After Joseph Stalin died in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev was elected first secretary of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party.He condemned Stalin and his tyrannical methods before a party congress in Moscow in 1956.Stalin was charged with cultivating a “cult of personality” and subverting Communist aims.Khrushchev eliminated the names of Stalin, Molotov, Malenkov and other supporters of Stalin from regions, cities and other sites in 1961-62 and removing Stalin’s body from the Lenin-Stalin tomb in Moscow in what came to be known as his de-Stalinization campaign.
Thirty-two years after Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek died in 1975, President Chen Shui-bian is carrying on a de-Chiang-ization campaign.Taipei has an international airport named after the president who ruled Taiwan from 1950 until his death.Chen had it changed to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport early last year.Chiang’s statues have been removed from military barracks and public parks.One of his giant bronze statues enshrined in the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial in Kaohsiung was cut up in chunks and carted away to Tahsi, a small village in the county of Taoyuan where it has joined scores of smaller ones in a small “graveyard” near the two mausoleums where the remains of the generalissimo and his son Chiang Ching-kuo are kept until a permanent interment can take place.
The campaign was highlighted by Chen’s denunciation of Chiang as the “chief culprit” of the February 28 Incident of 1947 and the “butcher” for the massive executions that followed in Taiwan under martial law.Tens of thousands of native-born islanders were massacred after spontaneous riots following the killing by a stray bullet of an onlooker at a mob scene in Taipei on the previous day.The slaughter was carried out by government troops dispatched to Taiwan from China by Chiang’s orders.After Chiang’s arrival in Taiwan at the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, thousands of communists and communist sympathizers were arrested, convicted and sentenced to long prison terms.Many of them were executed.Hundreds of others were arrested on false charges in what is called the reign of white terror.
Then, like Khrushchev who de-Stalinized the Soviet Union, President Chen ordered the elimination of Chiang’s name from all public places.The first to drop mention of Chiang Kai-shek was the memorial dedicated to him in the heart of Taipei.It was renamed the Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall.The major battle in the war over the Chiang Kai-shek memorial was fought between Hau Lung-bin, mayor of Taipei, and Tu Cheng-sheng, minister of education.Their battleground was the main gate to the memorial which bears what the latter thinks is the given name of Chiang Kai-shek.The four giant Chinese characters screwed in place on their stone base above the lintel of the pailou-like gate read Da Zhong Zhi Zheng, or literally Great Mean/Perfect Uprightness.The second and fourth of the quartet, combined, correspond to Chiang’s preferred name of Zhong-zheng.(Chiang’s given name in childhood was Zhizing, but he adopted the name of Zhong-zheng after he had become commandant of the Whampoa Military Academy in Canton or Guangzhou, where his literary name of Jieshi in Mandarin (Hard Rock) was transliterated as Kai-shek.)The Taipei mayor, whose father General Hau Pei-tsun was a cadet at Chiang’s military academy, wanted to keep the gate intact.
With the education minister succeeding in getting Great Mean/Perfect Uprightness replaced with Liberty Forum, the war for rectification of names is spreading all across the country.Chen’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party lawmakers have introduced a bill in parliament to eliminate Chiang’s name from schools, parks, villages, townships, cities and counties.Streets and roads named after him have to be renamed.Practically all localities have Zhong-zheng roads or streets.There are scores of schools at all levels named after Chiang Kai-shek.Major cities have Zhong-zheng wards or districts.All of them have to drop mention of Chiang’s name.Not even an IDF (indigenous defense fighter) warplane named
Zhong-zheng will be spared.Private enterprises are spared, of course.So are private citizens, albeit few parents love and admire Chiang Kai-shek so adoringly as to name their offspring Zhong-zheng.If adopted, the bill would kick off a nationwide name-changing movement like the one in imperial China when a new emperor ascended the throne.All his subjects and all public places that had a character or characters that formed his given name had to undergo a name change.
In the meantime, Chuang Kuo-yung, chief of staff to the education minister, has hinted that Chiang Ching-kuo is the next target of President Chen’s de-Chiang-ization drive.Chuang the hero of the war over the Chiang Kai-shek memorial said the junior Chiang was Ma Ying-jeou’s “mother’s (unprintable word).”Chuang challenged the mayor of Taipei he beat in the battle royal to sue him.He said he would send Hau back to his mother from court to cry before her.Similarly, Chuang seems to suggest Ma, the Kuomintang standard bearer who is awaiting a high court verdict on his corruption case, must be returning home to Chiang Ching-kuo to cry “Mama.”
Right on cue, Shieh Jhy-wei, director-general of the Government Information Office and Cabinet spokesman, announced on Friday the two mausoleums of the late presidents would be closed to the public and honor guards withdrawn on next January 1.Chen dare not demonize Chiang Ching-kuo, who died in 1988 as Taiwan’s most admired president though he was partly responsible for the reign of white terror; so his government has decided to remove the body of Chiang Kai-shek and that of the son from the mausoleums and inter them at a military cemetery in suburban Taipei.
As a matter of fact, President Chen’s entire campaign is being waged against the Kuomintang candidate, who served at one time as a senior secretary to Chiang Ching-kuo.All polls have shown Ma Ying-jeou could handily beat his Democratic Progressive Party rival Frank Hsieh and Chen has to make sure that the Kuomintang wouldn’t make a comeback, come next March 22.One easiest way is to make Ma appear as a favorite of Chiang Ching-kuo, the devotedly filial son of Chiang Kai-shek, the demonized dictator.Chen may deliberately provoke Chiang supporters into violent confrontation with his independence activists in the process.When bloody clashes occur, he is entitled to declare martial law or issue emergency decrees to call off or postpone indefinitely the presidential election to keep himself in power, albeit not for very long, to thwart Ma’s immediate effort to liquidate him.Chen is an unindicted co-defendant in a corruption case against his wife, who is standing trial for claiming an unlawful reimbursement of NT$14.8 million from a public fund under his control for the conduct of “affairs of state.”The president, who enjoys immunity against prosecution, will be formally charged and tried on leaving office.
（本文刊載於96.12.18 China Post第4版，本文代表作者個人意見）
王順民
(
12月6日 16:38
)
徐明珠
(
2007年8月3日 15:19
)
彭蕙仙
