The Taiwan chapter of Lions Clubs International (LCI) recently fended off a hostile bid to exclude Taiwan from the international service group’s proceedings, a senior club member said yesterday, urging members to remain vigilant against Chinese meddling.
Earlier this month, the representative of LCI Hong Kong asked a meeting of the international chapters in Hawaii to give China control over club affairs in Taiwan, said Chiu Wen-bin (邱文彬), a former international director of LCI Taiwan.
The Taiwan chapter — which was holding a major convention in Tainan at the time — immediately moved to condemn the measure in a unanimous vote, he said, adding that LCI shortly afterward rejected the proposal.
Photo: Lai Hsiao-tung, Taipei Times
When the first Chinese Lions Club was set up in Guangdong Province in 2002, it tried unsuccessfully to force the name “China Taiwan” on the Taiwanese chapter, he said.
China’s second attempt to force the name on Taiwan in 2019 encountered stiff opposition when Japan, South Korea, Australia and several other national chapters joined Taiwan in rejecting it, he said.
Taiwanese members should be on the alert when the local chapter holds its election for international director next month, as Beijing might try to meddle by inserting an agent in the race, he said.
“Lions clubs are opposed to any interference from political or religious groups in their internal affairs,” he said. “We must make sure to elect a candidate who has a clean record under LCI rules and ethics, is of good moral character and possesses Taiwanese consciousness.”
National Tamkang University associate professor of public administration Chen Chih-wei (陳志瑋) said that the LCI incident is emblematic of the role and function of China’s nonprofit groups.
“Nonprofits are treated definitionally as outgrowths of civil society in Taiwan and most other countries,” he said. “However, in China, nonprofit groups function as instruments of state power, despite the rapid growth they have experienced in the past 20 years.”
Although nonprofit groups enjoy limited autonomy in the realm of culture, social welfare and other soft activities, they exist only on condition that they acquiesce to political control, he said.
Wu Rwei-ren (吳叡人), an associate research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Taiwan History, said that Beijing has long made a strategy of interfering with any international group in which Taiwan is a member.
The more a Taiwanese group contributes to an organization, the more Beijing will take steps to undermine it, he said, adding that LCI Taiwan is not alone in feeling threatened.
Institutions can use legal mechanisms to protect themselves, he said, citing for example the group’s charter that binds its representatives to adhere to Taiwan’s position on sovereignty in any dealings with outside groups.
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