The Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee yesterday consulted historians and former officials at the China Youth Corps at a hearing in Taipei to determine whether the corps is a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) affiliate, but questions surrounding the foundation’s operations remained.
The committee’s investigation report found that the corps — known as the China Youth Anti-Communist National Salvation Corps until 2000 — was founded in 1952 after a resolution by the then-KMT Central Reform Committee in an effort to “depose Chinese communists and resist Soviet Union forces” following the KMT’s defeat in the Chinese Civil War and its retreat to Taiwan.
It organized camps to teach combat skills to young people at high-school level and above under the control of the Ministry of National Defense until 1969, when then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) son, then-minister of national defense Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), took over as premier, the committee said.
Photo: CNA
The budgets granted to the corps by central government agencies were received by the then-KMT Central Committee (now the KMT Central Standing Committee), which distributed the money to the corps, it said.
The corps later underwent a transformation and started organizing a variety of activities — including art classes, hiking and camping groups, and school graduation trips — and was designated a social organization overseen by the Executive Yuan, the committee said.
In 1989, it was registered as a private foundation, it said.
Asked by committee Chairman Wellington Koo (顧立雄) why the then-KMT Central Committee had received the money on behalf of the corps, corps deputy chief executive Cheng Fei-wen (鄭斐文) said he did not know.
Koo asked Chinese Cultural University history professor Tung Pao-cheng (董保城) whether the corps’ “instantaneous” transition from a government agency to a social organization, and later to a foundation, ran counter to social justice, since all its resources came from the central government.
Tung replied that during the Martial Law era, people were banned from forming groups and so the corps was monitored by the Executive Yuan.
After the Civil Associations Act (人民團體法) was passed in 1989, the corps was promptly registered as a foundation because it met all the qualifications, Tung said.
Koo asked former corps secretariat director Chao Ling-cheng (趙令正) why a number of members have doubled as presidents of education and cultural firms and foundations established by the corps.
Saying that the then-KMT government required all people aged between 16 and 25 to join the corps, he asked Chao why the corps’ size has shrunk to just 100 members.
Chao could not answer either question, saying the issues were not within his purview.
Former Academia Historica secretary-general Chen Li-wen (陳立文) said that she did not know whether the corps had returned the capital granted to it by the central government, but, as far as she knew, the corps used the majority of its funds on its work and organizing youth activities.
Koo said in an interview during an afternoon break that although information on how the corps acquired its funds was insufficient, the issue should not be dropped just because the corps was formed during the party-state era.
The committee is to focus its efforts to trace the cash flow to the corps between 1952 and 1969 by requesting more data from the Ministry of National Defense, he said.
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