A specter is haunting East Asia — at least according to Sydney’s Morning Herald. The ghost is none other than the Generalissimo of World War II and the Chinese Civil War, Chiang Kai-shek. His great-grandson’s election as Taipei’s mayor, seen as a springboard to the presidency, appears to have stirred up long-forgotten echoes of the elder Chiang’s vision of a China reunified not by Beijing’s Communists, but by the Free Chinese on Taiwan.

The election of Chiang Wan-an, the Herald writes, is putting a spotlight back on the elder Chiang. A former president of the Republic of China, Chiang “fled to Taiwan after being defeated by Mao Zedong in a brutal two-decade civil war,” the Herald relates, and moved Free China’s capital to Taipei. The election as mayor of the younger Mr. Chiang, as protests spread across the mainland, is a moment to weigh the Generalissimo’s legacy.