Since the start of the new legislative term, the most hotly debated topic has been the proposed legislation to remove portraits of the nation’s “founding father,” Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙), by abolishing the requirement for government departments, schools, the military and other institutions to hang a portrait of Sun on display.
Debate has centered around whether there is a pressing need for the legislature to prioritize such matters. The public appears divided on the issue and everyone seems to have their own views on the matter.
However, the real issue is what Sun’s relationship with Taiwan was and whether he really can be called the nation’s founding father. This should not be off limits for discussion and Taiwanese should be rational and tolerant enough to have a full and frank conversation on this issue.
Sun visited Taiwan on three occasions in 1900, 1913 and 1918, or four, if one counts 1924, when he stopped in Keelung Harbor, but did not disembark. An examination of Sun’s visits makes it clear that the main reason for his first visit was to obtain assistance from Japanese governor-general of Taiwan Kodama Gentaro for a political revolution in China. Sun was successful in gaining his support.
Therefore, rather than saying that Sun’s visit was of little significance to the Taiwanese, it would be more accurate to say that he did so to cooperate with Taiwan’s Japanese rulers.
Sun’s relationship with Taiwan is demonstrated by the preservation of a building that he stayed in during one of his visits on Taipei’s Zhongshan N Road. This is the only memory that Taiwanese, then under Japanese rule, had of Sun.
However, as autocratic governments believe the power to interpret history passes from one ruler to the next, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) came to Taiwan in 1949, it sought to brainwash Taiwanese with its view of history. The hotel where Sun stayed, the Umeyashiki Hotel, was renamed by the KMT as the Sun Yat-sen Memorial House.
In a similar way, the overlapping forces of the military and the education system were used by the KMT to comprehensively push the idea of Sun as the nation’s “founding father.” Thus, the KMT started to put Sun’s portrait on display from 1954 and have continued to do so ever since, for more than 60 years.
It is no exaggeration to say that this is the KMT’s view of history.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules over a population of 1.3 billion, calls Sun “an outstanding patriot, hero of the Chinese people and a mighty forerunner of China’s democratic revolution,” but it does not call him a “founding father.”
The provisional Republic of China (ROC) government of which Sun was provisional president from Jan. 1 to March 10, 1912, and the ROC government that bestowed the title of “father of the nation” on Sun in 1940 ended when former president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) regime was defeated by the CCP in the Chinese Civil War in 1949.
Thanks to martial law and the faith of the 2 million soldiers that arrived in Taiwan together with the Chiang regime, Taiwan became the only place in the world where Sun was called “father of the nation.”
Taiwan is now a democracy that has amended its Constitution several times and held six free and direct presidential elections, but Taiwanese still have not once relied on democratic procedure to discuss or come to a decision about this mindset of exiles that treats a Chinese revolutionary as the nation’s founding father.
When this issue should be discussed could be decided through public agreement. It could also be decided by the whole body of legislators, as Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators proposed amendments to the National Emblem and National Flag of the Republic of China Act (中華民國國徽國旗法) and two other laws that regulate the display of Sun’s portrait.
However, another issue that is perhaps more worthy of discussion is what today’s KMT supporters think of this “eternal premier” and “founding father” that the party elders brought with them to Taiwan. Surely it is not just another portrait on a wall that they bow before during various ceremonies.
The question is whether, during the past few years, the KMT government has focused on trying to modernize the essence of Sun’s main idea, the “Three Principles of the People,” or if it has directed its efforts toward building a party-state elite together with the CCP to use the power of the party state to snatch power from the people and replace social wealth equality with booty-sharing between government and industry.
This is an issue that is open to public debate, and it is why the KMT has lost two consecutive elections, and why the local transition of power is now to be followed by the transition of central government power.
The KMT’s legislative activities following its election loss have had nothing to do with national policy or the public’s living standards. Instead, they have been directed toward blocking bills regulating the management of party assets. The party’s hard work has caused the younger generation to openly question whether the KMT is prepared for a life in opposition.
Few people care whether the party remain in opposition forever, but if that were to happen, would there be any reason to perpetuate Sun’s already empty position as “founding father?”
That debate would be a faster way of doing away with the “founding father” than the DPP’s suggestion that Sun’s portrait should be removed from the nation’s walls.
Translated by Edward Jones and Perry Svensson
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