Written by Patricia Huang.
Image credit: Permanent Exhibition of The National Museum of Taiwan Literature by the author.
Right before the 2025 annual central government budget review, legislators from both ruling and opposition parties had unprecedentedly put more than 3,000 proposals on the table to prepare for a major cut. Among them, the proposals to substantially cut or freeze the Ministry of Culture’s budget triggered heated debates regarding whether earmarked subsidies for publishing, mother-tongue heritage, international cultural exchanges, and public television should be “cut or discarded.” Museums under the Ministry of Culture, such as the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, the National Taiwan Museum, the National Museum of Human Rights, the National Museum of Prehistory, and the National Museum of Taiwan Literature, although receiving less media attention, were also facing the possibility of 70% freeze in operating expenses due to the claim that “in view of the expansion of government expenditure year by year, and the results of the relevant operations failing to reach the expected goals”. After proposal adjustments and withdrawals, the legislature finally passed the third reading of the Ministry of Culture’s budget, cutting NT$1.1 billion (including NT$100 million for the construction of the National Repository Library) and freezing NT$3.4 billion (including 30% of the operating expenses of the five major museums) from the original plan of NT$29 billion (around 887 million USD).
Among the total budget of NT$3 trillion for 2025, it is surprising that the Ministry of Culture, with its “small share,” could become a trending topic of discussion, especially on the question of why culture needs to be subsidised, a controversial issue among many parties. In fact, the question of whether the government should treat culture differently from all industries and trades leads to the classic argument of “Cultural Exception,” and it is difficult to reach a consensus as there are steadfast supporters for and against the idea. France was the first country to advocate for differential treatment on culture. As early as the 1990s, France already defended this idea of cultural exception, advocating that culture should not be included in international free trade agreements, and that the subsidy and quota system for the content industry should not be repealed so easily, otherwise imported works with big money support would have huge impact on the domestic market, accelerating globalisation and seriously undermining France’s cultural autonomy. However, at the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, even though 148 countries voted in favour of recognising “the very specific nature of cultural goods and services, having both an economic and a cultural dimension,” the United States and Israel vetoed, demonstrating the strength of each side’s convictions.
Cultural Budgets from External Sources
Despite the importance of culture, the Ministry of Culture, which was late to be established, has struggled to break through in budgetary allocations. The legendary development of the French Ministry of Culture (Ministère de la Culture), which almost doubled its budget in 1982 and finally exceeded 1% of the country’s total annual expenditure in 1993, is a case well explored by academics. However, compared to the Ministries of Education or Health, whose expenditures are often multiplied by a factor of ten, the Ministry of Culture, traditionally not considered an “essential” ministry, is still considered poor among ministries. If France, a well-recognized cultural powerhouse, even has difficulty asking for more cultural budget, little wonder why governments of other countries strive to seek external sources to boost their cultural sector.
In the UK, for example, before the launch of the National Lottery, some people argued that the lottery revenue was a windfall and should be allocated to the arts, cultural heritage and sports, as these ‘desirable’ causes were rarely looked upon favourably by budget deciders, and the only way to create fertile ground for their growth was to look for alternative sources of funding. After the launch of the National Lottery in 1994, the developments of museums, visual and performing arts, cultural heritage, and cultural and creative industries have indeed been fostered by the massive injection of funds. In the 15-year period from 1994 to 2009 alone, £4.2 billion (approximately NT$168 billion) was allocated to cultural heritage, and £300 million (approximately NT$12 billion) to the film industry, making the lottery revenue an invisible but crucial factor in the UK’s cultural renaissance.
Likewise, funding for public television is not always included in a central government’s cultural budget. However, because the purpose of public television is to “promote public welfare,” most governments would not choose to leave the existence of public television to the market mechanism. For example, the primary source of funding for the British Broadcasting Cooperation (BBC) is the TV license fee, which has been set at an annual rate of £169.5 (approximately NT$6,800) per colour TV set since 2024. The license fee is considered a form of tax in the UK, and all households with a TV, whether they watch BBC or not, are required to pay it, or face fines or imprisonment. The Japanese Broadcasting Act also does not take audience viewing habits into account when it comes to collecting fees. Anyone who has a device such as a TV or mobile phone that can receive broadcast signals from The Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) is required to pay an annual NHK receiving fee: the fee is currently ¥12,276 per year for a device capable of watching terrestrial programs, and ¥21,765 (about NT$4,500) for both terrestrial and satellite programs.
Certainly, given it is relatively easy to evade charges and people do have different viewing preferences, the alternatives of mandatory rates are often broached. However, the state’s position to facilitate the growth of public television by means of financial assistance or legislation remains basically unchanged. For example, in Spain, in addition to the government subsidy, there is also an additional special tax of 1.5% of the annual revenue levied on domestic cable TV stations to channel more money into public television.
In fact, both BBC and NHK are the country’s first TV broadcasters. With a long history behind them, they have got the competitive edge and a certain degree of revenue-generating ability. For example, the BBC has the sci-fi series Dr. Who, whose fifth-anniversary show was recognised by Guinness World Records as the largest TV drama simulcast in history (in 94 countries), and Planet Earth, one of the most popular eco-documentaries in the history of cinema. NHK has the blockbuster morning drama Oshin (1983) and the historical drama Atsuhime (2008), etc., among many of these popular dramas that have been exported globally. But public television, which does not pursue commercial interest, can never be completely free from government support. It is worth noting that the BBC has been criticised on several occasions for its lack of neutrality, and the House of Commons once held a parliamentary debate on this issue. However, when responding to public petitions, the British government emphasised that editorial standards should be set by the BBC’s Board of Governors and that it is the responsibility of the UK’s Office of Communications (Ofcom) to regulate the BBC or review the licensing system.
Countermeasures and Impacts of Under-budgeting.
Taiwan’s cultural sector does not have these external resources or licensing revenues, so every cent of the Ministry of Culture’s budget is all the more valuable, and the opposition party’s attempts to ensure that taxpayers’ money is well-spent is all the more noteworthy. However, except for stopping possible budget paddling, the undifferentiated funding freezing has a very limited effect on improving the performances of these public-funded institutions. Theoretically, there is still a chance that the budget freeze will be lifted, but when there are hundreds of similar cases across various ministries and the conditions for lifting the freeze are not the same, it is highly likely that once the schedule is too jam-packed, ‘freeze’ will turn into ‘cut’.
The operating expenses of museums are mainly used to pay for the expenditures related to the four major functions of museums: collecting, exhibiting, educating and research. If there is no structural reform, with an unexpected 30% drop in funds, a museum will probably only be able to run normal operations till September or October. But it is obviously impractical to close museums for a season at the end of the year when the money runs out. A more reasonable approach is to spread the impact across the entire year. In other words, after the Lunar New Year holidays, museums must begin to scrutinize the funds available for the year ahead and try to cut expenses as early as possible. This means, even for contracts that had already been signed prior to the budget freeze, if there was a proviso in the contract stipulating “if the budget is reduced or not passed by the Legislative Yuan, or if the budget is frozen by the Legislative Yuan without being unfrozen, the contract may be terminated in whole or in part,” museums will also have to review the contracts again and, if necessary, terminate the contracts or stop the services.
For example, on March 1, 2013, when the US federal government began the ‘Sequester’’, the Smithsonian Institution quickly announced that from May onwards, it would not make up for the staff shortages, and would reduce the number of security personnel on-site, randomly rotate the closure of the exhibition halls, delay the infrastructural repair project, cancel some exhibitions, publications or educational activities in order to get through difficult times. In a similar vein, museums in Taiwan are likely to reduce the number of exhibitions or the amount of acquisition fees, as well as to cut back on other scheduled work. Moreover, although the freeze does not involve the personnel costs of those permanent staff, there are non-permanent workers in each public-funded museum, such as outsourced contract workers, whose salaries are paid by the operating expenses. The question of whether or not their contracts should be renewed will now have to be evaluated by the museums again based on the priorities of their duties. However, even if all these are done, austerity measures can still only respond to the so-called “expansion of expenditures” as claimed by some legislators, not to the improvement of the “results of the relevant business execution”. The legislators must give more precise comments on the operation of the museums so that the museums can start working towards meeting their expectations of “achieving the expected goals”.
At the 18th meeting of the 2nd session of the 11th Legislative Yuan, after completing the review of the total budget with the largest slash in history, the opposition party legislators said that in regard to Taiwan’s budget paddling, it is only natural to be frugal to watch out for the taxpayers; while the ruling party legislators said that the cut was retaliatory, the most substantial and the most vicious in history. The Ministry of Culture’s less than 1% of the total budget is only a small part of this chaotic battle, but perhaps as legislators from three political parties shouted at each other across the floor to defend their own positions, they all resonated with what Nobel Prize-winning author Albert Camus said: “In the clamour in which we live, love is impossible and justice does not suffice”.
Patricia H. Huang holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of Cambridge. She is currently the Chair of the Department of Arts and Design, National Taipei University of Education. Her research interests focus on museum management, cultural policy, and arts marketing.
This article was republished from ARTouch with the author’s permission and translated by Chee-Hann Wu. Read the original article on 4 February 2025 here.
This article was published as part of a special issue on ‘Taiwan’s Budget Crisis’.
Taiwan Insight 