Marching navy guards in Taiwan salute a statute of late president Chiang Kai-shek in a...

Marching navy guards in Taiwan salute a statute of late president Chiang Kai-shek in a memorial hall bearing his name in Taipei. Chiang and his Nationalist troops retreated to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a Chinese civil war to Mao Zedong's communists. Chiang was held as the island's savior throughout his authoritarian rule in Taiwan before he died in 1975. But Chiang's status and the political clout of his once-powerful family have diminished significantly in the last decade under democratic renaissance in Taiwan. Chiang's surviving family members have asked current Nationalist leaders to transfer his embalmed body to China for burial, but so far the party has not devised plans to do so. Picture taken 20DEC96.