To some, he is a hero despite losing a civil war. To others, he is a symbol of oppression. Some of the statues built in his honor have since been removed, but others remain because the cause he represented still has support.

No, he is not Robert E. Lee. He is Chiang Kai-shek, and how his memory has been handled in Taiwan echoes the debate over what to do with monuments to Lee and other Confederate leaders in the United States today.

Chiang, then the president of the Republic of China, fled with his Nationalist forces to the island of Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong’s Communist armies. On Taiwan, the generalissimo imposed martial law, stamped out opposition and nursed the unrealized dream of reconquering mainland China.