Army not KMT’s servants
When the Transitional Justice Commission criticized the conduct of the Republic of China (ROC) armed forces under the leadership of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), Veterans Affairs Council Minister Feng Shih-kuan (馮世寬) shot back with “that is how it was.”
His answer needs qualification; he needs to add “but it is no longer the case.” He owes this much to the armed forces, to set the question into the correct historical context.
Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) once said that Chiang did not want talent in his military, he just wanted minions, to explain the Chinese communists’ victory over the Nationalist army. Deng provided as two examples the outstanding generals Xue Yue (薛岳) and Sun Li-jen (孫立人), who secured great victories for the Nationalists, but who were later put out to pasture by Chiang.
Chiang never viewed the armed forces as a national military; he always saw them as his own personal army, who were there to be at his every beck and call, rather than to put the nation’s best interests foremost. He retained this attitude after he came to Taiwan in exile, using the armed forces to suppress dissidents and as a tool to cultivate his own loyalists.
It is hardly surprising, then, that the military was unable to transform itself into a national army: It was little more than the armed wing of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and was itself an impediment to Taiwan’s democratization.
Taiwan at the time had the appearance, but not the substance, of a democracy, with the armed forces trained to serve the president and the party. Since then, Taiwan has seen the re-election of the national legislature, the advent of direct presidential elections and the transition of political power away from the KMT’s single-party state, and the armed forces have reinvented themselves as a true national military with the nation’s interests and the protection of citizens as its goal, not the protection of one political party or individual politician. No longer does it view the dictator of yesteryear as its master.
Feng owes the ROC armed forces an apology, because he has misunderstood where its loyalties lie, and remains locked in the political reality of a bygone era, failing to see how the military has become politically neutral.
Chen Chi-nung
Taipei
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