When asked whether he wanted a memorial built in his honor, King Agesilaus II of Sparta said: “If I have done any noble action, that is a sufficient memorial; if I have done nothing noble, all the statues in the world will not preserve my memory.”
This sentiment is undeniably reflected in Taiwan today; all the statues in the world cannot whitewash Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) brutal totalitarian legacy. Those who still idolize Chiang are a declining minority and are often ridiculed for their blind romanticism.
Taiwan has transformed itself into a democratic state, even though the wounds of past trauma have not fully healed. Transitional justice is a continuous process meant to address these wounds. Being one of the key tenets of the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) platform, transitional justice is often misleadingly portrayed by the pan-blue coalition as a DPP ploy to crush the opposition.
The truth is the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is not ready, and might never be ready, to confront its own wrongdoings. By doing so, the KMT would have to abandon the cult of personality it has crafted around Chiang, and eventually also his son and successor, former president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), as the stern, but benevolent patriarch.
Understandably, due to the KMT’s considerable influence, transitional justice has not been smooth sailing. Even the removal of statues has encountered a lot of irrational opposition, similar to how the removal of confederate statues in the US has often been opposed by zealous believers of the “lost cause.” While many monuments of KMT authoritarianism have been removed over the years, transitional justice is not as simple as removing statues.
The most important issue transitional justice must address is the enduring KMT-legacy status groups that are still disproportionately dominant in the military and government.
Chiang Kai-shek’s rule was one marked by intense inequalities, with rules that heavily favored waishengren (外省人) — those who came from China with the KMT after the Chinese Civil War, and their offspring — over benshengren (本省人) — people who came to Taiwan in the centuries preceding World War II. Social mobility for a large number of Taiwanese was thwarted because of KMT-imposed barriers to entry.
On the other hand, this period also saw the creation and consolidation of a status group of a waishengren elite, still prominent in military and government circles today. The patrimonialism present during KMT rule developed into a structure that sociologist Max Weber termed as traditional authority as opposed to rational legal authority.
The overwhelming majority of generals in the military have a waishengren background. I am not suggesting a polemic that automatically assumes these generals have no merit because they are waishengren; this is a counterproductive oversimplification. Rather, we see the continued maintenance of a status group that often excludes benshengren. Sociologists can explain this with principles from social class reproduction theory.
A report by Japan’s Nihon Keizai Shimbun, or Nikkei, alleged that up to 90 percent of retired Taiwanese military officials had provided intelligence to China for profit. While this controversial report should be taken with a grain of salt, it illustrates a larger problem — the ingrained KMT ideology of Sinocentric historicism which often leads to justifying collaboration with China’s regime — is still very much prevalent in Taiwan’s military command. This Sinocentric historicism is often accompanied by an inability to imagine a Taiwanese future. It is very concerning that many of the powerful in the military share this way of thinking. In light of increased Chinese hostilities, transitional justice has received renewed purpose and urgency.
Taiwan’s military is no longer the KMT’s military. Chiang Kai-shek should be remembered for his rampant corruption and abuse of power, hardly the ideal military man. Removing statues that glorify KMT authoritarian rule only addresses the surface of the problem. In addition to these symbolic changes, Taiwan must eliminate the surviving roots of the KMT’s Chinese ideology in its power structure and challenge the privileged status groups that emerged alongside this ideology. Let justice be done though the heavens fall.
Linus Chiou studies physics and history at the University of Virginia.
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