the party.
The use of the diaries in the probe into the party’s ill-gotten assets is not only necessary, but could also offer an opportunity to initiate further investigations essential to realizing transitional justice.
The biggest challenge for nations pursuing transitional justice has always been finding enough evidence of past injustices, since authoritarian regimes typically destroy or conceal important documents before they are overthrown or replaced. This makes it difficult to reconstruct historical facts and assign responsibility.
In Taiwan, 30 years have passed since the lifting of martial law, but there has yet to be a law on the collection and preservation of historical documents and files about the White Terror era.
In the past few years, academics have used oral histories, wills, documents and letters to put together biographies of many White Terror victims, but when regarded in juxtaposition with the White Terror era as a whole, these biographies are just a drop in the ocean.
For this reason, Chiang Kai-shek’s diaries, which have gradually been made available since 2005, make up for the gaps in the history of the White Terror era that have been the result of the destruction or concealment of documents.
Chiang Kai-shek started to keep a diary in 1919, and kept doing so until his death in 1972, writing with a calligraphy brush and recording in detail such things as how he suffered from gonorrhea and about his troublesome fondness for prostitutes. The diaries also extensively record his direction of state and party policy.
The Chinese historian Yang Tianshi (楊天石) says that the diaries were intended exclusively for his own use, and as a result, they are factual and true.
In addition to the diaries’ high level of credibility, Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo maintained their authoritarian rule for a long time, and they did so through the presidency, which allowed them to control both the KMT and the Republic of China (ROC) government and run a highly oppressive regime.
This mode of government also lends a high level of truth to the state and party policies recorded in the diaries.
For example, comparisons by the assets committee showed that there are almost no discrepancies between Chiang Kai-shek’s diaries and the records of the KMT’s Central Standing Committee.
As the contents of the diaries are being gradually revealed, it might be possible to put together the history of the White Terror era, a period that has been deliberately erased and forgotten.
Furthermore, they can be used to achieve the ultimate goal of healing the wounds of victims and assigning responsibility to the perpetrators.
From another perspective, Chiang Kai-shek was the person who initiated more than 40 years of authoritarianism in Taiwan, and it is only right that his diaries should be used to assign responsibility to him and the KMT.
Lau Yi-te is chairman of the Taiwan Solidarity Union.
Translated by Tu Yu-an and Perry Svensson
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