The National Women’s League yesterday denied that it was an affiliate of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and that it exploited its connection to the party to secure financial aid and tax privileges, while the KMT accused the government of fabricating evidence in a bid to prove the alleged links.
In an investigation of possible connections between the league and the KMT during the KMT’s one-party rule, the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee highlighted the predominantly KMT leadership of the league, the use of KMT government power to finance it and close cooperation between the two entities.
The league was led by wives of KMT dignitaries, most notably Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) wife Soong Mayling (宋美齡), while the KMT government diverted revenue from a military surcharge and other taxes to the league, as well as granting it special subsidies and tax exemption privileges, a committee report said.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
The league collaborated with the KMT and in 1957 the then-Kaohsiung County chapter of the KMT asked the league to campaign for it in an election, suggesting a strong link between the party and the group, the report said.
Lawyer Hsu Lu-ping (徐履冰), a representative of the league, said the report was biased and that evidence in favor of the league’s position was excluded.
Although the committee cited a German political party assets law, which defines affiliates as organizations whose purpose is to solidify the party’s power, the committee did not apply this definition to the league and ignored the fact that the league had contributed nothing to the KMT’s political power, Hsu said at a public hearing yesterday.
“According to the German experience, the league is definitely not an affiliate of a political party,” Hsu said.
There is no evidence that Soong followed the KMT’s orders, while her dominant leadership style, which the committee mentioned repeatedly, is irrelevant to establishing there was a connection between the KMT and the league, Hsu said.
The league’s collection of a military surcharge and other taxes were legally grounded, and the revenue distribution was managed by the Importers and Exporters Association, not the government or the KMT, lawyer Shen Cheng-hsiung (沈政雄) said.
The league’s purpose was to build military housing and take care of members of the military and their families, not consolidating the KMT’s status, Shen said.
According to the Act Governing the Handling of Ill-gotten Properties by Political Parties and Their Affiliate Organizations (政黨及其附隨組織不當取得財產處理條例), a necessary condition to establish affiliation between a political party and a subgroup is that the party gives up control of an affiliated organization without receiving proportional payment, but the committee did not find any such evidence in the league’s case, KMT Administration Committee deputy director Lee Fu-hsuan (李福軒) said.
“The committee needs, at the very least, to understand the act correctly if it wants to incriminate somebody, but there is not even a single mention about [proportional payment] in its report,” Lee said.
Soong held only a peripheral position in the KMT and the league operated independently of the party, Lee said.
Lee said the committee had fabricated evidence, with a previous report misquoting a document signed by Chiang to suggest that the KMT had used government power to fund the league.
The complete abstract of the document indicated that Chiang was actually rejecting the budget proposal, Lee said.
The committee misquoted data to serve its purposes and was not willing to make corrections, he said.
In related news, the KMT said it would file an administrative lawsuit against the committee over its order that the KMT should pay NT$864.88 million (US$28.48 million) for selling properties appropriated from the Japanese colonial government.
The payment was due on Monday and failure to meet the deadline could result in the freezing of assets and detention of the KMT chairperson, who acts as the party’s legal representative.
The assets committee said it would transfer the case to the Administrative Enforcement Agency to secure payment.
The KMT would request the assets committee to reconfirm the order before filing an appeal, KMT Administration Committee director Chiu Da-chan (邱大展) said.
“The KMT has difficulties paying salaries. How can it pay such an amount?” Chiu said.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS