A giant bronze statue of the late President Chiang Kai-shek in Kaohsiung, the largest of its kind in Taiwan, was cut into chunks and hauled to Tahsi, a small township where his remains are still kept in a temporary mausoleum waiting for a formal burial, which has been delayed because of the opposition from his bereaved family.The statue, about 8.17 meters tall and showing him sitting on a huge throne-like armchair, had graced the Chiang Kai-shek Cultural Center in Kaohsiung.Its mayor, Chen Chu, ordered the removal.Her election at the end of last year is being contested by her Kuomintang rival Huang Jun-ying.A vote recount has been completed and a court ruling on the election may be announced any time.
The dethroning of Chiang Kai-shek in Kaohsiung is a relatively eye-catching episode in the government’s ongoing campaign to belittle or demonize him in the name of transitional justice.President Chen Shui-bian condemned Chiang as the “chief culprit” of the February 28 Incident of 1947, in which tens of thousands of innocent native islanders were massacred.Chiang has been labeled an executioner or murderer for his reign of white terror over Taiwan under martial law.His name was struck out from Taiwan’s main international airport.His smaller statues have been removed from military bases and schools.The Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei has been renamed.Another giant statue of the former president, a little smaller than the one cut to pieces, still sits in the spacious hall in the center of the public park, which is a big tourist attraction.
Transitional justice refers to a range of approaches that societies undertake to reckon with legacies of widespread or systematic human rights abuse in the past as they move from a period of violent conflict or oppression towards peace, democracy, the rule of law, and respect for individual and collective rights.One approach is to investigate, punish and repair the past abuses.That is the approach the government has adopted, launching campaign after systematic campaign to de-Sinicize Taiwan.A high school textbook on “national history” now teaches what occurred before 1945 as the “history of China” and what has ensued as the “history of Taiwan.”Official missions abroad have to omit mention of China in their titles.State-run enterprises were required to drop China from their names.Streets named after Chiang Kai-shek or Sun Yat-sen, father of the Chinese republic and founder of the Kuomintang, are being renamed.
These campaigns were portrayed as a “cultural revolution” by the celebrated Economist magazine.The Economist did not directly compare what is going on in Taiwan directly to Mao Zedong’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” in the 1960s, but the narration of the coverage was put under the title “Cultural revolution.”
Of course, the de-Sinicization campaigns cannot be compared to or with China’s cultural revolution.Mao Zeddong launched his epic campaign in 1965 to restore his dictatorship.With the help of the Red Guards, whom he unleashed in the following year, the Great Helmsman returned to power, ousting revisionist Liu Shao-chi and Deng Xiaoping in the process.The Red Guards, envisioning themselves as “revolutionary successors,” wrote “big-character” wall posters, ransacked private properties, rampaged the cities, renamed streets, attacked those with modern attire and haircuts, and humiliated foreign diplomats.They invaded and desecrated shrines and temples.Thousands of statues of the Buddha and Confucius were decapitated.
What the powers that be are doing in Taiwan is not to recover power but to keep it.The London-based magazine rightly pointed out President Chen’s government “may be politicking ahead of parliamentary elections in December and presidential polls next March.”The Democratic Progressive Party came to power with Chen’s election in 2000, which was considered then as a triumph of democracy.Expectations were high that he would usher in a new era of clean and efficient governance.His government is not efficient and quite corrupt.He himself, his family and his close cronies have been involved in a spate of corruption scandals.First lady Wu Shu-chen, indicted for corruption on last November 3, is standing trial.The president was not indicted, for he is immune against prosecution, but was regarded as an unindicted co-defendant, who will be formally charged with corruption on leaving office.Without opening the transitional justice gambit, he could never hope to keep his party in power after 2008.Incidentally, the ruling party has never controlled the Legislative Yuan.The party has to stop its erosion of power in the legislature in the yearend elections and hopes to remain in power with the election of its candidate to replace President Chen.
There is close resemblance in the means applied between the transitional justice drive and Mao’s Red Guards movement.The young Maoists attacked Confucius and writing slogans against Deng Xiaoping’s revisionism.There are no “Green Guards” to be unleashed in Taiwan and the government has to resort to its bureaucrats and patronized scholars for attacking Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang government.Compared with the cultural revolution in China, President Chen’s name rectification movement isn’t good enough to be called a teapot tempest.
On the other hand, there are signs that President Chen is imitating Mao Zedong.A basic ingredient of Maoism is the continuous organization of mass movements for the attainment of specific objectives predetermined by the party.Mao’s endless campaigns, which punctuated the daily rhythm of life in China, succeeded in organizing the Chinese people, whom Sun Yat-sen once characterized as “a pile of loose sand.”Chen and his party leaders have been following that Maoist principle to try to stay in power.As a matter of fact, the ruling party, like the opposition Kuomintang, has an institutional structure which duplicates that of the Chinese Communists.Chiang Kai-shek copied that organization from the Russian Communist Party.Mao Zedong did the same.The Democratic Progressive Party follows.
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which lasted ten years, put Mao Zedong back on the throne in Beijing.He was able to effectively seclude China, whose economy had stagnated until after Deng Xiaoping started to open it up after a comeback from the Cultural Revolution limbo.What looks like a micro-cultural revolution in Taiwan will be very much short-lived.It is expected to last until the next presidential election.
（本文刊載於96.03.19 China Post第4版，本文代表作者個人意見）
