2018 may be considered the “year of the vandal” in Taiwan, if statues of former president Chiang Kai-shek are any metric. The island is in a period of transitional justice, and as excesses and abuses of its authoritarian past are being investigated, former President Chiang Kai-shek is undergoing something of a performance review. From a grassroots perspective, the verdict doesn’t appear good.
Vandalism of Chiang’s image isn’t anything new to Taiwan. Liberalization and democratization have allowed a public debate on the island’s past. From time to time symbols of Taiwan’s past dictatorship become a target when that debate manifests into a physical form. In the past couple of years, the rate and audacity of vandalism of Chiang statues has grown, particularly since the 2016 elections, when the island voted Chiang’s Chinese Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang (KMT), out of power. For the first time in Taiwan’s history the party responsible for martial law and the White Terror period is under heavy scrutiny and powerless to prevent inquiries from the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which won power in the presidency and the Legislative Yuan.
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