Taiwan’s government has pledged to work faster in response to calls to remove almost 800 statues of Chiang Kai-shek, the Chinese military dictator who ruled the island for decades under martial law, but whose legacy remains a point of contentious debate.
In 2018 the government established a transitional justice committee to investigate the rule of the former generalissimo, who was president of the Republic of China (ROC) – in China and then in Taiwan – until his death in 1975. Among its recommendations was to remove the thousands of statues from public spaces.
