There is a good article on the facts of history regarding the KMT in Taiwan.
Look at the numbers:
Chiang Kai-shek - one of the top 10 worst dictators -- Death by Government by Rudolph Rummel, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii.
The article continues...
"Even if we view Chiang from a layman’s perspective, we see that in the 50 years from obtaining power as commander-in-chief of the Northern Expeditionary Army in 1926 to his death in 1975, his government held no democratic elections and his word was law. What is this, if not a dictatorship?"
"Putting aside Chiang’s responsibility for the 228 Incident, he and his son Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) oversaw 38 years of martial law in Taiwan. According to a report by the Ministry of Justice when Ma was minister, “military courts handled 29,007 political cases with approximately 140,000 victims” under the two Chiangs. In 1960 alone, the government listed 126,875 people as “missing” and withdrew their household registration, showing just how many people were executed publicly or in secret. If Chiang, who ruled the nation through violence and political prisons, was not a dictator, then who is?
Just like any other dictator, Chiang loved erecting statues of himself. According to media reports, there were at least 45,000 such statues around Taiwan, making it the country with the highest density of statues of a national leader in the world. In addition, his dozens of villas and items that he used are now treated as historical monuments and relics — even one of his handkerchiefs is on exhibit at the memorial hall."
1 comment:
And the dead dictator's memorial and the park complex perhaps occupies probably the BIGGEST and the most valuable piece of land of an urban area. A very strange phenomenon from an outsider's (people who don't live in Taiwan) point of view.
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