National Chengchi University yesterday passed a motion at an administrative affairs meeting that called for statues of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) to be removed as part of efforts to promote human rights and transitional justice.
The decision was in response to protests last year, when students plastered a statue of Chiang with fliers containing the names of people killed in the 228 Incident and called for the statue’s removal.
The university was established in Nanjing, China, in 1927 to train people to serve in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and was moved to Taiwan when the party fled China.
Photo: Huang Yao-cheng, Taipei Times
Chiang was president of the institution from its establishment until 1947 and was given the honorary title of “perpetual president emeritus.”
Two large bronze statues of Chiang were erected at the university: one in a sitting position in the library and one on horseback at the rear of the school’s campus.
Hsu Tzu-wei (徐子為), head of the university’s graduate students association, said that after last year’s protests by the Wildfire Front student group, university officials repeatedly delayed the removal of the statues.
Opponents said at the meeting that removing the statues would hurt the school’s integrity and international reputation, adding that Chiang’s contributions should be discussed alongside his mistakes.
Removing the statues would be an important first step toward transitional justice, Hsu said, adding that the 228 Incident and the subsequent White Terror era were the direct result of Chiang’s authoritarian rule.
As some of the university’s students are descendants of White Terror victims, honoring Chiang with statues is a second attack on victims’ families, he added.
The four-hour meeting ended with 52 of 68 votes in favor of the statues’ removal, Graduate Institute of Development Studies professor Lee Yeau-tarn (李酉潭) said.
Lee said he would lead a team of seven other professors and three student representatives to discuss how to move forward with relocating the statues to an “appropriate location.”
National Taiwan University history professor Hua Yih-fen (花亦芬) lauded the decision, saying that educators should seek to espouse the values of freedom and democracy, adding that allowing the statues to remain at the university would run counter to those values.
“Fortunately, National Chengchi University was willing to follow sound advice,” she said, adding that transitional justice involves more than just judicial and political elements.
“The removal of the statues honoring Chiang was long overdue,” National Chengchi University associate professor Liu Hung-en (劉宏恩) said.
Regardless of one’s evaluation of Chiang as a political leader, it is absurd to have a president’s statue on campus that is more than three times taller than a person’s height, he said.
If the statues were meant to honor the university’s founder, then every institution should have similar statues, Liu said, adding that the university’s association with a particular party is a source of frustration for many students and professors.
“If it is not a KMT school, why are statues from the period of authoritarian KMT rule kept?” Liu asked.
“What is the reason behind keeping the statue of someone who killed so many people?” asked one student, who declined to be named.
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
‘DETERRENT’: US national security adviser-designate Mike Waltz said that he wants to speed up deliveries of weapons purchased by Taiwan to deter threats from China US president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, affirmed his commitment to peace in the Taiwan Strait during his confirmation hearing in Washington on Tuesday. Hegseth called China “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security” and said that he would aim to limit Beijing’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific region, Voice of America reported. He would also adhere to long-standing policies to prevent miscalculations, Hegseth added. The US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was the first for a nominee of Trump’s incoming Cabinet, and questions mostly focused on whether he was fit for the
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
RSS