Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Subscriptshoe9/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 4.0
TAOYUAN MAYOR SIMON CHANG has been criticized for disregarding the results of an online poll to name new MRT stations that are part of the Green Line of the Taoyuan MRT, which will be opened in 2026.
What has drawn controversy is that four stations will be named “Zhongzheng”, the honorary name of former dictator Chiang Kai-shek. The names chosen through the online poll would have generally referred to locations by common usages for local areas around the MRT, such as “Taoyuan Night Market Station” or “Art District Station”, winning out against the choices that would have involved using “Zhongzheng.” As such, local DPP city councilors held a press conference in August to criticize the move by Chang.
Chang’s actions perhaps reflect how the KMT is unable to let go of the past, then. Namely, Chiang Kai-shek remains highly respected by the KMT’s upper echelons, in spite of the fact that he presided over the White Terror, with tens of thousands killed during the 228 Massacre and across the many decades of political repression that followed.
Even so, there are 355 streets named Zhongzheng across Taiwan. Efforts aimed at transitional justice have frequently called for such street names to be changed, as well as for statues of Chiang Kai-shek across Taiwan to be removed. But it is unlikely that there will be significant moves on this front when the Transitional Justice Commission established by the Tsai administration was unable to successfully enact the removal of the 6.3-meter bronze statue of Chiang Kai-shek in the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial in Taipei, the most visible Chiang Kai-shek Statue in Taiwan.
Photo credit: Foxy1219/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 4.0
Still, Chang may perhaps have electoral motives in mind. Taoyuan historically has slanted pan-Blue, despite the fact that Cheng Wen-tsan of the DPP was mayor of Taoyuan from 2014 to 2022. When Chen Shui-bian, as the first non-KMT president in Taiwanese history, made moves to change the names of landmarks and streets of Taiwan, as well as to remove Chiang statues, many Chiang statues were moved to what is now known as the “Valley of the Chiangs” in Taoyuan by then-mayor Eric Chu. This is near the Cihu Mausoleum where Chiang and his son and successor as dictator, Chiang Ching-kuo, are buried. While some international reporting has mistaken this as a move aimed at enacting transitional justice while memorializing authoritarianism, this was in fact a move aimed at protecting Chiang statues.
Indeed, this is not the only recent controversy involving the historical legacy of the Chiangs and street names in Taiwan in the past weeks. Recently, after Taiwan’s win at the 2024 Paris Olympics, Taipei mayor Chiang Wan-an proposed renaming Lane 361 of Fuxing North Road by the Taipei Municipal Zhongshan Junior High School to “Lin Yang Street.” This would be in honor of Taiwanese men’s badminton duo gold medalists Wang Chi-lin and Lee Yang.
Though it is not unheard of for urban infrastructure to be named after Olympic gold medalists in Taiwan, part of the criticism was that Chiang’s move was excessive, and aimed at capitalizing off of national pride in Taiwan’s accomplishments at the Olympics. But controversial also was that this is the same stretch of road that includes Freedom Lane, commemorating free speech martyr Nylon Cheng, the journalist and publisher who self-immolated after police broke into the offices of his pro-democracy magazine, Freedom Era Weekly, after a lengthy stand-off.
Chiang claims, of course, to be the great-grandson of Chiang Kai-shek, though Chiang Wan-an and his father John Chiang are not legitimate descendants of the Chiangs but claim to be his illegitimate descendants. Chiang and his father changed their name from Chang to Chiang when they decided to pursue political office.
Even so, Chiang Wan-an has more commonly expressed pride as a descendant of Chiang Ching-kuo, who is sometimes remembered as a more mild autocrat than the elder Chiang because the processes of Taiwan’s democratization began during his late rule. Consequently, Simon Chang’s moves in Taoyuan to name MRT stations after Chiang Kai-shek prove especially telling about the KMT’s current priorities. Certainly, one does not expect the KMT to make any concessions to transitional justice anytime, rather one expects the KMT to try and frame this simply as “Green Terror” aimed at establishing “cultural Taiwanese independence.”