Time to reclaim KMT assets
There are similarities between Taiwan and Cuba: Both were renounced by their colonizers, Japan and Spain, in the San Francisco Peace Treaty and the Paris Treaty after World War II and the Spanish War.
After the Spanish War, Cuba enjoyed independence from 1902 to 1959. Cuban leader Fidel Castro took power and associated the country with the Soviet Union in 1959 and served as prime minister until 1976 and then president from 1976 to 2008. The communists confiscated US$1.6 billion worth of US property across the island.
With US President Barack Obama’s new gesture of “openness” to Cuba, ordering the restoration of full diplomatic relations, US corporations and individuals are gearing up to pursue their claims on confiscated property against the Cuban government. There are about 6,000 confiscated assets, estimated to be worth more than US$7 billion, to which US firms and citizens hold claims.
Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) government also confiscated a lot of resources in Taiwan to support its civil war with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in China from 1945 to 1949. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was defeated and kicked out by the CCP at the end of the war. At that time, the KMT was a broke, down-and-out refugee in Taiwan.
Soon after it took power in Taiwan, just as the communists did in Cuba, the KMT confiscated Taiwanese resources and tax money, manipulated the currency exchange rate, misappropriated public property into the party and formed the KMT Business Management Committee (KBMC) to manage party-run enterprises and monopolize all industries in Taiwan, turning the KMT into the richest political party in the world.
The KMT one-party dictatorship controlled the Republic of China (ROC) government-in-exile since the day it escaped to Taiwan until 2000, when former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was elected. The interest earned from KBMC assets exceeds US$100 million a year, and the party uses it to lure politicians, bribe voters and trap Taiwan into being an abnormal society.
Prior to 1949, the ROC issued hundreds of millions of dollars in gold-backed bonds and refinanced the foreign debt obligations of previous Chinese governments. However, by 1949, this sovereign debt was all in default in one of the largest sovereign debt defaults of the 20th century, and the bearer bond holders are filing lawsuits against the KMT in US federal courts.
This debt, including accrued interest, now totals hundreds of billions of dollars. ROC law stipulates that the bonds may be repaid when Taiwan and China are unified. However, the law does not state who will repay this debt and what constitutes national reunification. One certainty is that either the KMT/ROC or the People’s Republic of China is liable for these gold bond debts and interests.
The confiscated property in Taiwan was turned into KMT party assets, or “black gold,” and the party uses it to bribe voters, to control business, to manipulate politics and to rule over Taiwan. It became a source of chaos in Taiwan. President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) swore to clean it up while running for president in 2008, but all his promises have proven to be empty. Now New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) is playing the same game.
The best lesson we have learned from the Sunflower movement and Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) tornado is to honestly and transparently face facts and reality. The KMT is a party of China, not of Taiwan, and is still liable for the gold bond default. The party should pledge allegiance to Taiwan and change its name to the Taiwan KMT if it wants to survive in Taiwan. It is time for Taiwanese to claim the property confiscated by the KMT.
John Hsieh
Hayward, California
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