The Golden Horse awards are upon us again, but there is little point going over old ground criticizing the event for its "Greater China" mentality and reduction of worthy Taiwanese movies to bit players. As long as there are celebrities to exploit and be exploited by, the deeper meaning of these outdated gongs will pass with little criticism.
It is therefore fitting to turn to the little-discussed agency that allows these and all other films and TV programs to be screened in this country. The Government Information Office's (GIO) film classification board is a rare success story within an administrative organ that should have been abolished years ago.
While the GIO has come under regular and largely justified attack from all sides of politics for its activities since the election of President Chen Shui-bian (
Armed with four classification categories, the board has over the years adapted remarkably well to the permissive content that has come from the West, Japan and Hong Kong.
As an illustration of this, back in 1994 Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List became the first film to break the pubic hair taboo on the big screen. To its credit, the board eventually passed the film without cuts; unlike more autocratic states such as Malaysia, Taiwanese viewers were able to see depictions of naked Jews of all ages being herded into labor camps and other places by Nazi guards.
Today, as with classification regimes in Britain, Australia and Canada, the Taiwanese board has a system in place that minimizes cutting -- and therefore shows greater respect to filmmaker and audience. Notable is the decreasing number of films suffering cuts to be screened at all or to receive a lower classification.
A notable exception in recent months is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, which had four of its most grisly scenes edited or removed to avoid a ban. The classifiers even banned the trailer -- which was rated "G" in the US.
But other recent offerings of horror and violence from Hollywood -- Saw III, Hostel and the remake of The Hills Have Eyes -- have been screened uncut in the versions submitted to the board, despite provocative and protracted scenes of torture.
The board remains more conservative on sexual matters, though the passing of Tsai Ming-liang's (
The board's conduct offers a salutary example of how government departments can work well in balancing the needs of the marketplace and the expectations of the community and movie lovers. And while there is a strong case to be made that restrictions at the high end of the system are too strict, it is clear that the overall direction the board has taken bodes well for freedom of expression -- and entertainment -- in this country.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not