The two recent gas explosion disasters have unexpectedly brought the country’s history as a one-party state back into the limelight, and along with it a slogan popular among some young activists which says that the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) downfall is the key to securing a better future. Although the dictum might be an overstatement or a naive response to the country’s political quagmire, it captures the younger generation’s frustration with the residue of the nation’s authoritarian past.
Shin Shin Natural Gas Co — the company accused of shrugging its shoulders at a natural gas leak that is suspected to have led to an explosion last week in a third-floor apartment in Taipei’s Sindian District (新店) that killed two people and injured 13 — is one of 16 natural gas companies that the Veterans Affairs Council has invested in.
The blast occurred shortly after the Legislative Yuan’s Budget Center released a report denouncing the Vocational Training Center for turning 27 companies it holds shares of into homes for “fat cats.” More than 13 of these firms have retired high-ranking military officers as chairmen and CEOs, instead of gas-related professionals, the report said, adding that seven officers had “seamlessly” assumed chairmanships the day they retired from the military.
What the Vocational Training Center did not reveal is that of the 16 natural gas corporations it has investments in — a near monopoly, as the 16 account for almost two-thirds of the nation’s 25 natural gas companies — seven are chaired by private shareholders who are in one way or another related to the KMT.
To name a few: Shin Shin is chaired by former KMT Central Standing Committee member Chen Ho-chia (陳何家); Chu Kuen-tu (朱坤塗), the chairman of Shin Chang, Shin Nan and Shin Hsiung, is the head of the advisers’ team at the KMT’s Hsinchu office; Greater Tainan Natural Gas Co (previously called Shin Ying) is headed by Kao Yu-jen (高育仁), a former KMT legislator and father-in-law of New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫).
The petrochemical sector — which has come under scrutiny due to the gas pipeline blasts in Greater Kaohsiung on July 31 and Aug. 1 that killed 30 and injured hundreds — is no less linked with the party, which became heavily involved in the sector in the 1970s.
In the 1960s, Taiwan was exporting processed plastic and textile products, and importing intermediate petrochemical materials from Japan and the US. It evolved its domestic petrochemical industry after the first naphtha cracker was built in 1968. The sector’s expansion involved state and private investments, with the latter controlled mainly by KMT capital. Other private shareholders, though not part of the KMT, had to form a symbiotic relationship with the party.
Hsu Jie-lin (許介麟), an academic specializing in Taiwan’s politico-economic history, said that once the midstream petrochemical industry became protected by the economic policies of the KMT government in the 1980s, the benefits for state-run CPC Corp, Taiwan — the upstream business — would sometimes be sacrificed to subsidize the midstream infiltrated by KMT capital.
The veneer of the KMT’s image as an ordinary political party was marred recently by another incident — unrelated to the explosions — in which Singfor Life Insurance Co Ltd, unable to stem its financial losses, was placed under government receivership by the Financial Supervisory Commission, which announced the move on Tuesday last week. The insurance company was one of the KMT’s assets until 2006 and the party in 2000 used insurance packages as an incentive for members to pay party fees. More than 300,000 of the firm’s 520,000 policyholders are KMT members.
The catchphrase uttered by some young people calling for the party to be brought down might be naive, but it illustrates how they feel about the ingrained, ubiquitous existence of the former party-state that continues to cast a long shadow over the nation’s political scene and society.
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