How 760 statues of a former Chinese dictator reopened a never-closed wound in Taiwan

Almost 50 years after Chiang Kai-shek’s death, the Taiwanese government wants to withdraw a total of 760 statues of the Chinese military dictator still spread across the island. The decision is not being well received by the Kuomintang (KMT), nationalist and pro-Beijing party. Still, the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), in power since 2016, is determined to shake off Chiang’s controversial legacy.

After being defeated by the communists in the Chinese civil war in 1949, Chiang fled to Taiwan, where he ruled for three decades under martial law. It is estimated that around 140,000 people were arrested and another four thousand executed for opposing the Kuomintang, until the end of martial law in 1987. The legacy of the authoritarian ruler has been a long-standing point of contention between the KMT and the DPP: the first accuses the second of wanting to erase History.

“There was a very strong cult around Chiang Kai-shek. Removing the statues is a way of reducing this cult”, says Luís Mah, professor of Development Studies at ISCTE/Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, speaking to Expresso. Taiwan has more than 300 roads and nearly 60 schools named after Chiang. In an inventory carried out in 2000 it was estimated that there were more than 40 thousand statues of the former dictator on the island.