Former National Palace Museum (NPM) director Feng Ming-chu (馮明珠) did not inform the museum before traveling to China and accepting a post with the Beijing Palace Museum, the NPM’s deputy director said yesterday.
Feng was on Tuesday hired by the Beijing museum’s research institute as a research adviser, less than four months after stepping down from the Taipei post.
Lee Ching-hui (李靜慧), the NPM’s deputy director, initially responded to the news by saying that Feng has the right to a job, but yesterday said that “the National Palace Museum had absolutely no prior knowledge [of her actions].”
The Executive Yuan requires former government officials to obtain approval from the agency they had worked for before visiting China — with a time frame ranging from three months after leaving their job to three years, depending on how confidential the agency’s business is.
“Feng made [the time frame] for former museum officials just three months, and that is why she did not need museum’s approval to visit China,” Lee said.
After discussing the situation with NPM Director Lin Jeng-yi (林正儀), Lee said she would like to restate the museum’s stance — which is that it hopes Feng, who had worked for the museum for more than 30 years, could keep classified information secret and protect the NPM’s interests.
In the past, the NPM, per the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), had always required its former staff to apply for approval to visit China from a review committee consisting officials from the ministries of justice and the interior, the National Security Bureau and the Mainland Affairs Council within three years of leaving government service.
However, according to internal NPM documents, Feng signed an official document on April 15 asking that the threshold be reduced to “within one year of leaving the government” and sent it to the National Immigration Agency on May 4.
She then re-issued the document, signed it and sent it to the NIA on May 13 asking that the restriction to be lowered to three months.
Sources said Feng’s changing rules ahead of President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) inauguration on May 20 had raised a lot of eyebrows at the museum, where many believe that her actions violated administrative ethics.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Ho Hsin-chun (何欣純) yesterday said Feng’s rule changes so soon before the change in administration was “ridiculous.”
Feng’s stint as museum director was not with controversy when it came to China.
She was criticized for not taking legal action against the Beijing Palace Museum after it was found stealing NPM’s photographs of items in the NPM’s collections for its own official periodicals, instead preferring to settle the matter privately.
It was only after lawmakers across party lines demanded that the NPM take legal action to protect its intellectual property rights that Feng filed suit.
Feng invited Hong Kong actor Jackie Chan (成龍), a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, to attend the opening ceremony of the NPM’s southern branch in Chiayi County, where a collection of replicas of bronze zodiac sculptures looted from the Old Summer Palace outside Beijing in 1860 that Chan had donated to the NPM were put on display.
Critics slammed the invite and the exhibition as an example of China’s “united front” tactics, but Feng defended the replicas, calling them examples of “excellent contemporary craftsmanship.”
DPP Legislator Chuang Jui-hsiung (莊瑞雄) sarcastically said that Feng’s hiring in Beijing “might be called an implementation of the so-called ‘one family across the Taiwan Strait.’”
“Does it really need to be so hurried,” he said.
However, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Apollo Chen (陳學聖) defended Feng, saying “national borders are nonexistent in the world of culture.”
Feng’s actions had been legal, Chen said.
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