Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
secret Swiss bank account for funding the “Contras,” who were then
fighting the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. President
Chiang also strictly forbade any further covert operations in the
United States. (Taylor 2000, 385-94)
In Taiwan in April 1985 Ch'en Ch'i-li, Wang Hsi-ling, and Wu Tun
were tried in Kuomintang military court, found guilty of murder,
and sentenced to “life” imprisonment, but everybody knew they
would be out before long. And indeed they were; in 1991 all three mur-
derers were released, ostensibly as part of a general amnesty to mark
the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Republic
of China in 1911. Ch'en Ch'i-li then became a businessman in Taiwan
for a time but in the mid-1990s fled to a life of self-imposed exile in
Cambodia. After he died of pancreatic cancer in Hong Kong in 2007
his body was shipped back to Taiwan, where gangster Wu Tun helped
organize and conduct his funeral. Meanwhile, in 1986 Tung Kuei-sun
wound up being extradited from a third country to the United States,
where he stood trial, was convicted, and sentenced to 25 years to life
imprisonment. He met his end in 1991 at the hands of fellow inmates
at a federal prison in Pennsylvania.
We will perhaps never know who ordered the murder of Henry Liu,
but there are persistent reports that the man behind it all was, once
again, President Chiang Ching-kuo's wayward son Chiang Hsiao-wu
(Jiang Xiaowu/Alex Chiang). Chiang Ching-kuo himself seems to
have believed that his son Alex was involved in some way:
At the minimum, however, Ching-kuo came to believe that Alex's “love
of intrigue,” his life style, his unsavory friends, and his reckless com-
ments had at the least led indirectly to the murder. Almost certainly
Ching-kuo himself knew nothing of the plan to kill Henry Liu, but
nevertheless he also bore responsibility.
The prominent political mur-
ders in 1980 and 1981 were also very possibly or even probably related.
(Taylor 2000, 390)
...
DEMOCRATIZATION
LifedraggedoninTaiwanduringthelongWhiteTerror,withthe
occasional anti-Nationalist riot to break up the monotony, but eventu-
ally it improved both economically and politically. Taiwan was emerg-
ing as a wealthy and fairly industrialized island by the early 1980s,
and during this time there appeared some faint but hopeful signals
that Taiwan might become more democratic. Chiang Ching-kuo must
