A new law calls for removing landmarks honoring a former dictator, Chiang Kai-shek, whose Confucian-style rule on the island nation finds renewed favor within China’s ruling party.
The Christian Science Monitor
Date: December 8, 2017
By: The Monitor’s Editorial Board
On Dec. 6, lawmakers in Taiwan voted to rid the island of a prominent symbol of the
AP Photo
country’s past. They approved a law requiring the removal of public statues honoring Chiang Kai-shek, a dictator who governed from the late 1940s until his death in 1975. In addition, Chiang’s name will be replaced on many schools and roads.
The law, coming 30 years after Taiwan moved toward democracy, shows how far a people will go to free themselves from a cultural legacy that may hinder progress in individual rights and equality before the law. The measure said that authoritarian rule should be “stripped of legitimacy.”
Chiang’s harsh rule of Taiwan was based on Confucian-style autocracy, or a belief that only a natural social hierarchy with a strong ruler can bring stability. That ancient tradition saw rights as granted only by the state and not inherent in everyone.
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