Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) yesterday accused China’s Sanxitang, also known as the Beijing Suyin Cultural Broadcasting Corp, of publishing unauthorized copies of the Wenyuan Chamber (文淵閣) edition of the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries (四庫全書), which is reposited in the National Palace Museum.
Chen castigated the museum for not investigating the matter, instead seeking to coordinate a transfer of licensing privileges from the original copyright holder, Taiwan Commercial Press, to the Chinese publisher.
Compiled during the 1700s, the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries is one of the largest sets of books created in Chinese history.
Source: National Palace Museum
The 3,400 individual works contained in its 36,381 volumes span the breadth of classical Chinese philosophy, science, art and literature. The works date from the pre-Qin to early Qing dynasties, a period spanning more than 2,000 years.
Of the original seven sets, three have been destroyed and one severely damaged. The Wenyuan Chamber set is regarded as the most complete.
Because of its symbolic importance, China in recent years has pushed for the Wenyuan Chamber set to “come home.” Creating full-sized copies of the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries is even listed as one of the Chinese government’s 25 most important publishing goals.
Chen said that last week she requested that the museum provide her with the documents relating to Suyin’s copyright violation.
According to Chen, the museum acknowledged that the Taiwan Commercial Press in 2012 notified the museum of Suyin’s misappropriation of their intellectual property. Suyin’s Web site had listed the price of a complete set at 60 million yuan (US$9.8 million).
Chen said her investigation suggested the museum might have known about the matter as early as 2010, as she found a museum report which mentioned there was a discussion of the issue between the museum’s cultural sales unit director Hsu Hsiao-te (徐孝德) and Suyin, along with representatives of the Taiwan Commercial Press, in 2010 in Beijing.
Saying that Chinese media have reported that the Complete Library reproduced by Suyin has already been sent to the Wenyuan Chamber of Beijing’s Forbidden City for storage, Chen added that according to her sources, National Palace Museum director Feng Ming-chu (馮明珠), during a visit to Beijing in January, even provided her Chinese hosts a blueprint for the Wenyuan Chamber and showed them how to lay out the books.
Questioning how photographic files of the Complete Library could be leaked to China, Chen also questioned the role played by Feng and said she should take responsibility and step down.
In response, museum spokesman Chin Shih-hsien (金士先) said Suyin initially began printing copies of the Complete Library without pursuing licensing.
When the museum found out, it approached Suyin and a licensing contract was signed, Ching said, adding that the contract stipulated Suyin pay a deposit to guarantee the observance of the contract.
However, after Suyin failed to return this deposit, the contract was nullified by the museum and Suyin was ordered to destroy all of its copies, Ching said.
He added that to his knowledge, none of Suyin’s copies of the Complete Library were presently in circulation, noting that such sets would be very obvious given the size and cost of the collection.
Additional reporting by Yang Ming-yi.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not