Written by Wu, Chieh-Hsiang.
Image credit: Screenshot of the online exhibition Taiwan’s Long Walk to Freedom of Speech. On the upper left-hand side is writer Chung Yi-jen; the head in the middle is artist Chen Wu-jen’s sculpture with verdicts on it.
The 2025 fiscal year budget cuts were implemented erratically and chaotically, to the point where even the legislators who initiated them are unaware of which items were cut or frozen, let alone able to assess their impact on specific areas of administration. Many Taiwanese, particularly those in the arts and creative industries, feel targeted by legislators from opposing parties, the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), who appear to have slashed budgets arbitrarily as a form of retaliation against the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government.
Amid the deliberations over the Ministry of Culture’s budget, numerous appeals emerged. One, initiated by the Association of Visual Arts in Taiwan, gathered over 5,000 signatures in a matter of days. The Taipei Comic Artist Labor Union also collected more than 6,500 signatures within two days. Prominent figures from the film industry held press conferences to emphasize the irreplaceability of public funding. At the same time, media scholars and journalists raised alarms about the threats posed to democratic foundations by insufficient support for independent public media.
Hsiao Tsung-Huang, Director of the National Palace Museum (NPM), urged legislators to preserve administrative expenses (業務費) for cultural institutions to ensure their basic operations. Large cuts to administrative expenses could paralyze cultural institutions, even if other budgets remain intact. For instance, without administrative funding, museum staff would have no financial resources to travel and oversee the security of loaned objects—tasks the NPM prioritizes when transporting national treasures. Without these funds, exchanges and exhibitions would be impossible. However, the KMT and TPP legislators were unmoved. In addition to freezing 3.4 billion NTD, 1.1 billion NTD of the Ministry of Culture’s 29 billion NTD budget was slashed. These seemingly minor cuts, made without thorough evaluation or cross-party negotiation, could cripple the operations of cultural institutions nationwide.
Censorship through Budget Cuts
The cuts have raised concerns about censorship, repression of the public sphere, and threats to media neutrality. KMT legislator Ko Chih-En justified cuts to the Taiwan Public Television Service’s budget by citing the recent historical series Three Tears in Borneo (聽海湧), claiming the narrative distorted history despite the production team’s assertion that the story was based on historical events but was fictional in nature. Another KMT legislator, Chen Yu-Jen, defended the cuts by urging artists to “abandon the beggaring bowels,” comparing their reliance on public funding to begging. This analogy sparked fierce criticism from the art community, with cultural policy experts finding little room for meaningful dialogue, perceiving the comparison as malicious. These arguments overlook the vital role that media and art play in democracy, where a dynamic public sphere and freedom of expression are essential. They also ignore the well-established rationale for public funding of the arts, which has been shown to benefit both social infrastructure and economic growth.
One of the most severely affected cultural institutions under the Ministry of Culture is the National Human Rights Museum. One justification for the budget cuts was that the museum commemorates atrocities through its exhibitions and designates historical sites tied to these events as Historical Sites of Injustice (不義遺址). Additionally, the cuts were justified by claims that the museum funded Cosmopolitan Culture Action Taichung (台中好民文化行動協會), which was alleged to support the recall of KMT legislators. The organization denied this, clarifying that its focus was on the annual commemoration of political victims through diverse cultural programs.
Amid misunderstandings and resentful interpretations by legislators, thirty-three civil organizations signed an appeal to preserve the necessary budget for the museum’s operations. Many of these organizations have long advocated for truth-seeking, human rights education, and a deeper understanding of the suffering caused by concealed history—long before the formal launch of transitional justice. Established in 2018, the National Human Rights Museum is a key institution responsible for implementing transitional justice policy, including investigating the KMT regime during the martial law period. This policy is often interpreted by current KMT members as political cleansing by the DPP. The museum’s budget cuts seem to be an act of retaliation by the KMT. The rationale for the cuts also hints at censorship, ignoring the diverse international and domestic themes the museum has explored since its inception—topics that have contributed to strengthening human rights in a democracy. The desire to censor museums became even more apparent when the budget for the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall was cut or frozen, with a specific demand to dismantle its permanent exhibition Taiwan’s Long Walk to Freedom of Speech (自由的靈魂vs.獨裁者：臺灣言論自由之路), which is placed opposite the hall commemorating Chiang Kai-Shek.
Endangered Cultural Share
Although Taiwan’s Cultural Fundamental Act (文化基本法), which came into effect in 2019, stipulates that the cultural budget should grow annually, it lacks specific proportional requirements and legal consequences for violations. Taiwan’s cultural budget has steadily increased over the past five years. In 2020, the Ministry of Culture’s budget was 23.34 billion NTD, accounting for 1.04% of the central government’s total budget. In 2021, it increased to 24.79 billion NTD, raising its share to 1.08%. By 2022, it had grown to 25.16 billion NTD (1.09%), and in 2023, it reached 25.52 billion NTD (1.11%). However, the originally allocated budget of 26.23 billion NTD for 2024 was reduced to 26 billion NTD after negotiations between the ruling and opposition parties, lowering the cultural budget’s share of the total central government budget to 1.09%. The stagnation of the cultural budget’s share in the 2025 budget is even more pronounced after further reductions.
An international comparison underscores the irrationality of these budget cuts. Legislators have cited the backward state of Taiwan’s film industry compared to South Korea and other countries as justification for cuts. However, this argument overlooks Taiwan’s significantly lower cultural budget proportion. In 2023, France’s cultural budget was approximately 8.9 billion euros (2.2% of the central government budget), Germany’s was 2.4 billion euros (1.9%), the UK’s was 2.2 billion pounds (1.7%), South Korea’s reached 8.5 trillion KRW (1.8%), and Japan’s was around 1.2 trillion yen (1.6%). These figures highlight that Taiwan’s cultural budget share is far below the average of countries that support their domestic cinematic productions through public funding.
A more far-reaching impact on cultural policy is the yet-to-be-ratified revision of the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法). The proposed revision would allow local governments to secure an additional 375.3 billion NTD in funding from the central government. Under the current system, the central government receives 75% of the country’s total tax revenue, while local governments are allocated 25%. This ratio is expected to revert to the pre-1999 60-40 split, benefiting KMT local governments more than DPP ones in the 2026 local elections. However, the revised law does not specify a fixed cultural budget proportion. Given the significant variations in cultural budgets across the 23 county governments—ranging from 5.29% to 0.77% in 2024—the existing structure of project-oriented coordination between the Ministry of Culture and local authorities to ensure local cultural expenditures is no longer guaranteed.
Culture Facing a Dilemma
The cuts not only undermine cultural production across various sectors but also stifle the broader public sphere and the dynamics of civil society, which have long thrived on diverse cultural and artistic activities. Taiwan’s cultural policy has been built on a cooperative synergy between government authorities, entrepreneurs, civil organizations, and countless proactive individuals. However, these cuts—driven by content-based decisions rather than genuine fiscal considerations—are having a chilling effect on activists who depend on public funding, ultimately posing a serious threat to freedom of expression.
Despite this chilling effect, following the parliamentary farce, during the annual book fair—typically funded by the Ministry of Culture, though its promotional budget was entirely cut this year—hundreds of writers signed an appeal urging citizens to recall the legislators responsible for the cuts. The slogan of the appeal, “When devastated cultural policy becomes a fact, recalling those responsible is a duty” (當文化政策遭到戕害成為事實，罷免不適任立委就是義務), was adapted from a maxim by Armadeu de Prado, a character in the novel Night Train to Lisbon by Swiss writer Pascal Mercier: “When dictatorship is a fact, revolution is a duty.” This slogan, which echoes its earlier adoption during the 2014 Sunflower Movement, highlights the urgent need for action to address the harmful effects of these budget cuts. The recall action now stands as the final call from Taiwan’s cultural community to safeguard its culture and diverse ecology.
Dr. Wu Chieh-Hsiang is a Professor in the Department of Arts at the National Changhua University of Education in Taiwan. She earned both her master’s and doctoral degrees in sociology and art history from Carl von Ossietzky University in Oldenburg, Germany. Dr. Wu previously served as the chairperson of Taiwan’s Association of Visual Arts, a national organization advocating for the interests of visual artists. From 2021 to 2024, she held the position of chairperson of the Taiwan Association of Cultural Policy Studies. Her recent research focuses on the culture of memory, art projects addressing past injustices, and the relationship between state power and exhibition institutions.
This article was published as part of a special issue on ‘Taiwan’s Budget Crisis’.