【经济学人】台湾国民党丨2016.12.17丨总第766期

THE Kuomintang (KMT) was once reputed to be among the world’s richest political parties. Its leaders fled mainland China in 1949 with shiploads of loot, including an estimated 138 tonnes of gold and the finest treasures of Beijing’s Forbidden City (see picture). The party then absorbed state property and other government assets that had been handed over by Taiwan’s departing Japanese colonial administrators in 1945. During the Kuomintang’s long single-party rule, which lasted until 1987, it amassed a vast business empire, complete with banks and television stations. So the fact that it is laying off 428 of its 738 employees for lack of money to pay them is, to say the least, a reversal.

国民党曾被称为是全世界最富有政党之一，因为1949年国民党领导人从大陆逃到台湾，携卷了成船的掠夺品，据估计其中包括138公吨的金子和紫禁城中价值连城的珠宝（见图）。之后，国民党又吸收了于1945年投降离开台湾的日本殖民政府管理层移交的政府财产和相关财富。直到1987年，台湾都由国民党一党当政，在这期间，他们开创了涉及银行和电视台的庞大商业帝国。所以，当他们因为资金不足以支付薪水而辞退了428名工作人员的时候，人们的确看到了他们的倒退。

At elections in January the independence-minded Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won a majority in Taiwan’s parliament for the first time, as well as the presidency. The DPP, naturally, thinks the KMT’s wealth gives it an unfair advantage in elections. Its staff, before the lay-offs, was five times bigger than the DPP’s. Moreover, the DPP considers the KMT’s wealth illegitimate, in that it stems from the party’s unfettered authority and the blurring of state and party assets during Taiwan’s 40-year dictatorship. Most of the KMT’s assets, the DPP believes, should be returned to the state, or in some cases to people or companies from which they were expropriated.

在一月的台湾大选中，有独立思想的民进党第一次赢得了议会的多数支持，同时也成为了新一届的领导团体。当然，民进党认为是国民党的财富让选举不公平但又是他们的优势。在裁员之前，国民党的工作人员是民进党的五倍，此外，民进党认为国民党的财产是非法的，因为国民党在台湾长达40年的独裁统治期间，利用党派的自由权利榨取了大量资金，从而政府和党派财产间的关系变得模糊不清。 （期待您的翻译，明天会有针对这句话的读者试译详解哟~）

• stem from: [stem] 出于，来自

• unfettered: [ʌn'fetəd] adj.自由的，不受限的

In July the DPP passed a law that assumes that all the KMT’s property is ill-gotten, bar membership fees, donations and the funding political parties receive from the government. The law allows the government to freeze the KMT’s assets while a committee assesses whether the party is the rightful owner, and to seize them if it judges otherwise. The KMT will only be able to reclaim assets it can prove it obtained legitimately.

7月，民进党通过一项法律，判定国民党所有的资金都不正当并且禁止任何形式的从政府接受资金的行为（包括党费，捐赠和资助政党）。法律还允许政府在委员会调查国民党是否合法拥有资金期间冻结国民党的资金，如果不合法的话，有权直接没收。国民党只有在证明自己有合法拥有权之后才能收回这些资金。

In late November the committee decided that the KMT should hand over two big holding companies, worth NT$15.6bn ($490m). One of them owns the party’s headquarters. In September, it had already frozen the party’s bank accounts, after KMT officials attempted to withdraw NT$520m. To pay staff in September and October, the KMT’s leader, Hung Hsiu-chu, was forced to take a personal loan of NT$90m. Half came from the ageing mother of Terry Gou, who heads Foxconn, the world’s largest contract manufacturer of electronic goods (it makes iPhones, among other things ) and half from an anonymous donor. The KMT, which argues that the committee is unconstitutional, found itself in the humiliating position of begging it to release some funds so that the party could pay taxes, among other things.

十一月下旬，委员会决定让国民党交出两家市值为156亿新台币（即4.9亿美元）的大型控股公司。其中一家拥有国民党的指挥权。在九月，在国民党官员试图撤回5.2亿新台币时，国民党的银行账户已经被冻结了。为了支付员工九月和十月的工资，国民党领袖洪秀柱被迫向银行私人贷款9000万新台币，一半来自于郭台铭年迈的母亲，郭台铭是世界上最大的电子产品承包制作商富士康的负责人（它生产苹果手机，和其他产品），另一半则是匿名捐赠。国民党认为该委员会的做法是违反宪法的，在它乞求委员会释放一些资金使国民党党可以交税和支付其他费用时，他们发现自己站在了屈辱的立场上。

• among other things：除了别的之外;

At the end of November the committee relinquished just enough money to allow the KMT to provide the severance pay required to lay off more than half its staff. The party has launched a frantic fund-raising drive among its 300,000-odd members. It says the DPP is on a politically motivated “witch hunt”; it is attempting to have the confiscations overturned in the courts.

十一月底，该委员会拿出了恰好足够让国民党支付刚刚裁掉过半员工的遣散费。国民党在其30万多名党员之中发起了疯狂的筹款活动。据说，民进党是有政治动机的“迫害”；他们正试图让法院退回国民党征收到的资金。

But even the KMT concedes that its wealth is doing it more harm than good and that it needs to make amends for the way it enriched itself. A spokesman says it would consider making donations to charity as a form of restitution. Polling suggests that a little over half of Taiwanese see the new law as justified; only a third see it as a political ploy.

但是，即使国民党承认正用自己资产进行的事情是弊大于利，而且需要补偿其谋取财富方式带来的损失。一位发言人表示，会考虑将向慈善机构捐款作为一种补偿方式。民意调查显示，约有一半以上的台湾人认为新的法律是正当的；只有三分之一认为这是一个政治策略。