The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday denied a petition filed by the China Youth Corps contesting the Executive Yuan’s recognition of the group as an affiliate of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
The Executive Yuan’s Ill-gotten Assets Settlement Committee in 2018 froze N$5.6 billion (US$170.64 million) in assets under the organization.
The ruling can still be appealed.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
Committee officials said the ruling set a legal precedent for future cases, such as restoring state assets and funds owned by the National Women’s League and the Chinese Association for Relief and Ensuing Service, as the corps denied that it was a KMT affiliate organization.
The Taipei High Administrative Court said that multiple KMT Central Reform Committee resolutions between 1951 and 1952, and a nationwide statement on March 29, 1952, announcing the establishment of the corps, with then-director-general of the Ministry of National Defense’s Political Warfare Bureau Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) tapped to oversee the preparations for the corps establishment, demonstrated ties with the KMT.
The resolution passed by the KMT Central Reform Committee said that the organization, then known as the China Youth Anti-Communist National Salvation Corps, was a government organization and would be led by the KMT, the administrative court said.
The court added that beginning with the first appointments of the corps’ Affairs Consultant Committee members in 1978, all committees included the head of the Executive Yuan’s Youth Development Administration or the party’s Youth Affairs Committee head.
The court cited statements made by Lee Chung-kuei (李鍾桂), corps president from 1987 to 2005, who said he was appointed by Chiang, then-KMT chairman, as proof that the KMT had control over the corps.
The court said that in the latter stages of the corps’ history, the then-KMT government included funding for the organization in its budget.
The court said facilities hosting corps recreational events were obtained at lower than the market price or without compensation, while its headquarters had been built using government funds.
Even if the argument that the corps had severed ties with the KMT in 1999 were credible, its finances and property ownership had not been sorted out, the court said.
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