“The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory... Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long the nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world around it will forget even faster,” Milan Kundera wrote in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, quoting Czech historian Milan Hubl.
The opposition-controlled Legislative Yuan on Friday passed the long-delayed third reading of this fiscal year’s general budget, with overall cuts of NT$48 billion (US$1.5 billion) across agencies, along with spending freezes. About NT$1 billion was slashed from the Ministry of Culture’s budget, with the NT$47.38 million publicity budget cut to zero. Funding for Public Television Service (PTS) was reduced by NT$21.85 million and NT$200 million was frozen until a new chairman is appointed, while the budget for TaiwanPlus, the PTS-affiliated English-language channel, was cut by NT$200 million.
It is the second consecutive year that the ministry’s publicity budget has been slashed entirely, while funding for PTS was again reduced and frozen. Last year, when Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators proposed cutting PTS’ budget, and other arts and culture grants, KMT Legislator Chen Yu-jen (陳玉珍) called arts and cultural workers “beggars” who rely on government subsidies to survive, urging them to “throw away their bowl.” The KMT’s animosity toward the cultural industry is clear.
Minister of Culture Li Yuan (李遠) has criticized the opposition parties’ “horrendous plan,” saying that the KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) are using the cuts to silence Taiwan’s voice, “destroying the nation by eliminating its culture.” KMT and TPP lawmakers dismissed Li’s remarks as “fearmongering.”
Culture is a nation’s soul. A nation survives on a sense of collective identity shared by people who imagine that they have a relationship with other members of the community across time. The concept of “imagination” does not make a community less real.
As Indian-American anthropologist Arjun Appadurai said, imagination is a collective, lived tool people use to construct everyday identity. A nation is constructed instead of being defined physically or materially by geographical borders. The social construction indicates a process of construction and manifestation of a collective through the spread of common ideas.
As Benedict Anderson put it, in an imagined community, mass media play an important role. Television, newspapers, books and works of art, using a common language, serve not just as channels for public communication, but also the foundation for spiritual and political life — they bring people together. People gain national consciousness and a deep sense of comradeship. In that process, scattered individuals can unite and take collective action to pursue what they consider best for their community.
That is what the opposition parties fear — Taiwanese realizing who they really are. It is why the KMT and the TPP are trying to erase the nation’s culture and memory. News is the first draft of history. All forms of art connect people by representing and exploring their existential state, fostering mutual understanding and empathy. If cultural development is stifled, people will begin to forget who they are and who they once were. A nation’s collective existence would vanish.
KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) earlier this month said that Taiwan has never been a country. That kind of self-denial is undoubtedly a brazen insult to the nation and those who fought for its freedom, democracy and survival with blood and tears. Who does she think she is to say those words on behalf of the nation?
People are still fighting for Taiwan’s dignity on the world stage. Taiwanese artists and curators participating in the Gwangju Biennale, a two-month art festival that South Korea is hosting from next month, stood up against the organizer for arbitrarily renaming the Taiwan pavilion and removing “Taiwan” from the poster. They issued a joint statement, titled “The censored Taiwan Pavilion,” to condemn the organizer’s political censorship.
At a turbulent time when Taiwan faces transnational oppression, Taiwanese must not consent to or engage in any denial of their own existence.
Those who should really “throw away their bowl” to stop begging are the traitors who live on taxpayers’ money, but collaborate with the enemy to betray their country.
For the last 15 years, China has relied on gray zone operations to advance its territorial ambitions across Asia. And for 15 years, the US has struggled to respond. But the open door on which China has been pushing may finally be closing. Gray zone operations involve the assertive use of a variety of tools in ways that create conditions that can be described as neither peace nor war. Military forces might act provocatively — even dangerously — while carefully avoiding violence, whereas law enforcement employs nonlethal violence as a first resort. Such an approach creates difficult calculations for its targets.
EDITORIAL CARTOON
China’s new exit and entry regulations might signal an increase in the risk that Taiwanese travelers will face, an analyst said on Tuesday last week. The new rules, which take effect on Sept. 15, expand the power of authorities to restrict travel on national, industrial and technological security grounds, question travelers about their reasons for leaving and inspect electronic data. Taiwanese who do not support the ruling party should not dismiss the warnings as fearmongering or propaganda. Beijing applies its “anti-secession” laws indiscriminately, an official said recently while presenting a report on proposed amendments to combat China’s efforts at transnational repression. Chinese
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