The China Youth Corps directly benefited from the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) autocratic rule, which violates the essence of a political party, as well as the rule of law, the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee said in a report on Tuesday.
The corps was involved in the KMT affairs and even “drafted” young people studying abroad to serve as the party’s overseas staff from 1952 to 1969, when it was a directly subordinate to the Ministry of the National Defense (MND), the committee said.
Following its disassociation from the MND, the corps was not registered until 1989 and enjoyed a “quasi-governmental organization” status due to the “political needs” of the KMT, it said.
During this time, the corps continued to benefit from MND resources, and all levels of government facilitated its activities and gave it subsidies, the committee said.
The corps, with the support of the KMT, established a “heavy presence” within schools on the premise of providing services or hosting educational or recreational events, but in fact these organizations helped the party suppress student movements and monitor student activities.
The corps’ involvement in school monitoring efforts, such as the Spring Winds project, from 1971 until the lifting of martial law in 1987, shows that it played a part in the KMT’s oppressive regime, the committee said.
The Spring Winds project was launched to monitor a surge in student activism during a movement to protect the Diaoyutai (釣魚台) Islands in parallel to rising anti-government student activism in South Korea at the time.
The committee accused the corps of illegally occupying national land and a Taipei City Government-owned plot in the Jiantan Borough (劍潭) until 1993, when it signed a lease contract.
It also accused the corps’ Miaoli County branch of illegally occupying county-owned land until the Miaoli County Government sold it to the corps.
The corps, using the Chinese Youths Culture Foundation as a front, purchased Kinmen County-owned land to serve as its Kinmen Youth Activity Center, the committee said, adding that there were also reports of ancestral land being occupied by the military, before being sold to the corps by the county government.
The corps as of 2020 had assets totaling NT$5.18 billion (US$175.4 million at the current exchange rate), only 20 percent more than the NT$4.1 billion in 1993, which should be adjusted for inflation and currency exchange rates, the committee said.
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