A document discovered recently in a safe at the Control Yuan shows that General Sun Li-jen (
Historians have called Sun the greatest Chinese military officer of the 20th century. Fearing political rivalry, however, the general was placed under house arrest by Chiang Kai-shek (
Last August the Control Yuan asked Chu -- who is a research fellow at the Institute of Modern History at Academia Sinica -- to re-investigate Sun's case.
FILE PHOTO
According to Chu, the document, which was written by a special investigation team under the Control Yuan in October 1955, shows the Control Yuan was not convinced that Sun was involved in any mutiny. The Control Yuan also believed Sun's subordinates were innocent.
According to the document, the signatures on Sun subordinate Kuo Ting-liang's (
That led the members of the investigation team to write a letter to Chiang, which concluded: "It is impossible for General Sun to start a mutiny against the government."
The Control Yuan, however, was immediately pressured by high-level government officials, saying that no public announcement about the investigation would be allowed.
Sun's case had languished ever since. According to Chu, the investigation file on Sun's case was meddled with. "Many key words or sentences in the file were erased," Chu said.
The recently discovered document is original and is therefore valuable evidence, Chu said.
Chu said he chose to reveal the findings yesterday because it was the 100th anniversary of Sun's birth. He suggested the Control Yuan publish the original document to clear Sun's name.
Sun, born in 1900 in Anhui Province (安徽省) , was a graduate from the prestigious Virginia Military Institute. Fighting against the Japanese from 1936 to 1945, Sun became known as "The Ever Victorious General." He was also awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1942 for rescuing 7,500 British soldiers in a battle.
After the KMT lost the civil war with the Communists and fled to Taiwan, Sun was promoted to commander (
The troops became a mainstay for the KMT and loyal to Chiang and his son. Sun was later promoted to head of the Army General Headquarters. In 1955, however, Sun's subordinate, Kuo Ting-liang, was accused of treason and was arrested. Sun was forced to resign his post and was put under house arrest the same year.
Sun's family and friends, as well as some local media, tried for years to redress what they saw as a miscarriage of justice.
After Chiang Ching-kuo's death in 1988, the Control Yuan decided to re-investigate Sun's case. Only two months later, on March 20, then Minister of National Defense Cheng Wei-yuan (鄭為元) officially announced that Sun was a free man. Two years later Sun died at his house in Taichung on Nov. 19, 1990.
Japan has deployed long-range missiles in a southwestern region near China, the Japanese defense minister said yesterday, at a time when ties with Beijing are at their lowest in recent years. The missiles were installed in Kumamoto in the southern region of Kyushu, as Japan is attempting to shore up its military capacity as China steps up naval activity in the East China Sea. “Standoff defense capabilities enable us to counter the threat of enemy forces attempting to invade our country ... while ensuring the safety of our personnel,” Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. “This is an extremely important initiative for
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) today accepted an invitation from Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to lead a delegation to China next month, saying she hopes to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations and bring stability to the Taiwan Strait. “I am grateful and happy to accept this invitation,” Cheng said in a statement from the KMT chairperson’s office. Cheng said she hopes both sides can work together to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations, enhance exchange and cooperation, bring stability to the Taiwan Strait and improve people’s livelihoods. At today's news conference, Cheng said any efforts to
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
RSS