So what would a modern Confucian have to say about the wild re-decoration of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taibei, which I blogged about here?

    At first blush, it would seem that filling the Hall with kites and posters is an unfilial  act against the "national  father."  It is fairly common to understand Confucianism as requiring unbending respect and deference to political authority, an extension of the duty owed to elders and parents.  That, at any rate, is what authoritarians have asserted throughout Chinese history.  And that assertion, when it is backed up by repression and force, has real cultural and political effects: it might be true that, generally speaking, Chinese people in Chinese cultural contexts (the PRC and Singapore most prominently) are more willing to accept authoritarian political practices than, say, contemporary Americans or Europeans.  I do not want to make too much of this because, as any careful study of Chinese politics would reveal, there has always been dissent and contention in Chinese political life.  But let’s give the authoritarian-Legalist-Confucians their due.

       Alternatively, it is also true that Confucianism holds in itself, and has always held in itself, a powerful critique of tyrannical abuses of power.  Mencius, of course, is the best example of this sensibility: his numerous sharp responses to power-hungry and unjust kings and dukes constantly remind us that political legimiacy is a matter of ethical accomplishment.  Only good rulers are legitimate rulers, and rulers who cause harm to the people can rightfully be removed from power or, even, killed.

       When we keep that point in mind, we might ask ourselves: did Chiang Kai-shek do anything that might deserve the kind of critique the new art of the Memorial Hall brings forth?  It is not too hard to answer "yes" to that.  Any honest consideration of the February 28 incident, commemorated so movingly at the Taipei 228 Memorial Museum, casts a dark historial shadow over Chiang.  While he did not pull the triggers that killed rought 20,000 of Taiwan’s social and cultural elite in 1947, he was the supreme political leader of that time and must bear a certain responsibility for the massacres.

     Yes, historical assessments are more complex than any single incident or event.  But even when we consider whatever economic good might have been created in Taiwan in the 1960s and 1970s, for which Chiang might be able to take credit, we must keep the terrible human cost in mind.

      If Mencius were to see what has become of Chiang’s memorial he would, I believe, not only understand the justness of the victims, he would smile at their colorful critique.