Reports Economist, Chiang Kai-shek may once have been revered as a near-god on Taiwan, where he led his Chinese Nationalist regime after being defeated by Mao Zedong's Communists on the mainland in 1949. But almost a third of a century after his death, the memory of the old dictator is being effaced, with the removal of the generalissimo's statues and the renaming of many streets and even Taipei's international airport. ?
This has provoked a political row, which this week engulfed Taiwan's defence minister, Lee Jye. He was expelled from the Kuomintang (KMT), Chiang's former ruling party, for allowing statues of the old nationalist to be removed from Taiwan's military bases.
The current government of President Chen Shui-bian intensified its campaign against the generalissimo as the island marked the 60th anniversary of the "228 Incident"--the KMT's violent suppression of protests against its rule on February 28th 1947. Blaming the massacres on Chiang and the "outside" regime of the KMT, the DPP announced plans to rename the giant Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei as the "Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall", and tear down the sanctuary's perimeter wall. The central government dropped "China" from the names of many state enterprises last month. There is talk of removing Chiang's portrait from Taiwanese coins. (Source: The Economist, Mar 15, 2007).