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Presidential election: Ma promises to do more to support language, culture

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday proposed forming a language and cultural academy to counter the impact of China's Confucius Academy.

The Confucius Academy is run along the lines of the Alliance Francais, the British Council and the Goethe Institute. It provides Chinese-language instruction and serves as a cultural ambassador for Beijing. It has branches in Germany, Sweden, Australia, the UK and many other countries.

Ma said that if he is elected president, he will launch an NT$5 billion (US$159.74 million) cultural diplomacy fund to boost the country's profile and make culture the center of the government's "soft power."

Ma said he would also establish the Taiwanese equivalent of the Nobel Prize for literature for Chinese-language writers around the world and provide pensions to artists.

He made the remarks at a meeting with 13 prominent stage and cultural figures, including Performance Workshop (表演工作坊) founder and director Stan Lai (賴聲川) and TV star Chao Chih-chiang (趙自強), called to hear their views on cultural policy.

Ma said his promises were not just "campaign talk" and he would deliver on them.

Ma's Democratic Progressive Party rival Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) pledged on Wednesday that he would increase the budget for cultural affairs if elected from 1.3 percent of GDP to 5 percent. That would boost the budget from NT$20 billion to between NT$70 billion and NT$80 billion, he said.
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