I made the statement because I’m tired of the idiotic whining in Taiwan that Chiang was a “dictator.” So what? So were Europe’s kings and all previous Chinese emperors. And they still have their merits. We shouldn’t be judging Chiang on whether or not he accepted elections, just as we wouldn’t judge Louis XIV or Henry VIII by that standard. And yes, China had some benevolent emperors in its history, but there were plenty who were merciless in how they dealt with their opponents. I don’t see why Chiang is so deplorable.
I can put my finger on it. It was peer pressure. CKS thought he’d be ostracized by his Chinese leader peers. “C’mon, all the cool kids are killing off their opponents! Just try it!” “Well, Ok…”
But that is a very Eurocentric interpretation of Chinese history. CKS and Mao were light years ahead of the Manchurians. If one were to believe everything the English language historian wrote China, well it is the land of dragon ladies and exoticism abound.
Taiwanese interpretation is against CSK because there is no one else on the island to hate. He’s as easy a scapegoat Taiwan has at this point. Just like the Greens feel PRC is using Taiwan to stoke nationalism on the mainland. The Greens are using CSK as their focal point to stoke Hoklo nationalistic sentiments on Taiwan.
I mean seriously how many their 30’s even remember CSK, let alone blame the KMT for everything wrong on Taiwan.
there’s something very, very wrong with this statement/justification. just can’t put my finger on it.[/quote]
Study up on the period after the Opium Wars in China. There was a power vaccuum in China and everyone tried to filled the void. Nothing wrong with that, it was just an unstable time. That’s why people who understand Chinese history realise this period could be the cusp of the next Tang dynasty on the Mainland.
So where does that leave Taiwan as the Mainland becomes not only a political and cultural powerhouse, but a cultural exporter. Sort of make the Hoklo desire for a Hoklo nation on Taiwan seem kind of foolish, doesn’t it, against that kind of backdrop.
CSB is really just digging is own legacy on Taiwan. Mister Greaseball all the way… 
But that is a very Eurocentric interpretation of Chinese history. CKS and Mao were light years ahead of the Manchurians. If one were to believe everything the English language historian wrote China, well it is the land of dragon ladies and exoticism abound.
Taiwanese interpretation is against CSK because there is no one else on the island to hate. He’s as easy a scapegoat Taiwan has at this point. Just like the Greens feel PRC is using Taiwan to stoke nationalism on the mainland. The Greens are using CSK as their focal point to stoke Hoklo nationalistic sentiments on Taiwan.
I mean seriously how many their 30’s even remember CSK, let alone blame the KMT for everything wrong on Taiwan.
there’s something very, very wrong with this statement/justification. just can’t put my finger on it.[/quote]
Study up on the period after the Opium Wars in China. There was a power vaccuum in China and everyone tried to filled the void. Nothing wrong with that, it was just an unstable time. That’s why people who understand Chinese history realise this period could be the cusp of the next Tang dynasty on the Mainland.
So where does that leave Taiwan as the Mainland becomes not only a political and cultural powerhouse, but a cultural exporter. Sort of make the Hoklo desire for a Hoklo nation on Taiwan seem kind of foolish, doesn’t it, against that kind of backdrop.[/quote]
Thats because we can obviously tell that Lhasa, with its brand spanking new brothels and gambling areas mostly owned by the Han are greatly helping Tibetans. Thats some action that Taiwan can’t miss.
Lets not forget the great atrocities that Inner Mongolia and the Uyghurs undergo, something Taiwan shouldn’t miss out on.
/Sarcasm.
So seriously, just because China may have gotten nearly a trillion dollars in foreign investment automatically means that Taiwan must unify? Remember during the 97-98 earthquakes I remember a certain Chinese official demanding that Taiwan must unify now that people were dying/dead from the earthquakes. What idiocy!
Read “The Struggle for Modern Tibet”, ShrimpCracker. Lhasa had prostitution long before the Hans came into the picture. In the case of the author, he was a young boy when prostituted to one of the head monks in the Dalai Lama’s administration in exchange for tax money. The author also went to India with the Dalai Lama, and later received a degree from the University of Washington.
Shrimp,
Once again you don’t see how China is rising as an important player while the USA is falling. Europe thinks NYC is a “bargain” because of the falling dollar. China is able to cause a world wide bear market with a slide in the Shanghai index.
PRC has a great many reasons why unification should occur. Even on in the ROC there are great many that believe in unification.
The world is changing in the brief 3 years we been going back and forth on this and quite honestly TI has done anything to improve the lives of the people in Taiwan in that timeframe.
I h
Why not give everything on Taiwan back to the Chinese then. Those that don’t want to be Chinese can apply for dual citizenship and visit on occassion…
And China must forget Qin Shi Huang, Shang and Yuan, Yang Guifei, Cixi, the national soccer team, and the Yellow River for flooding and killing millions of innocent farmers. Ban all books and films displaying Huang He and fill up the river!
I really did not like CKS very much, but …
CKS is an important part of Taiwan’s history, and Nations which deny their own difficult history don’t deserve a better future. CKS is one of ROC fathers, not the best possible one, sure, nevertheless he is.
“Better my father wasn’t born!”, a son said …
BTW children.
How Taiwan’s teachers want to explain its rising after WW2 now? Was it KMT led by a cleaning lady? Why don’t deny the existance of KMT, or even ban the KMT for bad behavior in the past? A one party system wasn’t the worst solution for Taiwan, or?
Anyway, without CKS there would be no Taiwan as all know and respect today.
Taiwan is not the “son” of China, only a smaller entity being buffeted about by a larger. The fact that so many of its denizens trace their ancestry in that direction does not give their putative “cousins” any special rights over them. (Funny how feudalistic Communist thinking can be.)
CKS’s historic influence over Taiwan is celebrated by some, but rued by others, while still more shrug their shoulders in apathy. The notion that he (or his shade) is owed some sort of worship or deference is to my mind bizarre. Certainly CKS was never so solicitous of anybody else’s feelings or hopes for the future.
On the same principle, should Germany have a Hitler memorial?
On the same principle, the US still has Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill and names countless schools and other things after him, including more than a few memorials.
On the same principle, the US still has Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill and names countless schools and other things after him, including more than a few memorials.[/quote]
Excuse my ignorance about Mr Jackson but how many US citizens think of him as being responsible for the murder of hundreds of citizens of his own country? And, if he did behave as badly towards his own countrymen as CKS did towards the Taiwanese then, you’re right, there’s no need to venerate either of them.
On the same principle, the US still has Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill and names countless schools and other things after him, including more than a few memorials.[/quote]
Excuse my ignorance about Mr Jackson but how many US citizens think of him as being responsible for the murder of hundreds of citizens of his own country?[/quote]
Uh, pretty much anybody who took a history class?
Screaming Jesus: “On the same principle, should Germany have a Hitler memorial?”
Principle???
Hitler destroyed Germany and many other European countries, begun the WW2 with 50 million victims and 12 million refuges. Any merit?
CKS and his KMT established a powerful country, and without him no child in the world would today know where Taiwan is, like almost nobody knows where Guizhou is, bigger than Taiwan btw. Who knows the Capital of Guizhou, a 35 million Chinese province?
CKS’s memorial or not, that’s not the main question here. CSB wants to erase him from the memories of Taiwanese people, and this way, he wants to change the history of Taiwan’s amazing success.
That, as usual, is always a question of pros and contras, I’m not a defender of CKS at all, but imo his merits were much bigger than his faults.
Chomsky said: “If humans rights would be fully applied, all American presidents must be hanged”, nevertheless many of them are heroes, till today.
On the same principle, the US still has Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill and names countless schools and other things after him, including more than a few memorials.[/quote]
Excuse my ignorance about Mr Jackson but how many US citizens think of him as being responsible for the murder of hundreds of citizens of his own country?[/quote]
Uh, pretty much anybody who took a history class?[/quote]
Oh, classy! Quoting Out of Context for Dummies! is that your next book?
Andrew Jackson’s name was never mentioned in any of my history classes and I’ll have to ask my niece in high school in Canberra but I’m fairly sure she hasn’t been taught about him either. This is nothing more than typical US-centric shit coming from someone who wants to tell Taiwanese what to think and do.
On the same principle, the US still has Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill and names countless schools and other things after him, including more than a few memorials.[/quote]
Excuse my ignorance about Mr Jackson but how many US citizens think of him as being responsible for the murder of hundreds of citizens of his own country?[/quote]
Uh, pretty much anybody who took a history class?[/quote]
I’ll have to ask my niece in high school in Canberra but I’m fairly sure she hasn’t been taught about him either. This is nothing more than typical US-centric shit coming from someone who wants to tell Taiwanese what to think and do.[/quote]
Huh? We’re not talking about how much Australians’ relationship to Andrew Jackson, but that of Americans. Like the Hitler/Germany example and the CKS/Taiwan example. AFAIK schoolchildren in the US are taught about Jackson and the genocide of Native Americans. I don’t know where you get the idea I want to tell Taiwanese people what to think and do. It’s just a discussion, and I am bringing up relevant examples.
Yes, you are bringing up a relevant example Paogao but when Zeugmite says “anybody” that widens the criteria somewhat, wouldn’t you agree? He’s the one the US-centric comment was aimed at. PLus, he did it just for the purpose of distracting attention from my point.
Which means you are both being disingenuous by not answering that point.
Why venerate mass-murderers?
[quote=“Beachside Queenslander”][quote=“zeugmite”][quote=“Beachside Queenslander”]
Excuse my ignorance about Mr Jackson but how many US citizens think of him as being responsible for the murder of hundreds of citizens of his own country?[/quote]
Uh, pretty much anybody who took a history class?[/quote]
Oh, classy! Quoting Out of Context for Dummies! is that your next book?
Andrew Jackson’s name was never mentioned in any of my history classes and I’ll have to ask my niece in high school in Canberra but I’m fairly sure she hasn’t been taught about him either. This is nothing more than typical US-centric shit coming from someone who wants to tell Taiwanese what to think and do.[/quote]
Maybe we should chip in and buy you a Reading for Dummies.
You asked earlier “how many US citizens” think of him as being responsible for the murder of “hundreds” of fellow citizens. Zeugmite replied “pretty much anybody”… in context, this clearly means US citizens who took a history class. If you have a problem with that statement, I suggest you take a flight out of Australia (and Taiwan) once in a while. I’d actually tweak the original statement a little. I thought it was thousands that died, not hundreds.
I don’t see why Andrew Jackson is especially deplorable, though. It’s the opinion of many African-Americans that just about every elected American president before 1865 (and arguably before 1965) are equally guilty for not destroying the institution of slavery.
[quote=“Taibeijing”]
BTW children.
How Taiwan’s teachers want to explain its rising after WW2 now? Was it KMT led by a cleaning lady? Why don’t deny the existance of KMT, or even ban the KMT for bad behavior in the past? A one party system wasn’t the worst solution for Taiwan, or?
Anyway, without CKS there would be no Taiwan as all know and respect today.[/quote]
But isn’t the the whole DPP political strategy. Instead of actually trying to make Taiwan better, it is so much easier to wish Taiwan was better.
By blaming everything on CKS it makes their job a lot more easier. If not for CKS…(whatever)…would be better. Flapping their lips and shaking their fists for the TV is so much easier than actually creating and implementing public policy.
US president most like CKS
I submit Rutherford Hayes for this lively disscussion. He presiding over the USA when US troops were sent in to overthrow the monarchy on this peaceful paradise. It is interesting to note the genetic make up of the Hawaiian mitochondria are similar to those of the Taiwanese aboriginal.
This genetic factiod could be using claiming TI for Hawaii as well.
Hitler may have lost the war, but he does loom large in history and the public consciousness. Don’t we want to acknowledge this by having a Hitler memorial? (P.S. CKS lost his war too, only not quite as much.)
Lincoln was a dictator who ruled only by force of arms, and admitted opposing slavery mainly because it was expedient. Woodrow Wilson supported the political aspirations of distant peoples rather more than those of nearby ones (or American women, for that matter). Both are presented in rather glowing terms in American schoolbooks.
Taiwan’s economic success was not really CKS’s doing. A lot of the steps that mattered were forced on him by the U.S… But I suppose he can be credited for Taiwan’s de facto independence–not that this was what he was seeking, exactly.