I don’t think you should be perfect to be remembered, I think you should at a bare minimum not also be known as “The Butcher of Shanghai” to contemporary historians.

He put down an anti-government uprising by slaughtering 18,000 people. “Not perfect” is an understatement.

They didn’t call his military dictatorship in Taiwan “The White Terror” because Chiang Kai-Shek was an imperfect guy

Same argument could be applied to the people like Robert E. Lee who cemented their place in history. It’s just that they happen to be on the wrong side of history just as Chiang Kai-shek is.

Yes, it is indeed a W.

Having a place in history doesn’t automatically mean they should be honoured. There’s plenty of people from history that we can all agree have made a huge impact and yet we wouldn’t want statues of them.

unironically hero worshipping literal nationalists

The crackers howl and mald every single time someone even so much as floats the idea of taking down the statues of slave-owning confederates; so of course nothing’s happening to the Bandera statues here.

also a deeply unpopular politician on the mainland so it’s also a show of good faith

It’s complicated. Chiang Kai-shek was a historical adversary of the CPC and is viewed as a traitor and war criminal in the PRC. However, his nationalist party, the KMT, is alive and well in Taiwan. The CPC currently favors the KMT even though they were former adversaries because the KMT advocates for deepening economic ties to the PRC.

With this context I’m guessing the KMT’s primary opposition, the DPP, wants to highlight the KMT’s fascist legacy while also conflating the KMT’s and the CPC’s expression of Chinese nationalism. Making that false equivalency is easier because of the KMT’s interest in building stronger economic ties with the mainland.

Western media usually frames issues from the DPP’s perspective which would explain the commentary in the article.

Removing his statues could be seen as white-washing the KMT’s history, but I doubt anyone in the PRC is actually mad about it like the article claims.