On January 3rd, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, discussing an escalating confrontation with Iran, told reporters: “In the coming hours to days, we will unleash Chiang.” The phrase ricocheted across Taiwan's political spectrum. Supporters of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party heard a leash — a dog being set loose. The opposition Kuomintang heard something closer to reverence. Both interpretations, in their own way, missed the point.
To understand why Rubio — a Cuban-American senator from Florida, now America's top diplomat — would reach back seven decades for a Cold War reference when talking about Iran, you have to understand a history that stretches from the missionary halls of 1930s Shanghai to the exile communities of Miami. That history, and what it means for Taiwan today, is what Samuel Hui (許劍虹) has spent years piecing together. （Related： US-Israel Strategic Misalignment Could Shape Trajectory of Iran Conflict, Experts Warn ｜ Latest ）
The Old Republicans and Their Complicated Love
Huiis a Chinese-American writer who has spent more than a decade studying the military and diplomatic history of the Republic of China and its tangled relationship with the United States. He is careful, even-handed, and reluctant to overstate — qualities that make his analysis on this subject worth taking seriously.
“The word ‘unleash' doesn't necessarily imply a dog,” he said. “There used to be a beverage advertisement in America with the slogan ‘Unleash the Power.' Dogs have a very positive image in America anyway. Taiwan doesn't need to read it that way.”
What Rubio's phrase does invoke, Huiargues, is a specific Republican tradition — one that goes back not to the Cold War, but further, to the presidencies of Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover in the late 1920s. When Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government consolidated power in 1928, America was governed by Coolidge; Hoover, who succeeded him, had spent years in China as a mining company representative. He arrived in office with genuine affection for the country and instinctive sympathy for Chiang's government.
But the Republican relationship with China in that era was built on contradictions that Huidescribes with precision. “On one hand, early Republican figures did enormous charitable work in China — adopting orphans, funding missions. On the other hand, they supported the Chinese Exclusion Act.” The impulse was to Americanize China, not to welcome the Chinese into America. They wanted China to become Christian, democratic, and open to American commerce — a vast market, a moral project, and a geostrategic anchor, all at once.
“They hoped the Chinese would stay in China and build it well,” Huisaid flatly. “But not come to America.” Supporting Chiang, in this framework, was never purely altruistic. It was strategic, ideological, and tinged with a paternalism that old Republicans rarely examined.
