The Taipei City Government has declared the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, which opened 27 years ago, a temporary heritage site. Granted, we live in a fast-paced world, but to turn the CKS Memorial Hall into a historical relic after a mere 27 years, the Taipei City Government seems to have a glacial view of history.
The city government does not really regard the memorial hall as a historical relic. Rather, the move was simply a means to obstruct the Cabinet's decision to remove the memorial's enclosing walls. In fact, the decision to include the memorial on the list of heritage sites by hook or by crook is a farce.
As required by the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act, the Taipei City Government's Department of Cultural Affairs gathered its cultural heritage review committee to form a task force of specialists to assess the memorial hall's value as a cultural site. After discussions, the task force suggested that the park surrounding the CKS Memorial Hall be registered as such and some of its buildings as historical structures.
The Cultural Heritage Preservation Act, says the task force, stipulates that any space and its related environment relevant to a "myth, legend, movement, historical event, social community, or specific rituals" can be listed as a cultural heritage site regardless of how long it has existed.
The memorial hall is treated by the vestiges of the Chiang regime as the mausoleum of dictator Chiang Kai-shek (
No one will argue that I.M. Pei's (
Moreover, the task force has suggested that some of the other buildings in the park should also be registered as historical structures, marking the first time buildings sharing a site have been given a different cultural heritage classification.
This is clearly a move against the central government's proposal. Indeed, many people may be in favor of a name change, but there are many differing opinions on the proposal of demolishing the memorial's outer walls. For good or bad, the words and deeds of historical figures were the forces that shaped Taiwanese society. Following the end of the authoritarian regime, much historical data has appeared showing that Chiang was not the great leader portrayed by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). Rather, he was a person with criminal weaknesses who made bad mistakes.
Regardless of whether the wall is torn down or the city government declares it a cultural site, the process lacks the kind of public participation that is central to democracy. Athough the Cabinet is planning to establish a task force of its own, it should go about its work without any preconceptions. It should allow the public to reach its own conclusions on Chiang's impact on the nation and encourage democratic debate to guide the planning process. This is the way to bring about a rational assessment of Chiang's place in history.
The wall isn't the issue, but perhaps an open discussion of the hall's status and local planning will result in a new consensus rising from the ashes of Chiang's dictatorship. This is an important lesson in history and democracy, and a process more befitting a monument to democracy.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS