Written by Meng Kit Tang.
Image credit: 04.07 總統出席「鄭南榕殉道37周年追思紀念會」by 總統府, license: CC BY 4.0.
Introduction: Irony as a Democratic Test
On November 9, 1987, just fourteen months after the Democratic Progressive Party was founded and four months after martial law was lifted, a man was beaten bloody inside the party’s own national congress. His assailants were not Kuomintang agents. They were members of the opposition. The man was Cheng Nan-jung (鄭南榕), and he was attacked for advocating a position the party would later claim as foundational.
Today, the DPP commemorates Cheng each year on April 7, Freedom of Speech Day (言論自由日). Presidential tributes honour him as a martyr of Taiwan’s democracy. At the 2025 ceremony, President Lai Ching-te declared that “absolute freedom of speech does not mean using freedom to eliminate freedom,” placing a condition of national security upon the principle Cheng died defending.
This is not merely a story of political inconsistency. It reflects a deeper pattern of institutional amnesia. A disruptive figure has been transformed into a sanctified symbol, without a full reckoning of how he was treated when he was inconvenient. Democracies that fail to remember cannot fully account for themselves. To face history and bear its weight (面對歷史，承擔責任) is not a demand for guilt. It is a condition of credibility.
The Man They Beat, Then Beatified
Cheng Nan-jung was born in 1947, in the shadow of the 228 Incident that defined Taiwan’s modern trauma. In his writing, he recalled how neighbours protected his pregnant mother from retaliatory violence. That experience shaped his political philosophy. He later described himself as an action philosopher (行動的哲學家) committed to defending belief through action, whatever the cost. His principle was uncompromising: one hundred per cent freedom of speech (百分之百的言論自由), including the right to articulate ideas the state forbade.
The DPP he confronted in 1987 operated under Article 100 of the Criminal Code, which criminalised sedition and rendered advocacy of independence prosecutable. The law would not be amended until 1992. The party’s caution reflected both legal vulnerability and political calculation.
At the DPP’s second National Party Representatives’ Congress, held at the Ambassador Hotel in Taipei, Cheng arrived uninvited. He distributed copies of Freedom Era (《自由時代》) and pro-independence materials. Legislator Chu Kao-cheng confronted him. Cheng struck first, slapping Chu, declaring that he acted on behalf of the Taiwanese people (我要為台灣人摑你一耳光).
The response was immediate and collective. He was beaten with cups and chairs, kicked, and left bloodied. Eyewitnesses recalled shouts urging that he be beaten to death (打死他).
Cheng initiated the confrontation. The response was disproportionate. Both facts belong in the record.
He did not retreat. In 1988, he published a draft constitution for the Republic of Taiwan. In 1989, facing sedition charges, he barricaded himself in his office for seventy-one days. On April 7, as police forced entry, he set himself on fire. He died, leaving words now preserved at the Cheng Nan-jung Liberty Museum: “The KMT can seize my corpse, but not my person.”
His position was absolute: free speech was not contingent on political timing, institutional comfort, or state security. It was the foundation of all else.
The Sanitised Saint
Official commemorations present Cheng as a martyr of KMT authoritarianism and a symbol of Taiwan’s democratic identity. This framing is not false. It is incomplete.
No DPP statement, presidential speech, or museum exhibit acknowledges that party members assaulted him in 1987 for advancing the very positions later embraced. The episode is not debated. It is absent.
The omission does not require deliberate suppression. The concept of concealing the faults of those held in reverence (為尊者諱) often operates through silence rather than design. Cheng has been institutionalised in memory but not interrogated in full. The essential question remains unasked. What did we do when it mattered?
The contemporary reinterpretation sharpens the point. By subordinating free speech to sovereignty and security, Lai’s formulation inverts Cheng’s logic. For Cheng, the right to say what the state deemed dangerous was the precondition of democratic life. The party has not only omitted the 1987 violence; it has quietly rewritten the philosophy of the man it claims to honour, in real time, from the podium of the ceremony that bears his name.
As independence moved from the political fringe into the mainstream, Cheng’s transformation into a foundational symbol followed. The victor writes the narrative (成王敗寇). In power, the DPP has written Cheng into history on its own terms.
Complexity Without Equivalence
Historical accuracy requires holding complexity without flattening it.
The DPP of 1987 was a fragile organisation operating under legal threat. Confronted by an outsider distributing independence literature at a closed congress, the conditions for confrontation were shaped by context as much as individual choice. The party that exists today is not identical to the one that met in 1987, and holding current leaders directly responsible for that moment risks collapsing historical distinction.
Cheng, for his part, was not a passive victim. He entered as a non-member, provoked confrontation, and struck first. His method was deliberate escalation, rooted in a belief that principles must be asserted regardless of consequence.
Selective memory is not unique to the DPP. The KMT’s long suppression of 228 history and its management of the White Terror reflect the same instinct on a far greater scale. The two are not equivalent. The DPP’s case matters precisely because it claims moral authority as the agent of Taiwan’s democratisation. The gap between that claim and the incomplete record is where the problem lies.
What Democracy Costs
History, when used as a mirror, demands more than when it is used as a political asset.
Taiwan’s Transitional Justice Commission undertook significant work between 2018 and 2022. It addressed KMT-era injustices through exonerations, archival releases, and the identification of sites of repression. Its mandate, however, focused on state actions between 1945 and 1992. Intra-opposition episodes such as the 1987 assault fell outside its scope by design. This does not diminish its achievements. It reveals a limit. Justice cannot be applied selectively without weakening its authority (正義不能選擇性地施行).
The question of free speech has grown more acute. Taiwan now faces sustained information pressure from the People’s Republic of China, including disinformation campaigns and influence operations. Calls to regulate speech in the name of national security have gained traction. Cheng’s insistence on absolute expression and his rejection of security as a limiting principle speak directly to this tension.
The underlying dynamic persists in altered form. The challenge is no longer the suppression of an inconvenient voice through force, but its management through reinterpretation.
The remedies are conceptually simple and politically costly. Incorporating the full account of 1987 into museum exhibits and curricula would restore historical completeness. A formal acknowledgement by the DPP would carry greater weight. Such steps would invite exploitation by political opponents and amplification by Beijing’s propaganda apparatus. That cost is real. It is also secondary.
To recognise shame is to approach courage (知恥近乎勇). The willingness to acknowledge one’s own failures, especially when they will be used against you, is among the most demanding tests of democratic integrity.
The Conclusion Cheng Already Wrote
On the morning of April 7, 1989, Cheng Nan-jung remained inside his barricaded office as police forced entry. He had refused to compromise. When the door gave way, he struck a match.
He did not die for a party. He died asserting that the state cannot own a person’s conscience, and that the right to speak the forbidden is inherent, not granted.
He had already defined the standard by which his legacy should be judged. To pursue justice is to act upon what one knows (爭取正義與公理，理當即知即行). The most meaningful tribute is not ceremonial remembrance. It is the willingness to state plainly what happened, and to refuse to look away.
The knowledge has long been available. The action remains undone.
Meng Kit Tang is a Singaporean freelance analyst and commentator who works as an aerospace engineer. He graduated from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), NTU, Singapore in 2025. He is also a regular contributor to Taiwan Insight.