Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA) has changed its policy on China and Taiwan for over a decade

SAN FRANCISCO — Since its establishment 175 years ago, the San Francisco Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA) has witnessed the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the First and Second World Wars, the founding of Republic of China (ROC, Taiwan) and the People's Republic of China (China).

CCBA was once loyal to the Qing Dynasty and later devoted to overthrowing the Qing government. From 1911 to May 26, 2013, CCBA had a flag display in the assembly hall of its headquarters for 102 years to show their support to the ROC government.

Major changes at the CCBA took place 11 years ago. As some members of the Board of Directors have had influences on their own family associations to show their support to China and been able to switch to displaying the 5-Star Red Flag instead of the long tradition Blue Sky-White Sun-Red Field national flag of ROC. CCBA also followed to remove the national flag of ROC, but there has been no 5-Star Red Flag displayed at its assembly hall.

The removal of the 5-Star Red Flag at CCBA became one of the most controversial incidents in the history of the CCBA in recent decades in which lawsuits were filed. There were warning signs occurring among the board members at CCBA before the action of removing the national flag of ROC.

There are 55 members of the Board of Directors at CCBA who are elected by seven member benevolent associations whose presidents make up the 7-member Board of Presidents at the CCBA. Seven members of the Board of Presidents would rotate every two months to become the Presiding President as the top leader of the CCBA during those two months.

The Hoy Sun Ning Yung Benevolent Association, which has the most members among the seven family associations, is assigned with 27 seats on the general Board of Directors in CCBA. The Sue Hing Benevolent Association, which is the second largest association, is assigned with eight seats. Six seats are assigned for the Hop Wo Benevolent Association, five seats for Yeong Wo Benevolent Association, three seats for Sam Yup Benevolent Association, and one seat for Yan Wo Benevolent Association.

Among the seven benevolent associations, Yan Wo, which has fewest members, took the lead to remove the national flag of ROC and replace it with the 5-Star Red Flag. More family associations have followed the trend led by the Yan Wo Benevolent Association for the past decade.

As of today, only two associations, Sue Hing and Hop Wo, are among the seven CCBA member associations still having their national flags of ROC displayed at their headquarters. Some family associations in San Francisco Chinatown have decided not to display any national flags of both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

At a regular monthly meeting on May 28, 2011, shortly before the meeting ended, a CCBA board member proposed a resolution to take down the plaque, "Unite to Serve the Country", on the wall which was placed under the portrait of Dr. Sun Yat-sen in the center of the CCBA assembly hall on the grounds that the plague was too political and out of the trend.

The "Unite to Serve the Country" plaque was a gift in April 1972 from Chiang Zhongzheng, then President of the Republic of China, to "Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association in the United States and the Overseas Chinese Anti-Communist Association".

The board member who introduced the resolution to remove the plaque emphasized that the Overseas Chinese Anti-Communist Association has long existed in name only and it was not appropriate to hang the plaque in CCBA.

A total of 30 board members attended the meeting. Some board members decided to leave earlier before the meeting ended. As a result, the resolution was passed by board members in raising their hands without objection.

Ted Win Wong (黄榮達), a board member representing Hoy Sun Ning Yung Benevolent Association, immediately removed the plaque from the wall. Roger Louie, who was the Presiding President of CCBA at the time, chaired the monthly meeting.

Sometime after the monthly meeting, a number of board members were not happy with the resolution and protested that the hasty voting on the resolution had violated CCBA's bylaws due to some board members who went to the bathroom and missed the vote count.

Almost two years later on May 25, 2013, Chuwen Huang (黃楚民) from the Hoy Sun Ning Yung Benevolent Association introduced a resolution to remove the national flag of ROC from the assembly hall at CCBA. After a heated debate, Ted Wing Wong as Presiding President of CCBA declared an immediate vote on the removal of the ROC flag.

With 42 of 47 members of the Board of Directors in attendance voting, the board in the end voted 21 to 20 with one abstention in favor of the resolution to remove the flag.

Once the resolution was passed, Nansheng Yuan (袁南生), the Consul General of the People's Republic of China in San Francisco, made history in June of the same year to become the first diplomatic official walking into CCBA.

The resolution of removing the national flag of ROC also triggered lawsuits filed by three CCBA board members as plaintiffs, Charles Chow, Yiu Ting Cheung and Chung Lo Kwan who represented the Sue Hing Benevolent Association to sue CCBA and individual defendants Ted Wing Wong and Roger Louie.

The plaintiffs demanded in the lawsuit to have the flag resolution be overturned because of insufficient votes in favor of removing the ROC flag.

After three years of litigation and a 5-day bench trial, the San Francisco Superior Court ruled that the flag resolution was invalid.

The Court found that there were 21 votes in favor of the flag motion and missed one vote to meet CCBA's bylaws to have more than 50% of the meeting attendee votes to pass any resolutions. In that meeting for the flag motion vote, 47 directors signed in and 43 ballots were handed out. In order to pass, the flag motion needed to receive at least 22 votes. "As a result, the Flag Motion did not pass," the Court ruled.

The California Court of Appeal affirmed the judgement by the State Court in San Francisco on February 2, 2019 after defendants filed an appeal.

The CCBA has witnessed the changes of Chinatown for the past 175 years. Public safety has always been CCBA’s one of the top priorities.

Decades ago, the CCBA honored dedicated police officers from the Central Police Station for keeping Chinatown safe.

The Presiding President swearing-in ceremony is held every two months as a long tradition of CCBA. The ceremony was kept low-key in the old days. Today the ceremony has become a grand affair with lion and dragon dances, state and city government officials were invited to attend. The ceremony would be extended to a restaurant with a banquet to celebrate. On the same day, congratulatory advertisements are published in the Chinese-language newspapers.

The bylaws of CCBA had once been controversial. It was originally composed of six benevolent associations and was called Six Companies. The Siu Hing Benevolent Association joined later and became CCBA's 7th member association.

Chinese American historian Him Mark Lai, who belonged to the Fa Yuan Benevolent Association, once revealed that Fa Yuan intended to join the CCBA but was rejected, and filed lawsuits twice in the early days. The association still failed to get into the CCBA and finally gave up on their plan. "It is estimated that the number of Chinese immigrants from Fa Yuan [county] in Guangdong Province far exceeds that of the immigrants from Taishan [county]," Lai said prior to his passing in 2009.

Chinese benevolent associations were formed in major metro cities across the nation and the globe where Chinese immigrants reside, even in the small island countries in the Indian Ocean.

In the early years, the CCBA in San Francisco took a lead in coordinating the consolidated associations nationwide. Today, they have independently operated with different bylaws.

The CCBA in San Francisco has carried on its tradition to rotate Presiding President leadership every two months as the top leader. However, the opportunities for each member association to gain that leadership position have not been equal.

27 members from the Hoy Sun Ning Yung Benevolent Association are assigned sitting on the CCBA's Board of Directors, and its annually-elected President is able to serve as the Presiding President for three times in a calendar year. While presidents of other six member associations need to wait for two years to be rotated as the Presiding President of CCBA.