The Taiwan Design Center, which helps local companies become cultural innovators, is to be become the Taiwan Design Research Agency, Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Chuan-neng (林全能) said yesterday.
The upgrade, expected in the first half of next year, is to accompany a budget increase to NT$530 million (US$17.4 million) from NT$424 million, Lin told a news conference at the Executive Yuan in Taipei.
The agency is a collaboration between the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Ministry of Culture, Lin said, adding that the partnership also generated the Taiwan Creative Content Agency, which promotes the creation of cultural content.
Photo: Screengrab from the Taiwan Design Center’s Facebook page
The design agency is to improve design from the industry side and promote it, he said.
The center gets 41 percent of its funding from the Ministry of Economic Affairs; 40 percent from other agencies, such as the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Transportation and Communications; and 19 percent from the private sector, Lin said.
The economic ministry seeks more participation from the private sector to increase private sector funding in the upgraded budget to 30 percent.
The World Economic Forum this year and last year named Taiwan No. 4 in innovation in its global competitiveness report, said Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), who approved the center’s upgrade.
Taiwan could drive economic growth by integrating design into industry, technology and culture to create high-value-added products, Su said, adding that design is essential for innovation.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in October promised to incorporate improved design into the robust manufacturing sector so that the “Made in Taiwan” brand could be upgraded to “Designed in Taiwan,” Su said.
The government would make fostering the nation’s design capabilities an administrative goal — one that could be more easily attained with the Taiwan Design Research Agency, Su said, adding that it would facilitate pooling of government resources.
The ministry told a weekly Cabinet meeting that it hopes that the nation can start pushing the Designed in Taiwan brand globally by 2030.
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) today condemned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after the Czech officials confirmed that Chinese agents had surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March last year. Czech Military Intelligence director Petr Bartovsky yesterday said that Chinese operatives had attempted to create the conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, going as far as to plan a collision with her car. Hsiao was vice president-elect at the time. The MAC said that it has requested an explanation and demanded a public apology from Beijing. The CCP has repeatedly ignored the desires
RSS