KMT deal ethically dubious
In 2018, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) signed a contract with National Chengchi University (NCCU) to digitize its archive of 300,000 documents about the party’s history.
The digital cache was officially launched on Tuesday.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), who were on hand to unveil the archive, said that as the KMT’s history is linked with that of the Republic of China (ROC), the archives are an important national asset.
NCCU vice president Wang Wen-chieh (王文杰) said that the KMT Culture and Communications Committee’s Party History Institute has been collecting documents for 91 years, adding that these documents reflect the party’s organizational establishment and evolution, along with the political, economic, educational and other spheres of the ROC over a long period.
As such, the archives are an indispensable resource for researching modern and contemporary history, he said.
Be that as it may, Ma and Chu believe that the history of the KMT equals the history of the founding and building of the ROC, and that at least the archival materials from the years of authoritarian rule under former presidents Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) should belong to the state and be “nationalized.”
The question is how could the NCCU sign a contract with the KMT to use the university’s administrative resources as the party’s historical repository? How much money was involved in the contract? Was it lawful and reasonable? Was it approved by the university’s board of directors and student association? The NCCU’s human and material resources belong to the state, so does the deal contravene the division between party and state, as the KMT enjoys exclusive treatment? Can anyone who has the money sign a contract with NCCU to rent state-owned premises and equipment to store their documents?
The KMT is a big family business, so even if there is no suitable place to store its archives, does it really have to choose NCCU? Would it not have been less questionable to rent a building from a private enterprise or other organization? Would that not have been a less controversial option?
Chi An-hsiu
Taipei
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