|
KMT’s dark history
did not simply fade away
By Charles Snyder
It was good that I was sitting down when I read the Taipei Times’ report on
Premier Wu Den-yih’s (吳敦義) baseless allegation that it was during former
president Lee Teng-hui’s (李登輝) term that the nation’s political culture became
riddled with corruption and gangsters. It is rare that somebody hears such
claptrap.
The pervasive corruption and gangsterism in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT),
since its founding until today, are legion and have been recognized by just
about every academic and historian worth their salt. To deny this is to deny
reality.
The story reminded me of an article I wrote about juvenile delinquency in Taiwan
for the Far Eastern Economic Review after having completed a year’s study at
National Taiwan University’s Stanford Center in 1970. It was titled “East Side
Story” — a play on the US musical West Side Story.
The Taipei newspapers were full of accounts about the hei shehui (黑社會), or black
societies. One of my teachers told me that they were juvenile crime gangs, whose
numbers and activities were soaring and who were becoming an increasing danger
to society. I decided to investigate.
The resulting article was based primarily on an interview with then-National
Police College principal Mei Ko-wang (梅可望), the college’s youth crime
statistics, a 1959 study by the college and the works of a newspaper columnist
whose name I forget. The columnist had waged a print war against the gangs and
the failure of the legislature to act. When the columnist’s war became too
fierce, his column was dropped.
At the time, the KMT authorities were falsely trumpeting to the world that there
was no juvenile delinquency in Taiwan. My article detailed how the government
had been completely inept in dealing with street gangs and how some legislators
publicly accused high-ranking KMT officials of having direct links with some of
the gangs.
The statistics showed that in 1959, when street gangs began to be a problem, 65
percent of gang members were children of Mainlanders, although Mainlanders made
up only 15 percent of the population. The study showed that the vast majority of
gang members were sons and daughters of government officials and who were
considered upper class and middle class. Two-thirds of gang members were
students.
Later statistics showed that the number of youths running afoul of the law
skyrocketed from 933 in 1952, to a whopping 7,383 in 1959. After a brief drop,
the figure jumped to more than 9,000 by 1969, after rising by 12 percent a year
in the late 1960s.
Even before infesting Taiwan with criminality, the KMT was well-known for its
corruption in China. Historians have noted that former president Chiang Kai-shek
(蔣介石) and many other KMT leaders were members of the Triad Society, a Western
term for the anti-imperial nationalists of the 19th century who morphed into
gangs of plain-vicious hoodlums in the 20th century.
The point is not what happened four decades or more ago. The point is that the
same KMT leaders’ kids who were gangsters in their youth — those hundreds or
thousands of kids — are now old enough to be in the top echelon of the KMT
organization and power structure. And they are the people who have perpetuated a
reign of corruption and official criminality in Taiwan for all these years.
Wu should look at himself, his party and his cohorts before making absurd
accusations against Lee and the Democratic Progressive Party. The nation’s
journalists should also start looking at the early police files of the KMT’s
leaders. They might be amazed at what they find.
Charles Snyder is the former Washington correspondent for the Taipei Times.
|
