Surviving with the Other Chiang

"Even the heavens are weeping for President Chiang." That was the poetic phrase used by many Chinese in Taipei last week to describe the incessant downpour that accompanied the paying of respects to the late President Chiang Kai-shek (TIME, April 14). For many--especially the veteran Nationalists who followed Chiang to Taiwan after the Communists took control of the mainland in 1949--his passing was a wrenching emotional experience.

Groups of mourners, some sobbing, bowed ritually before a flower-bedecked altar set up at the presidential residence four miles from the capital. Then at midweek, Chiang's body was carried along a 15-mile procession route past an estimated 500,000 people to the Sun Yatsen Memorial Hall in downtown Taipei. There, to the accompaniment of piped-in elegiac music, thousands walked past the open coffin. The Generalissimo's body was clothed in a black Chinese gown with the red sash of the republic's highest order across his chest; his face, thin and white, bore a slight smile and showed no sign of the heart and bladder disease that had made him an invalid and recluse for most of the three years before his death at the age of 87.

Chiang's body will be "temporarily interred" at Tzu Lake, a favored scenic spot 25 miles south of Taipei, until the "recovery of the mainland" permits permanent burial in his old capital at Nanking or in his native Chekiang province. Meanwhile, all of Taiwan will observe an obligatory mourning period for 30 days. Flags will fly at half-mast; all places of public entertainment will be closed by government order.

Real Power. Few people in Taiwan expected Chiang's passing to have much effect on the country's future. Real power had already been given to the Generalissimo's eldest son, Chiang Ching-kuo, 65, who became Premier three years ago (Vice President C.K. Yen, who succeeds Chiang Kai-shek as President, is expected to be little more than a figurehead). Chiang Ching-kuo is unlikely to change his father's adamant refusal to negotiate any land of political settlement with the Communists in Peking.

In other areas, though, he has proved to be a more flexible and perhaps even more popular leader than the iron-willed, authoritarian Chiang Kaishek. He has diffused the force of a Taiwanese independence movement by encouraging native islanders, who make up 85% of Taiwan's population of 16 million, to join both the ruling Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) and the government.

Chiang Ching-kuo, as a former director of the secret police, has not exactly turned the island into the bastion of freedom that the Kuomintang claims it is. There are more than 1,000 political prisoners, the press is closely supervised, and foreign books and magazines reporting favorably on the People's Republic are censored. But Chiang has managed to maintain a level of economic growth that has given Taiwan the highest standard of living in East Asia after Japan. The prosperity of the native Taiwanese business class, moreover, has helped to reduce their resentment of mainlander rule.

The government's chief long-range worry is that the world diplomatic shift in favor of Peking will make it impossible for Taiwan to remain separate from the mainland. The biggest problem is the attitude of the U.S., the only major industrial nation that still formally recognizes Taipei. At first, Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz--a low-ranking emissary in light of Chiang's historical importance--was considered to head the U.S. delegation to the funeral. That slight was corrected when Vice President Rockefeller replaced Butz. Japan, which last year broke off relations with Taiwan, is sending former Prime Minister and Nobel Peace prizewinner Eisaku Sato. Understandably, the Taipei government is concerned about President Ford's proposed trip to Peking later this year. One fear is that Ford will have to agree to further progress toward "normalization of relations" with the mainland--perhaps including recognition of Peking--in order to justify the trip.

Still, most people on Taiwan remain convinced that Washington will not completely abandon the island. They feel that the U.S., which has investments in Taiwan worth $475 million, will retain a political presence in Taipei, at least in the form of a liaison office, and will let Peking know that it would strongly disapprove of a military takeover of Taiwan. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's view is that the Communists are preoccupied with the Soviet threat along China's northern and western borders. Thus they are unlikely to insist on the "liberation" of Taiwan as a price for Sino-U.S. detente. Then too there is the sticky question of the 1954 Mutual Defense Treaty between the U.S. and Taiwan. Peking would probably insist that the U.S. renounce the treaty as part of a normalization agreement, but Ford, concerned about conservative support at home, is unlikely to agree to that just before a presidential election campaign.

Taiwan, with a 500,000-man army and one of the best air forces in the world, could put up stiff resistance to any invasion from the mainland. Peking might succeed in an all-out effort to take the island by force, but only after a brutal and costly war that China can now ill afford. Despite the vigorous claims on both sides of the Straits of Taiwan that there is only one China, there are likely to be two of them for some time to come.

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