This year marks the centennial of the Republic of China (ROC) Military Academy, founded on June 16, 1924, in Guangzhou, China. Originally called the Whampoa Military Academy, as it was founded in the city’s Huangpu area, the name is still salient for many on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. The “spirit of Whampoa” is still used as shorthand for patriotism, harkening back to a time of united struggle against warlordism and Japanese invaders based on the republican philosophies of ROC founder Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙).
At the time of the academy’s founding, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was in a tense detente with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as both factions sought to unite a splintered China through the Northern Expedition. In an interesting quirk of history, its primary financial backer was the Soviet Union, which sent officers to oversee the training of cadets who would become leaders of the ROC and the People’s Republic of China, molded in the Leninist image.
Yet although they trained together, the alliance was doomed to failure from the beginning. Before the Northern Expedition was even finished, Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and his allies purged the communists from their ranks. The academy was relocated to Nanjing and then to Chengdu during the Second Sino-Japanese War, which saw a second, equally doomed united front between the KMT and the CCP, before the former eventually retreated to Taiwan at the end of the Chinese Civil War. The academy ended up in Kaohsiung’s Fongshan District (鳳山), where it remains today.
This complex history lends itself to free interpretation. As the birthplace of both the ROC military and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, both sides of the Strait have reason to commemorate the academy’s centennial. Yet free interpretation also lends itself to propaganda.
Both sides of the Strait organized events to mark the occasion. In Kaohsiung, President William Lai (賴清德) on Sunday presided over a ceremony featuring marching cadets dressed in uniforms from each of the academy’s iterations. In China, Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧) spoke at the main event in Beijing on Monday, while other celebrations were held across the country, including the opening of an exhibition on the original site in Huangpu. Both governments even released stamps to mark the occasion.
Based on this history, the academy represents a China whose fates are intertwined. The narrative is convenient for Beijing, which spends every Whampoa anniversary highlighting these ties and inviting former Taiwanese military officers to the event to keep the link alive.
Although Beijing made much ado about drawing more than 3,000 retired Taiwanese officers this year, Taipei estimated that fewer than 100 were to attend the events organized by the Chinese United Front Work Department. Based on its itinerary, the department appears to be emphasizing camaraderie across the Strait based on a shared animosity toward Japan.
Yet if anything is clear from these dueling centennials, it is that a lot can happen in 100 years. The days of the KMT and the CCP (reluctantly) fighting side-by-side against warlords and Japanese invaders feels like ancient history, and rightfully so. It has vanishingly little bearing on the China and Taiwan of today, whose service members do not remember the “Whampoa spirit.” The only lesson that remains painfully salient is the deadly rivalry between the parties, their shared foes long since faded into the annals of history.
Now that the centennial has come and gone, it is time to move on from this antiquated affinity with Chinese history and foster a “Taiwan spirit” amongst the nation’s finest.
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