HONG KONG — The dispute over the renaming of a memorial hall in Taiwan would be hilarious if it were not for the very serious political tensions that are pitting the two main political parties against each other.
President Chen Shui-bian, to weaken Taiwan's links to China, had ordered that the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, which honors the man who ran Taiwan for a quarter of a century until his death in 1975, be renamed. The Cabinet passed new rules for the management of the hall and changed its name to the Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall.
However, the Taipei municipal government, which is controlled by the opposition Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (KMT), had earlier designated the hall a temporary historical site and would allow no changes to the structure, including the putting up of signs or banners designating a new name.