Cultural Diplomacy of Taiwan - private actors in Taiwan’s cultural diplomacy

Jora, Bogdan Lucian

Researcher

2020

Taiwan Fellowship Scholar

Field of Study：

No：

Date：2021/2/17

I initiated this research coming from the European experience regarding the role of culture in alterity, imagology, détente and conflict prevention. The paper starts presenting the theoretical reflection on cultural industries as a conflict prevention too, the eventual role of European integration as a potential model and some conceptual clarifications. Then are exposed several case studies involving cultural industries and industries with cultural content and their role in the process of cross-Strait search for “win –win” formulas and reconciliation: ‘The Cross Strait Cultural Industries Fairs”, “Shanghai World Expo”, “Music, TV, Theatre, Film”, “Cross-Strait Media Exchange”, “Museums cooperation across the Strait”, “Cross–Strait Student exchanges”, “Cultural Tourism”. One chapter provide arguments for the way technology as such as an “Industry with a cultural content” can be an act of culture with reconciliatory effect. Further questions on how to translate cultural features into modern desirable products and how those products used in their daily life may create further bridges of communication across the Taiwan Strait are addressed. The capacity for cultural persuasion of industries with a cultural content seems to be stronger than the one of cultural industries as such, being generated by a world where economic interests and the “language of money” prevail the “language of politics”. One of the several conclusions is that the simple exposure of good quality culture or “art for art” without political expectation, just for the genuine pleasure of sharing cultural values may have a stronger reconciliatory effect.