President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has apologized for the government’s failure to allocate 4 percent of its budget to cultural affairs and promised to do so in the near future, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) said yesterday.
Meeting with cultural industry representatives, Chuang Po-chun (莊伯仲), director of party’s Culture and Communication Committee, said the budget for cultural affairs had not been met because of the global financial crisis and natural disasters, including the Typhoon Morakot.
“President Ma apologizes for failing to reach the goal, but the government’s cultural budget has increased each year and we will make more of an effort to reach the goal,” Chuang said at KMT headquarters.
Cultural groups visited the KMT to express concerns about cultural policies amid recent controversies over a government-sponsored musical.
The musical, Dreamers (夢想家), cost NT$215 million (US$7.1 million) and drew criticism from cultural groups that the Council for Cultural Affairs (CCA) wasted money and that the government had failed to allocate funds to cultural groups in a fair manner.
Former Council for Cultural Affairs minister Emile Sheng (盛治仁) resigned last week amid the uproar, but the cultural groups pledged to continue pressing the government for a greater emphasis on cultural development.
Director and conductor Tseng Dau-hsiong (曾道雄) said more than 2,000 people in the cultural industry and others have signed a petition calling for more emphasis on cultural development.
The movement will not stop until the government present solid cultural policies, he said.
Chuang said budget for cultural affairs under the former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government varied between NT$5 billion and NT$6 billion, but the Ma administration has raised it to almost NT$10 billion.
Next year’s budget allocation will be more than NT$10 billion, which showed the government’s attention to cultural development, he said.
“There is room to grow in terms of the cultural budget and we will reflect upon the issues raised by the cultural groups. However, the DPP has no right to criticize government policies because it failed to put enough emphasis on cultural development when it was in power,” he said.
The cultural actitivists called for a presidential debate on cultural policies to be held on Dec. 26.
Chuang said he would relay their message to Ma.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods