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Taiwan Won't Erect Goddess of Democracy Statue After All
By wchung | 06 Jul, 2025
The Goddess of Democracy, the symbol of the Tiananmen Square protests, can’t find a home in Taiwan, according to officials Thursday. A 99-foot tall statue by activist artist Chen Weiming was to have been erected on an island just 2 kilometers (1.25 miles) of the Chinese mainland to commemorate the event.
The plan was put on hold because no “suitable location” could be found for the statue, said an official of Kinmen county which has jurisdiction over the island. “We are still evaluating the project and there is no proper location for it. There is no political pressure involved.”
Kinmen (also known as Quemoy) lies just 2km off the coast of Xiamen in China’s Fujian Province of which the island was historically a prefecture. The island was occupied by the Nationalists during their retreat from the mainland in 1949. Kinmen is just a few hundred meters from islands controlled by China. Kinmen was shelled by the PLA in 1958, setting off a sporadic artillery war that lasted until 1978.
The effort to erect the Goddess of Democracy on Kinmen is being funded by Chen who lives in the US and is currently raising money for the project.
The fact that the project was called off just days after Ma Ying-jeou’s reelection sparked speculation that it was an accommodation to China. As president Ma has pursued a policy of steady economic integration with China. The statue would have been seen by Beijing as a slap given its determined efforts to suppress all reminders of the uprising during which tanks were used to crush the Goddess of Democracy statue which had been built in Tiananmen Square by protesting students out of styrofoam and papier-mache.
“It’s quite possible and it would be very sad if that’s really the case as it shows that life in Taiwan is threatened by authoritarian Chinese communist party,” said Wu’er Kaixi, one of the student leaders of the protests and now a software entrepreneur and political commentator living in Taiwan. “I urge the Kinmen county government not to set this precedent and risk losing Taiwan’s freedom.”
China’s government has blocked dissemination of information about the night of June 4, 1989 in which the PLA killed hundreds, possibly even thousands of pro-democracy protesters who had been occupying Tiananmen Square.
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