On Aug. 23, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for the first time released a public report on the management of its stolen assets. It is an open and honest report that manifests the KMT's willingness to face and tackle the issue.
The reports divides the historical background of the issue into three periods -- the authoritarian period under Chiang Kai-shek (
The period of greatest activity was the transitional period under Lee. Doubling as president and KMT chairman, Lee worked to make the handling of his party's assets transparent and expand the investment scope of party-owned businesses. In addition, faced with competition from a growing opposition party, Lee integrated party assets with political activities and elections.
Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
The KMT's assets drove Taiwan's money politics, eroded the basis for local government elections, corrupted the nature of democratic politics and distorted the distribution of national resources. The KMT's businesses were used to create wide-ranging and tight integration between government, industry and local factions. This turned the party assets into a political and economic monster, a cancer that academics have called an economic equivalent of the 228 Incident.
The KMT's account of its assets sends a few new messages. It is no longer as excessively protective of and attached to its assets as it was under Lee's leadership, and it takes on board criticism of the KMT's accumulation of wealth, if indirectly. This is probably an example of the new leadership style Ma has displayed after moving the party's headquarters from Zhongshan S Road, a major symbol of the authoritarian era.
If the KMT can give up its attachment to the assets, it will no longer have to protect them. Besides, the total value of its party assets is dwindling and will shrink even more. Democratic requirements and demands for fair political competition, the pressure from regular local and national elections, the reality of a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government, and the Control Yuan's investigation into the assets issue have all contributed to a new wave of scrutiny that will mean the end of the KMT's involvement in commerce.
Ma will now have to choose between taking responsibility for terminating the party's assets, or following in the steps of his predecessor and continuing to procrastinate.
I must stress that as long as the KMT holds on to its assets, and as long as the unfair competition between political parties created by these assets continues, Ma will be the target of severe criticism from those demanding the fair disposal of the assets no matter how humbly or aggressively he handles the issue.
Those demanding the return of the KMT's ill-gotten assets are faced with two predicaments. First, Lee's avoidance of any role in the handling of the assets must be addressed. Second, there is almost no research currently being conducted on the party assets.
The first predicament results from Taiwan's changeable political climate. Lee's position on the political spectrum has changed from being "Mr Democracy" into a pro-independence diehard. Whether for strategic reasons or for the sake of other interests, the push to force the return of the KMT's assets has deliberately avoided discussing the relationship between those assets and Taiwan's political development during the Lee era.
The second predicament is that those demanding the return of the assets take a short-term perspective. The reference materials used by the DPP in the pursuit of the KMT's assets over the past decade are based on a study conducted by the Taiwan Research Fund in 1995 and a 2001 party asset report by the Control Yuan, both of which were directed by me.
Most of the information used by the DPP when calling for the return of party assets in various elections over the past decade comes from these two reports.
Excluding the report released by the Control Yuan, it is shocking to consider how little data the DPP has generated on its own over the past six years. The main reason for this is that few are willing to put up the resources necessary to conduct the research while too many treat the issue like a short-term performance for the media.
Ma has now presented a "mid-term" report on the issue. If he can issue a final report soon -- say, within one year -- and if he is willing to return the remaining property to the government or charities, and if the DPP is willing to approach the issue in a non-ideological and informed manner, then the assets issue will die a natural political death.
It has been almost two decades since the campaign to force the return of the KMT's stolen assets began. For more than 7,000 days, my associates and I have been convinced that the final remaining specter of the KMT's party-state system must be buried once and for all if we want a sound democratic and party system. We still believe this can be achieved, and hope that it will be achieved sooner rather than later.
Huang Huang-hsiung is a former Control Yuan member and the founder of Taiwan Research Fund.
Translated by Daniel Cheng
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