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President sees Taiwan as center of Hakka culture

President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday attended the founding ceremony of the Cabinet's Hakka Commission (客家委員會) headed by Fang Kuang-chun (范光群) and Liu Yung-pin (劉永斌), expressing his hope to "build Taiwan into the world's center for Hakka culture."

"Because of political pressures, Hakka people of the last generation were afraid of admitting their ethnic identity. As for the current generation, they wonder how they can identify with [being Hakka] since they can no longer speak their mother tongue well," Chen said at the ceremony. He added that the top priority of the commission is to preserve the Hakka language in order to revitalize Hakka culture.

Chen said that in order to realize this goal the commission should focus its efforts in three directions.

First, it should coordinate with other government agencies, domestic Hakka groups and the media to promote its cultural agenda and further the Hakka renaissance movement (客家文藝復興運動). The commission should also aim to ally with overseas Hakka organizations to promote Hakka cultural exchanges in international society, he added. Third, as most Hakka people make a living from farming, Chen said the commission should cooperate with the Cabinet's Council of Agriculture and local governments to help facilitate the transition of the farming industry in traditional Hakka villages. Such work would be important to the farming community as Taiwan's imminent entry into the WTO is expected to have a negative impact on the nation's agricultural development.

Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄), Legislative Yuan speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and KMT Vice Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) also attended the ceremony as guests of honor to show their support for Taiwan's Hakkas.

"There are nearly four million Hakka people in Taiwan and the Hakka spirit has become one of society's mainstream values.

"Therefore, the commission's establishment is a case of late justice," Chang said in his address, adding that the government has not treated Hakka groups fairly in the past.

Wang said that the legislature had fully supported the commission's founding and that he had especially asked vice president of the Legislative Yuan Yao Eng-chi (饒穎奇), who is a member of Hakka organizations, to host the legislative sessions at which bills related to the new commission had been successfully reviewed and passed.
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