Chiang Kai-shek’s great-grandson’s visit to Communist China next week will come at what the Confucian sages might call a most auspicious — or, from another point of view, inauspicious —  moment. The mainland is tense. The economy is faltering. The financial “tremors” come, the Times reports, as the Chinese are “contending with slowing businesses and shrinking personal fortunes.” Analysts warn of a “Lehman Moment.” 

The bet by the communist tyranny has been that its subjects would tolerate the heavy hand of the regime provided it led to rising prosperity. That quo of the economic quid is now in doubt, reminding of the principle that a successful economy is not possible without unfettered political liberty as well as economic liberty. They are both required, we often note. The way to think of them is as the warp and woof of the fabric of freedom.

Today’s crisis in China can be traced, economist Mickey Levy writes in the Wall Street Journal, to 2012, when President Xi “began clamping down on free enterprise,” supposing that “China’s socialist ideals were consistent with sustained economic health.” Mr. Xi had it backwards, Mr. Levy writes, and now “the bill is coming due” for “Beijing’s rejection of free enterprise in favor of communist ideals.” He calls it “economic payback time.”

The result is a kind of whiplash for mainland Chinese, for whom over the past 40 years, “China’s economy seemed like,” the Times reports, “an unstoppable force, the engine behind the country’s rise to a global superpower.” Yet today “the economy is now plagued by a series of crises,” the Times says, including what looks like a real estate bubble fueled by “excessive borrowing” — a reminder that the run-up in prices is denominated in fiat money. 

This is a moment to remember Sun Yat-sen. The “crisis of confidence” has left China “verging on despair,” the Times reckons. It is Sun Yat-sen, the pioneer of Chinese democracy — and an occasional  correspondent of The New York Sun — who helped topple the Manchu dynasty and launch a republic. He called for “government by the people, of the people and for the people,” reasoning “I believe in this since I believe in the Chinese people.”

Sun Yat-sen’s successor, Chiang Kai-shek, incubated these principles after Mao’s victory in China’s civil war forced the retreat of the republic to Taiwan. In time, Sun’s vision led to a multi-party democracy and a vibrant economy. Chiang dubbed Taiwan a “citadel of freedom,” and hewed to his vision of a reunified China, ruled not by the Communists but by the freely elected Legislative Yuan, the governing body created by Sun Yat-sen.

The Generalissimo died in 1975, having, until the end, urged his countrymen to remember “the sacred task” of “recovering the mainland.” That aim fell by the wayside after Free China lost its seat at the United Nations, and then President Carter recognized the Communist government. Chiang’s KMT party evolved toward a more accommodating posture toward the mainland. Its candidate for president in 2024 also downplays talk of formal independence. 

Think of this past as prologue as the mayor of the capital of the Republic of China, Chiang Wan-an, a rising star in the republic’s politics, travels to the mainland. It is tempting to stress the historical resonance of the visit — a journey the mayor’s great-grandfather hoped to undertake by force of arms. Yet the younger Mr. Chiang is a lawyer, not a soldier. He worked in venture capital at Palo Alto before taking up a career in politics. He has been circumspect about his famous forbear. 

Even so, the symbolism of Mr. Chiang’s visit is all the more striking in light of the liberty principles that the island democracy has come to represent. If Chiang Kai-shek’s vision of a reunified China is ever to be fulfilled, it is more likely to be achieved by the power of these ideas. During his trip Mr. Chiang has the chance to stress how on Taiwan, these ideas led to popular rule, civil liberties, open elections, and a free-market economy that’s thriving.