Amid the dispute between Taiwan and China over the Whampoa Military Academy, which has been renamed the Republic of China (ROC) Military Academy in Taiwan, former minister of national defense Kao Hua-chu (高華柱) made an intriguing comment, saying: “The temple is with them, god is with us.”
The “temple” refers to Whampoa Island in China’s Guangzhou Province, where the academy was founded, and “god” refers to the ROC Military Academy in Kaohsiung’s Fengshan District (鳳山).
The spirit of Whampoa is the “orthodoxy” formed by each academy president from the first, Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), to the 32nd, Hou Chia-lun (侯家倫), along with its teachers and students.
The core value of the orthodoxy is to “safeguard the ROC and protect the ROC Constitution,” and all Whampoa graduates should strive for sacrifice, unity, and love for the country and its people.
The academy has been relocated several times. Founded in 1924, it moved from Guangzhou to what was then the Chinese capital, Nanjing, three years later and to Chengdu in 1937 due to the Japanese invasion.
In 1950, it moved to Fengshan after Chengdu fell into the hands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government relocated to Taiwan.
The majority of the more than 1,000 graduates of the 23rd class — the last Whampoa class in China — either died in battles on their way to western China or died defending Chiang as he departed from Chengdu Lantau Peak Airport for Taiwan in 1949.
The school was in China for only 26 of its 99 years, but it has been in Taiwan for almost 73 years.
The spirit of Whampoa has long been internalized locally, so it is no longer appropriate to confine the debate to unnecessary arguments over which place the spirit should be named after.
The call to erase “Whampoa” from the spirit would be a redundant move — just as redundant as the call to rename the ROC Air Force Academy’s “spirit of Jianqiao” the “spirit of Gangshan” after its location in Kaohsiung’s Gangshan District (岡山), as well as renaming National Defense University Fuhsingkang College’s spirit of Fuhsingkang the “spirit of Beitou (北投),” to reflect its home in the Taipei district.
Would the quality and quantity of the ROC Military Academy’s enrollment surge to the level of National Taiwan University or other prestigious institutions next year if it were to rename its spirit of Whampoa?
More than 90 percent of graduates of the 23rd Whampoa class and those who went before them have been reunited in heaven, not to mention the earliest graduates from the first six classes during the KMT-CCP First United Front in the 1920s.
Former army general Hsu Li-nung (許歷農), a graduate of the 16th class who is now 104 years old, is perhaps the only alumnus in Taiwan who attended the academy in China, while most remaining alumni in China did not fight side by side with the KMT against the Japanese.
Besides, historical data show that there were 22 major battles during the Japanese invasion, but the CCP did not participate in them.
If retired military officers from Taiwan were to take part in the academy’s 99th anniversary celebrations in China, what shared topics would the Taiwanese and Chinese alumini have except those represented by visiting the original Whampoa site?
Liao Nien-han is a lecturer at the ROC Military Academy.
Translated by Eddy Chang
The international women’s soccer match between Taiwan and New Zealand at the Kaohsiung Nanzih Football Stadium, scheduled for Tuesday last week, was canceled at the last minute amid safety concerns over poor field conditions raised by the visiting team. The Football Ferns, as New Zealand’s women’s soccer team are known, had arrived in Taiwan one week earlier to prepare and soon raised their concerns. Efforts were made to improve the field, but the replacement patches of grass could not grow fast enough. The Football Ferns canceled the closed-door training match and then days later, the main event against Team Taiwan. The safety
There are moments in history when America has turned its back on its principles and withdrawn from past commitments in service of higher goals. For example, US-Soviet Cold War competition compelled America to make a range of deals with unsavory and undemocratic figures across Latin America and Africa in service of geostrategic aims. The United States overlooked mass atrocities against the Bengali population in modern-day Bangladesh in the early 1970s in service of its tilt toward Pakistan, a relationship the Nixon administration deemed critical to its larger aims in developing relations with China. Then, of course, America switched diplomatic recognition
The National Immigration Agency on Tuesday said it had notified some naturalized citizens from China that they still had to renounce their People’s Republic of China (PRC) citizenship. They must provide proof that they have canceled their household registration in China within three months of the receipt of the notice. If they do not, the agency said it would cancel their household registration in Taiwan. Chinese are required to give up their PRC citizenship and household registration to become Republic of China (ROC) nationals, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said. He was referring to Article 9-1 of the Act
Strategic thinker Carl von Clausewitz has said that “war is politics by other means,” while investment guru Warren Buffett has said that “tariffs are an act of war.” Both aphorisms apply to China, which has long been engaged in a multifront political, economic and informational war against the US and the rest of the West. Kinetically also, China has launched the early stages of actual global conflict with its threats and aggressive moves against Taiwan, the Philippines and Japan, and its support for North Korea’s reckless actions against South Korea that could reignite the Korean War. Former US presidents Barack Obama
RSS