Global Times warns Taiwan against 'morbid nostalgia' for Chiang Kai-shek era
As Taiwan celebrated its 103rd National Day, the island received a rare “treat”: an editorial by the Communist Party-affiliated Global Times warning about “morbid nostalgia” for a Kuomintang-ruled country.
As Taiwan celebrated its 103rd National Day on Friday, the island received a rare “treat”: an editorial by the Communist Party-affiliated warning about “morbid nostalgia” for a Kuomintang-ruled country.
The newspaper, notorious for its very nationalistic views, said some online and intellectual circles were increasingly having “morbid nostalgia” for China’s republican era, when the country was ruled by Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang government.
The mainland and Taiwan have been ruled separately since defeated Nationalist forces fled to the island in 1949 after losing a civil war to the communists. China has never renounced the use of force to bring the now democratic Taiwan under its control.
While allowing that “nostalgia is a basic human emotion”, the paper argues that when commentators compare the current political or social situation unfavourably to that of the Republican era, they are “engaged in malicious deception” and should be “unceremoniously debunked”.
The Kuomintang government “failed to get the support of grass roots on the mainland”, or defeat “separatist forces” (such as the Communist Party, which was victorious in the Chinese Civil War in 1949) and should also be held liable for the “ravaging of China by Japanese invaders” during the second world war, the paper claims.
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Today’s China is better off “both in overall national strength and international status” than the China “petty bourgeoisie” intellectuals reminisce about, the editorial concludes.
