Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Weng Hsiao-ling (翁曉玲) has proposed cutting more than NT$1 billion (US$30.9 million) from the Ministry of Culture’s proposed budget during the second round of legislative reviews.
The proposal would eliminate the ministry’s entire NT$47.38 million public communications budget and reduce funding for than 30 other items covering operations, personnel, administration, equipment and subsidies. The ministry said the cuts would affect funding for performing arts groups, visual arts organizations, publishers, bookstores, community cultural projects and local museums, adding that they would undermine efforts to strengthen Taiwan’s cultural sector and expand its international presence.
Cultural organizations have criticized the proposed reductions. Taiwan Performing Arts Alliance head Lin Chia-feng (林佳鋒) said cultural funding should not become “a tool for political confrontation,” while publishers and gallery heads said that broad cuts would weaken Taiwan’s international cultural outreach.
It should come as little surprise that the KMT has targeted the Ministry of Culture, given the party’s increasingly close engagement with China and its longstanding emphasis on Chinese identity.
The Ministry of Culture is responsible for preserving, supporting and promoting Taiwan’s culture at home and abroad. Its work includes funding literature, publishing, performing arts, film, television, museums, cultural heritage preservation and community arts programs, while supporting Taiwan’s cultural and creative industries and promoting Taiwanese books, films, exhibitions and performances internationally.
These goals inevitably place the ministry at odds with China’s efforts to shape Taiwan’s identity. Beijing has long sought to portray Taiwan as an inseparable part of China while promoting a shared Chinese national identity among Taiwanese. Earlier this month, Beijing implemented its Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law, which aims to integrate China’s ethnic groups through education, language and state-led identity building.
KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing on April 10, describing the visit as a “peace mission” and “the first step” toward easing cross-strait tensions. While Cheng has said the KMT seeks dialogue rather than confrontation, her meeting with Xi has raised concerns among critics that Beijing is seeking greater collaboration from the party for narratives emphasizing Chinese identity over a Taiwanese identity.
Those concerns have gained attention amid growing international recognition of Taiwan’s cultural achievements. Taiwanese writer Yang Shuang-zi (楊?子) won this year’s International Booker Prize for her novel Taiwan Travelogue (臺灣漫遊錄). The book’s depiction of Taiwan’s Japanese colonial-era history, including a positive portrayal of a Japanese character, contrasts with Beijing’s longstanding narrative that focuses primarily on Japanese wartime aggression.
Attitudes toward Japan’s colonial rule are more complex in Taiwan than in China. The KMT has historically shared Beijing’s emphasis on Japan’s wartime atrocities, reflecting the period when the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party fought as uneasy allies against Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese War. After Japan’s defeat in 1945, the KMT portrayed its arrival in Taiwan as a liberation from colonial rule.
The KMT has long promoted a Chinese identity among Taiwanese and supported the idea of eventual Chinese unification, although its vision has differed significantly from Beijing’s. However, Taiwan’s democratic development has evolved a broader understanding of identity that includes local history, indigenous heritage and the nation’s distinct political experience.
The Ministry of Culture was established on May 20, 2012, succeeding the Council for Cultural Affairs (文化建設委員會), founded in 1981 as the nation’s first Cabinet-level cultural agency. During the KMT’s authoritarian era, cultural policy emphasized Chinese heritage and the Republic of China’s claim to represent all of China. After democratization, cultural policy increasingly shifted toward recognizing Taiwan’s own history, local identities and multicultural society.
For many Taiwanese, cultural policy is not merely about funding the arts — it is about preserving a democratic society’s ability to define its own identity.
The Democratic Progressive Party must do what it can to protect the Ministry of Culture. The ministry plays an important role in Taiwan’s soft power efforts and in ensuring that Taiwan’s culture is represented internationally on its own terms. Taiwan’s national identity continues to evolve, and weakening the institutions that preserve and promote that identity would leave the nation more vulnerable to external efforts to shape its narrative.
Protecting Taiwan’s cultural institutions is therefore not only about protecting artists and cultural workers; it is about protecting Taiwan’s ability to tell its own story.
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