The Taiwan that China wants is vanishing

There was a time when the beneficent smile of a dictator greeted you everywhere in Taiwan.

It's a far rarer sight now as more and more of those likenesses, which once exceeded 40,000, are removed.

Some 200-odd statues have been stashed away in a riverside park south of the capital Taipei. Here, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek is standing, sitting, in marshal's uniform, in scholars' robes, astride a stallion, surrounded by adoring children, and in his dotage leaning on a walking stick.

A democratic Taiwan no longer seems to have room for its erstwhile ruler, who moved the Republic of China here after fleeing impending defeat at the hands of Mao Zedong's communist forces.

The mainland became the People's Republic of China, and Taiwan has remained the Republic of China. Both claimed the other's territory. Neither Chiang, nor Mao, conceived of Taiwan as a separate place with a separate people. But that is what it has become.

Unlike Taiwan, China's claims never waned. But almost everything else has changed on either side of the 100-mile strait. China has become richer, stronger and an unmistakable threat.

Taiwan has become a democracy and is in the middle of yet another election where its ties with Beijing are being tested. No matter the result of Saturday's vote, its freedom is a danger to the Chinese Communist Party's hopes of unification.

There are still those who see themselves, like Chiang, as Chinese - they look to China with admiration and even longing. On the other side are those who feel deeply Taiwanese. They see Beijing as yet another colonising foreign power, like Chiang and the Japanese before him.

There are also 600,000 or so indigenous peoples who trace their ancestry back thousands of years. And then there is