The National Palace Museum has recently come under the political spotlight amid charges that it is trying to minimize Chinese influence despite its backbone being arts from ancient China.
Critics said the move reflects the wishes of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to seek a "Taiwanese identity" by erasing cultural and historical links with China and push for independence.
The museum's director Lin Mun-lee (林曼麗) refutes the accusations.
"There is no need for the National Palace Museum to rid itself from its Chinese roots and I think this is a misunderstanding," she told a media briefing earlier this week.
"History and charter are two different things. History cannot be changed because facts are facts," she said, adding that the old charter dated back two decades and so no longer suited a modern museum.
The DPP faced similar charges in recent years when it decided to remove Chinese history and geography from tests for civil servants and unveiled plans to reduce Chinese classics lessons in high schools.
At the height of the war in 1948, the KMT began relocating the treasures from the former imperial palace in Beijing to Taiwan, and then fled there a year later.
Today the 81-year-old museum is a national landmark and one of Taiwan's major tourist attractions, with more than 655,000 ancient Chinese artefacts spanning some 7,000 years of history.
Lingering hostility between Beijing and Taipei has made Taiwan wary about exhibiting the museum's prized collections overseas because of concerns that China might lodge claims to the objects.
In recent years, the museum has only staged exhibitions in the US, France and Germany on condition that the host nations passed relevant legislation protecting Taiwan against any such claims from Beijing.
Next week, several Chinese scholars will come to Taipei to participate in a symposium on Northern Song dynasty arts and culture as part the museum's grand reopening festivities.
Their visit highlights the irony facing scholars of Chinese antiquities and dynastic arts, as they must to travel to Taiwan to glimpse the riches of China's past.
Nevertheless, director Lin has always stressed the legitimacy of Taiwan's claim to the priceless collection of artefacts.
"These treasures came to Taiwan decades ago under the special circumstances of that time," Lin said. "Taiwan has performed well its duties to preserve them from being destroyed by war."
"I don't think it is illegitimate for Taiwan [to keep the artefacts.] Some people have the wrong conception that the artefacts should return to China," she added.
also see story:
National Palace Museum is born again
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
The eastern extension of the Taipei MRT Red Line could begin operations as early as late June, the Taipei Department of Rapid Transit Systems said yesterday. Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said it is considering offering one month of free rides on the new section to mark its opening. Construction progress on the 1.4km extension, which is to run from the current terminal Xiangshan Station to a new eastern terminal, Guangci/Fengtian Temple Station, was 90.6 percent complete by the end of last month, the department said in a report to the Taipei City Council's Transportation Committee. While construction began in October 2016 with an
NON-RED SUPPLY: Boosting the nation’s drone industry is becoming increasingly urgent as China’s UAV dominance could become an issue in a crisis, an analyst said Taiwan’s drone exports to Europe grew 41.7-fold from 2024 to last year, with demand from Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression the most likely driver of growth, a study showed. The Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET) in a statement on Wednesday said it found that many of Taiwan’s uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) sales were from Poland and the Czech Republic. These countries likely transferred the drones to Ukraine to aid it in its fight against the Russian invasion that started in 2022, it said. Despite the gains, Taiwan is not the dominant drone exporter to these markets, ranking second and fourth
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
RSS