A suggestion by a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) member that the National Palace Museum’s holdings belong to the party, and therefore its ticket revenues should go to the party, has stirred up a hornets’ nest and triggered criticism from government officials and others.
Chen Li-hsu (陳麗旭), a Tainan delegate to the KMT’s National Congress on Sunday, said that since the Republic of China’s government took major treasures that had belonged to the National Palace Museum in Beijing with it when it went into exile, those items actually belonged to the KMT.
She called on party headquarters to demand their return and for the museum’s ticket money to be turned over to the party as well.
Photo: Pan Shao-tang, Taipei Times
The the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee yesterday said that it was “disappointing to see some people still cling to past authoritarian mindsets, believing the KMT owns all the nation’s treasures.”
“During the communist rebellion and the civil war period, the KMT took advantage of the one-party state to contravene the law and devise ways to legitimize its illegal actions. The KMT acquired properties and assets that belonged to the nation and its citizens, amassing a vast wealth that it then controlled,” the committee said in a statement.
“National treasures are not the same as treasures of a political party,” it said.
Pressed by reporters yesterday, KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) said the proposal was the personal viewpoint of a party delegate and the idea was not discussed during the congress.
However, former KMT chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) told reporters that he saw Chen’s suggestion as a call to identify with the Republic of China (ROC).
“Of course the treasures of the National Palace Museum belong to Republic of China,” Chu said.
Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) said that “all of the nation’s belongings belong to all 23 million citizens, not to any one party.”
In a Facebook post, Taiwan Statebuilding Party Legislator Chen Po-wei (陳柏惟) raised the possibility that at least one KMT member might have a claim on the museum’s treasures.
When the ROC was founded, the provisional government in Nanjing headed by Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙) reached an agreement with its rival, the Beiyang government in Beijing of warlord general Yuan Shi-kai (袁世凱), for the national treasures left by the Qing Dynasty to be housed in the Forbidden City, but when warlord Feng Yu-hsiang (馮玉祥) overthrew the Beiyang government, everyone living in the Forbidden City and its contents were kicked out, he wrote.
“If Taiwan were ever to return these treasures, it would be to the Qing emperors’ descendants of the Manchu clan Aisin Gioro, among whom the most prominent is [former KMT secretary-general] King Pu-tsung (金溥聰),” he wrote.
Additional reporting by Chen Chien-chih, Huang Mei-chu and Jason Pan
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
DEFENDING DEMOCRACY: Taiwan shares the same values as those that fought in WWII, and nations must unite to halt the expansion of a new authoritarian bloc, Lai said The government yesterday held a commemoration ceremony for Victory in Europe (V-E) Day, joining the rest of the world for the first time to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. Taiwan honoring V-E Day signifies “our growing connections with the international community,” President William Lai (賴清德) said at a reception in Taipei on the 80th anniversary of V-E Day. One of the major lessons of World War II is that “authoritarianism and aggression lead only to slaughter, tragedy and greater inequality,” Lai said. Even more importantly, the war also taught people that “those who cherish peace cannot
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
RSS