If the transition of real power takes place in the Presidential Office, then the change of president of the General Association of Chinese Culture (GACC) is the symbolic transition of power.
In 2000, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) relinquished power to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), and this year, the KMT handed it back to the DPP and President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) when she took office.
While the KMT was civilized in its handover of real power, it was not when it came to the symbolic transition of power. By renaming the National Cultural Association, which had already been renamed once under the Chen administration, to the GACC, and appointing former premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) to be its president, former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) deliberately stymied the symbolic transition of power.
Founded in 1967 to counter the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Cultural Revolution, the GACC is a legacy from the days of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石). The organization, originally named the Committee for the Revival of Chinese Culture, has been renamed many times.
The GACC, under the Presidential Office, and the KMT Culture and Communications Committee, which before 2000 was the Cultural Affairs Department, jointly supervise the Council for Cultural Affairs, which they both rely on for funding. However, they have recently also received funding from business sponsors recruited by the president.
The GACC was originally called the Committee for the Revival of Chinese Culture to highlight the president as the leader of Chinese culture, as the CCP was destroying traditional Chinese culture during the Cultural Revolution. This one-person show, with the party and government behind it, shackled the nation’s cultural development by making it part of national policy, shaping modern Taiwan’s “culture.”
A cultural revival was intended to compete with the CCP, but what was there to revive? All it did was exploit government and social resources to highlight the advanced cultural vantage point of the president. Chiang and Mao Zedong (毛澤東) both rank high on the list of the world’s dictators, and their competition turned “culture” into a sad and bitter joke.
Under Chen’s administration, several Taiwanese writers were recruited by the GACC to serve as its deputy president and members, but it was not renamed the National Cultural Association until the end of Chen’s presidency. The label of “Chinese culture” imposed on Taiwanese has been a long-lasting, unnecessary burden.
The KMT had no option but to hand over government power to the DPP, but it has made clear that it is unwilling to hand over the GACC, the seat of symbolic power. However, Tsai must not see the distorted “Chinese culture” the GACC promotes as valuable, or think that the revival of Chinese culture is beneficial to Taiwan’s art and culture.
Both South Korea and Japan have preserved more Chinese culture from the Han and Tang dynasties than China, and they also modernized themselves by adopting a significant amount of modern and contemporary Western culture. What Taiwan needs is to revitalize its own culture, not revive Chinese culture. It is time for the Tsai administration to scrap the idea of a “Chinese cultural revival” for Taiwan once and for all.
Lee Min-yung is a poet.
Translated by Tu Yu-an
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