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.
On May 7, 1971, Henry Kissinger planned his first, ultra-secret mission to China and pondered whether it would be better to meet his Chinese interlocutors “in Pakistan where the Pakistanis would tape the meeting — or in China where the Chinese would do the taping.” After a flicker of thought, he decided to have the Chinese do all the tape recording, translating and transcribing. Fortuitously, historians have several thousand pages of verbatim texts of Dr. Kissinger’s negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Paradoxically, behind the scenes, Chinese stenographers prepared verbatim English language typescripts faster than they could translate and type them
More than 30 years ago when I immigrated to the US, applied for citizenship and took the 100-question civics test, the one part of the naturalization process that left the deepest impression on me was one question on the N-400 form, which asked: “Have you ever been a member of, involved in or in any way associated with any communist or totalitarian party anywhere in the world?” Answering “yes” could lead to the rejection of your application. Some people might try their luck and lie, but if exposed, the consequences could be much worse — a person could be fined,
Xiaomi Corp founder Lei Jun (雷軍) on May 22 made a high-profile announcement, giving online viewers a sneak peek at the company’s first 3-nanometer mobile processor — the Xring O1 chip — and saying it is a breakthrough in China’s chip design history. Although Xiaomi might be capable of designing chips, it lacks the ability to manufacture them. No matter how beautifully planned the blueprints are, if they cannot be mass-produced, they are nothing more than drawings on paper. The truth is that China’s chipmaking efforts are still heavily reliant on the free world — particularly on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Keelung Mayor George Hsieh (謝國樑) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Tuesday last week apologized over allegations that the former director of the city’s Civil Affairs Department had illegally accessed citizens’ data to assist the KMT in its campaign to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) councilors. Given the public discontent with opposition lawmakers’ disruptive behavior in the legislature, passage of unconstitutional legislation and slashing of the central government’s budget, civic groups have launched a massive campaign to recall KMT lawmakers. The KMT has tried to fight back by initiating campaigns to recall DPP lawmakers, but the petition documents they