Historians panned former vice president Lien Chan’s (連戰) criticism of independent Taipei mayoral candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), saying that after Lien’s ancestors’ actions, Lien should be the last one accusing other people’s ancestors of serving with the Japanese government.
Lien on Monday said that Ko is the third-generation descendant of a man who served the Japanese colonial government and that Ko has little to no identification with the Republic of China (ROC).
Commenting on Lien’s remarks, National Taipei University Taiwanese culture professor Lee Hsiao-feng (李筱峰) said that after Taiwan was ceded to the Japanese Empire by the Shimonoseki Treaty, many Taiwanese were forced to change their surnames if they wanted a position in the local government. Noting the oft-cited “sympathetic understanding” concept in historic studies, such actions were understandable, Lee added.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao
Academia Sinica Institute of Taiwan History associate research fellow Wu Rwei-ren (吳叡人) said that it was not that Taiwanese were happy to become Japanese, adding that very few Taiwanese were in the higher echelons of the colonial government.
There were at most three or four during the entire 50 years that Japan ruled over Taiwan, with most of them accepting the position to provide income for their family, Wu said.
“Most Taiwanese were working in the middle to low levels of the government; unless they and their ancestors actively colluded with the colonial government, it is difficult to criticize their morality,” Lee said.
Lien often complained that his ancestry was the source of complaints, but now he is also criticizing the ancestors of others, Lee added.
Lee said that Lien’s grandfather, Lien Heng (連橫), was not without moral defects, as he wrote a poem praising then-Japanese governor of Taiwan Kodama Gentaro as a “saint” in 1899 and wrote on the government’s behalf that opium was good for the body, which led to his removal from the Yueh Club, one of the three largest poet’s clubs in Taiwan at the time.
“Lien Chan’s comments sought to stir up discontent between ethnicities and pro-unification and pro-independence supporters, and at a time when Taiwan is gradually becoming a multi-ethnic society, such actions are very immoral,” Wu said.
Separately yesteday, ERA Communications Inc founder and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) member Chiu Fu-sheng (邱復生) on Facebook expressed his surprise at Lien Chan publicly calling Ko a “bastard” (混蛋).
Chiu said it was hard to respect Lien Chan anymore and that it was hard to believe that Lien Chan was such a person, adding that he was also sad to see that “elections are like drugs and can make people crazy.”
At another setting yesterday when asked about his father’s remarks, KMT Taipei mayoral candidate Sean Lien (連勝文) said his father’s “emotional outburst” was due to his extreme dissatisfaction with Ko’s campaigning methods.
“It made my father think back to the elections with former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁),” Sean Lien said, adding that having his ancestors criticized also contributed to his father’s emotional response.
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