The Cabinet’s Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee yesterday dismissed media reports that the China Youth Corps could face more than 1 million refund requests due to its designation as a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) affiliate, calling it a “phony issue.”
Committee spokeswoman Shih Chin-fang (施錦芳) told reporters in Taipei that it should be easy for the corps to accurately estimate how many people might request refunds, given its abundant employees.
“Instead, the corps, which has long branded itself as an organization in the service of society, carelessly threw around the number 1 million to confuse the public,” Shih said. “I do not think using such inciting rhetoric will be good for the corps’ future operations.”
Photo courtesy of the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee
Shih said Taiwanese are passionate about learning and exercise, and would not flock to the corps for refunds just because it was listed as a KMT affiliate on Tuesday due to the party’s control over its personnel, finances and operations in the past.
Shih made the remarks one day after corps secretariat director Cheng Fei-wen (鄭斐文) was quoted by Chinese-language newspaper the Apple Daily as saying that it could receive more than 1 million requests for refunds for its fitness business alone.
“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), we are required to apply for the committee’s approval for each refund request we receive,” Cheng was quoted as saying. “However, each of the corps’ 13 sports centers on average record about 83,000 visits per month, which means nearly 1.08 million visits nationwide. Potential refund requests could be affected.”
According to the committee’s investigations, in addition to the 13 sports centers, the corps also own 15 youth activity centers and 62 cram schools. The combined income was about NT$2.65 billion last year.
The corps was asked on Wednesday to provide an estimate as soon as possible of the number of refund requests it would receive, Shih said.
“Committee members have reached an agreement to permit operations of the corps’ fitness, learning and youth activity centers, as long as they are deemed legal, to protect the rights of their many customers and employees,” Shih said.
As for people who have purchased fitness, learning, travel or other vouchers from the corps, Shih said they could rest assured that their rights would not be affected in the short run.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods