FREE ESSAY ON CULTURAL POLICY IN TAIWAN

CULTURAL POLICY IN TAIWAN

Cultural Policy in Taiwan
Taiwan has its own very special government system. On the central government level
(relevant to the federal government), there are both president and premier in      ?     
                                                                                         
                                                                                         
                                                                                         
                                                                                         
                                                                                         
                                                                                         
                                                                                         
                                                                                         
                                                                                         
                                                                                         
                                                                                         
                       information of a system of appointment of Board members or the
chairpersons are written anywhere on the Council's both English and Chinese version of
website, and the website of the Executive Yuan.
The mandate or guideline (in their own words) of the Council aims to provide a wide range
of services, including the preservation of heritage and traditional culture, cultivating
arts and culture activities, supporting arts in the community and artists, promoting
music, dance, drama, and fine arts, and a lot more. The Council also subsidizes several
arts institutions (Taiwanese crown corporations), with the most important ones such as
National Symphony Organization, National Experimental Symphony, National Experimental
Chorus, National Taiwan Academy of the Dramatic Arts National Opera Troupe, and Combined
Arts Troupe. 
All these above mentioned functions of the Council were conducted with a single Council
body and decided by the chairperson and the Board. The Council is also asked to promote
Taiwanese/Chinese culture internationally, and set up cultural divisions overseas.
Although Taiwan is not a very big place geographically, it does have a large population
(about 230 million people). Keeping all these functions in one body is not very keeping
all the functions working effectively. As we discussed in class, some of the functions in
the Council's guideline can be separated to be mandates for setting up separate
department in a government (of any level), such as heritage preservation, cultural
administrative body and a separate granting agency, such as in Canada, on the federal
level of arts and culture, there are Department of Canadian Heritage, Ministry of
Canadian Heritage, and the a separate arts granting body, the Canada Council for the
Arts. The Taiwanese Council for Cultural Affairs is aware of this, so the Council has
been promised recently in the most recent national elections that it is going to evolve
into the Ministry of Culture under the Executive Yuan, and a separate arts granting
agency, National Culture and Arts Foundation, was established in January 1996.
The funding source of the Foundation came from both public budget and private donation.
As from the public, upon its establishment, the Foundation was established with the goal
of being an arts granting agency that operate with the minimum financial support for the
government annually. The objective of the initiation fund is planned to be reached in a
ten-year period, to be raised from the private donation and budgets promised from its
supervising department, the Council for the Cultural Affairs. The government aimed to
gradually withdraw its financial commitment to the Foundation and later the Foundation
should mainly operate on the interest payment drawing from its initiation fund and raise
more from the private continuously. 
The Foundation was established with a fine designed structure. The Foundation has a Board
of Directors whose member invited by the nominator from the Executive Yuan. The nominees
should be from the government officers, artists and arts professionals, and scholars. The
Board member is supposed to be a paid job. The Director of the Board is to be elected by
the Board members. The members will be re-selected every three years, with the possible
extension of another three-year period once. It is also legislated in the National
Culture and Arts Foundation Act that the number of government representatives on the
Board cannot be more than one fifth of the total members. The Board of the Foundation is
responsible of the making and reviewing of budgets, and have the full authority of
approving grants. 
Also the setting of the Foundation, such as the quota of government representatives on
the Board and the appointment of the Board, may be copied from the similar agencies of
other developed countries, such as Canada, which has great examples of having
quasi-independent, arm's length agencies to distribute arts grants, the Foundation was
established to accommodate Taiwan's distinguish government structure and political
environment. It is apparent that Taiwan does not have a healthy systematic government
structure, from the phenomenon of the bizarre system that allows the existence of both a
president and a premier in the same government system with a lot of ambiguity on the
responsibility and accountability of the double leaders and double parliaments. Neither
the people nor the government is familiar with the arm's length system so it is maybe
better and simpler to set up the Foundation as a private non-profit organization which
nurtures and encourages the participation and accomplishments in arts and cultural
activities. 
The Foundation review applications for both project grants and operation grants, and also
set-up annual awards for outstanding performance in arts field. To this date, although
the Foundation is still young and there are things on structure or procedures needed to
be adjusted or improved, overall the arts community in Taiwan is still very pleased to
see its establishment and operation. After all the Foundation is operated systematically
and transparent. It is not usually seen in Taiwan for a sort of government affiliated
organization. 
As for on the municipal level, Taipei City and Kaohsiung City, they manage their
policies. These two cities were on the equivalent level as the former Provincial
governments because of the large population live and work in their jurisdictions. They
have their own department of managing the arts and cultural activities in their cities,
especially Taipei City, where about one fourth of Taiwanese population is. The policy of
Taipei City has tremendous impacts on the overall Taiwan. For other counties and
municipalities the arts policies are more or less the extension of the from of the
central government, or a means of attracting tourism.
Bibliography
1. The Council for Cultural Affairs, http://www.cca.gov.tw/intro/report,
http://www.cca.gov.tw/intro/index_e.html (English doc.)
2. The Executive Yuan, http://www.ey.gov.tw/
3. National Culture and Arts Foundation, http://www.ncafroc.org.tw/IE/A/01/index.htm,
http://www.ncafroc.org.tw/IE/G/INDEX.htm (English doc.)