The rise at Free China’s capital of the great-grandson of Chiang Kai-shek takes place at a moment when the tyrants at the communist capital are struggling to contain a wave of protesters for “freedom” on the mainland. The moment echoes the hopes of the elder Chiang — “Project National Glory.” It is the reunification of China under not a “people’s” congress at Beijing but a free, multi-party legislature based, for the moment, at Taipei.

It would be a mistake to make too much of the accession of Chiang Wan-an as Taipei’s mayor. But also too little. The job is seen by the LA Times as a “stepping stone to the presidency.” The scion of Mao Zedong’s foe, Chiang Kai-shek, the Times reckons, is a “rising star” poised to “refurbish” the image of Chiang’s nationalist party, the Kuomintang, which, defeated in war, seated the government at Taipei, where Mr. Chiang was elected.

The dream of restoring the Republic of China across the full expanse of the Middle Kingdom was cherished by Chiang Kai-shek up until his death in 1975, and not abandoned by Taiwan until 1990. The free republic’s legislature, the Yuan, retained hundreds of seats representing electoral districts on the mainland until the early 1990s. The KMT party’s charter still maintains Chiang’s call for reunification. 

The younger Chiang’s career suggests the prospect of a political dynasty and evokes the stuff of legend. It wasn’t until he was a teenager that, Bloomberg reports, “his father sat him down to tell him about his heritage” as the great-grandson of the Generalissimo and President of China’s Republic who, allied with America, fought to hold at bay Chairman Mao’s Communists — and the Empire of Japan — and maintain a free China.

The 43-year-old Mr. Chiang was pursuing a career as a corporate lawyer in America only to have a change of heart when he saw “a struggling KMT” and entered politics to, Bloomberg reports, “commemorate ancestors” and “show devotion to the country.” Mr. Chiang also spoke up in defense of Taiwan’s independence in response to an astounding gaffe by Elon Musk suggesting that Free China settle for a Hong Kong-like status under Beijing.

“There’s no need to even think about such a proposal,” Mr. Chiang averred in a debate for the Taipei mayoralty. “I’ll definitely oppose it to the end,” he said. While Mr. Chiang has by no means embraced his great-grandfather’s martial posture toward Beijing — the success of the KMT in recent elections is seen as an endorsement of their more conciliatory posture — his call is “to uphold the dignity of the Republic of China.” 

Mr. Chiang’s election as mayor “could produce cascading effects,” says the head of the Global Taiwan Institute, Russell Hsiao, impacting “the situation across the Taiwan Strait.” That impact takes on a deeper resonance with the wave of protest across the mainland — “the most widespread show of opposition to the ruling party in decades,” the AP reports, calling the spreading uproar “a rare direct challenge to the ruling Communist Party.” 

One China watcher tells us he “wouldn’t get carried away” by the unrest, and not to “confuse widespread protests with deep commitment to resistance.” Yet the Communist Party “has lost control of messaging & communications tools.” He notes “the whole internet is alive, and everything from email to faxes to Shutterfly type apps are being used.” He is alert to the “impact on business” if the unrest continues or even grows.

This is the context in which, across the Strait of Taiwan, a new leader has emerged with historic ties to the man who sought to reunify China under the republic forged by the pioneer of Chinese democracy, Sun Yat-sen. That would mark the vindication of Sun’s prediction in 1913, writing in The New York Sun, that one day the “tyrant of Pekin will hurry from the country quite as ignominiously as ever a culprit left his former haunts.”