External communications are valuable, if not essential, resources for building international awareness of Taiwan and in projecting its “soft power” capacity. The island's liberal democratic values, rooted in a history of political struggle against authoritarian rule and the successful transition to democracy at the end of the 1980s, should appeal to a global audience that remains suspicious of the political culture of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Moreover, Taiwan's government has long acknowledged cultural assets as strategic enablers that can grow familiarity with the island. External communications, including public and cultural diplomacy, are therefore instruments of statecraft that may persuade global audiences to pay more attention to Taiwan, sympathize with its seclusion from mainstream world politics, and support its political and strategic agendas.Footnote 1 This requires the creation of structures that can work within the constraints of an international system that does not recognize Taiwan's legitimacy and a global news media environment that deploys conflict frames to report on Taiwan. These structures must also communicate a persuasive narrative or set of narratives that may attract the attention of increasingly fragmented audiences across the world.
This paper focuses on the structure of Taiwan's external communications during Ma Ying-jeou's 馬英九 presidency (2008–2016). It is contextualized through understanding why international communications, outreach and engagement are essential in helping the invisible become visible. The analysis will assume the triangulation of international relations, international communications and diplomacy that has transformed how people and states interact with each other.Footnote 2 Moreover, this context helps us to understand how middle powers with few formal diplomatic relations, like Taiwan, may manage their encounters with obstacles that prevent them from engaging fully in the international political system.Footnote 3 An American diplomat observed how “Taiwan has grown into a society that represents most of our important values that we try to promote elsewhere in the world.”Footnote 4 This is clear recognition that Taiwan possesses “soft power,” an intangible attraction based on the ideals and principles an actor – be they a government, country, organization or individual – values, represents and projects. Soft power capacity is also measured by how the actor behaves at home and abroad.Footnote 5 Taiwan's soft power presents a direct contrast to its more authoritarian neighbours while representing a model for less democratic countries to emulate.Footnote 6 Following his election as president in 2008, Ma Ying-jeou asserted that “the most important asset” of Taiwan's foreign policy “is our democracy, our way of life, our willingness to maintain cross-Strait stability, and our determination to fulfil our obligations to the international community.” But there is more. Taiwan's discourses on soft power have expanded “beyond democracy, culture and diplomacy as factors that make Taiwan attractive to the world to include other non-material sources of power,” including good governance, high levels of educational attainment and economic development.Footnote 7 These are all of the qualities documented by Shelley Rigger in order to explain the title of her book, Why Taiwan Matters.Footnote 8
So, the question driving my research in this area is: if the American diplomat quoted above is correct to correlate Taiwan's values with those of other liberal democracies, especially the US, why is Taiwan still unable to connect with international audiences? Taiwan's external communications are failing to help the island transit from the invisible to the visible. The successful projection of Taiwan's soft power depends on others seeing, recognizing and responding to the island's attractive qualities. If properly structured, organized and adequately resourced, public and cultural diplomacy can communicate Taiwan's values, ideals, culture and positive behaviour to international audiences.
This paper will first address the contextual background of external communications during the Ma Ying-jeou presidency, namely: the need to increase familiarity with Taiwan among global publics before external communications can influence opinion; the shift towards a more positive relationship with the PRC; the domestic political situation that challenged Ma's ambitions for cross-Strait relations; changes in the global communications landscape that have transformed public diplomacy and inserted new voices in the foreign policy process; and the turn from a model of external communications based on political warfare to one that identifies more closely with public and, especially, cultural diplomacy, but which remains within a Cold War confrontational context.
This paper accepts Robin Brown's claim that while “public diplomacy research and practice wrestles with the question of how we can make public diplomacy better,” the more important consideration is “why is public diplomacy the way it is?”Footnote 9 So, while this contextual background can help to explain the development of Taiwan's external communications, it is important to recognize also that the structural arrangements for managing this environment also changed under Ma Ying-jeou. Hence, the paper discusses in detail the impact of the abolition of the Government Information Office (GIO) and the creation of a new Ministry of Culture. This reflected a renewed emphasis on “culture” as the defining theme of Taiwan's external communications and engagement.
The assessment of Taiwan's external communications presented in this paper is based on semi-structured anonymized interviews conducted between 2011 and 2016 with members of relevant ministries in Taiwan including subdivisions of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA), the NGO Affairs Committee and a range of departments within the GIO; the Council for Cultural Affairs; the Taiwan Tourist Bureau; the Mainland Affairs Commission; and the Foreign Service Institute. In addition, interviews with the American Institute in Taiwan and the British Trade and Cultural Office (now the British Office Taipei) complemented the discussions with members of Taiwan's embassies and representative offices around the world.Footnote 10 This assessment has also benefited from interviews with members of the foreign press corps stationed in Taipei and with representatives from the Kuomintang (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
Context
Six themes form the contextual background for understanding both the structure and content of Taiwan's external communications. This context conforms to Louis Clerc's call for approaches to public diplomacy that move beyond using the US as a model or unit of analysis, and which instead evaluate the impact of “the international environment of the country, the state of its domestic policy, its administrative organization, technological developments, and identity construction.”Footnote 11
Familiarity
In a 2005 survey conducted in five countries (Japan, the UK, US, France and Germany), the Gallup polling organization found that in each “only minorities of the general population – from 15% in France to 44% in the United States – claim to know ‘some’ or ‘a great deal’ about Taiwan.”Footnote 12 Other polling data reveals how “Just 29% of Americans are even aware that Taiwan has a democratic political system. The results are similar in the United Kingdom (27%), France (23%) and Germany (33%).”Footnote 13 A member of Taiwan's representative office in the US (TECRO), interviewed in 2016 for this paper, claimed that “Taiwan is punching above its weight” if its communication is measured only with the Washington elite; however, as Gallup suggests, its communication is having little to no impact on American public opinion (a point confirmed by members of the American Institute in Taiwan in an interview for this paper).
This lack of familiarity must be the starting point for any discussion about Taiwan's external communications and how they may contribute to increasing the island's visibility in the political and non-political landscape. Taiwan has a problem when a US undersecretary of state announces that the island's low international profile is a positive development. Attending a conference on US relations in North-East Asia in March 2015, Wendy Sherman was asked why Taiwan “is not discussed much these days.” In response, Sherman said this indicates that “Taiwan is stable, prosperous [and] has a strong relationship with mainland China.”Footnote 14 Clearly, big powers still matter and enjoy the privilege commensurate with their status to decide that another nation-state's low profile is a “good thing.” Small powers – and especially those like Taiwan with little official international legitimacy – struggle for attention:
A major power is going to be the subject of discussion and controversy no matter what it does … Generally, the smaller powers do not enter the global political discussion unless a crisis or scandal envelopes them … The task of smaller powers is to be heard on the stories that matter to them, to explain their positions and aspirations during non-crisis moments, and to do so in a way that captures attention.Footnote 15
This is a particularly relevant observation for Taiwan, and Jonathan Sullivan's careful data-driven research has confirmed that the frequency of Taiwan appearing in the headlines of the English language print media declined during the Ma presidency, in part because of the more positive geopolitical relationship across the Taiwan Strait.Footnote 16
The key to managing a successful transition from the invisible to the visible is better external communications. Cynthia Schneider concisely defines public diplomacy as “all a nation does to explain itself to the world.”Footnote 17 However, invisible powers such as Taiwan do not have the luxury of trying to explain. Their public diplomacy must first be oriented around the constraints of the environment in which they function, including the need to capture attention in an over-crowded information space. It is difficult to explain if no one is listening.
Relations with the PRC
During Ma's presidency, Taiwan experienced a shift in its relations with the PRC. This included the expansion of direct links between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, which allowed for much greater movement of people and goods. Moreover, since 2009, the so-called “diplomatic truce” ended the competition between the PRC and Taiwan for diplomatic allies. These developments in the political terrain may have provided the framework for longer-term engagement based on the value of people-to-people diplomacy: “The proliferation of crosscutting ties and the rising frequency of interaction … tend to stabilize bilateral relations. They make disruptive behaviour more expensive by raising the spectre of ripple effects across issues and actors.”Footnote 18
In early November 2015, Ma Ying-jeou met Xi Jinping 习近平, the president of the PRC, in Singapore. This was the first time the heads of state from Taiwan and China had met since the 1940s. Xi and Ma addressed each other as “Mister” rather than “President,” and no joint statement or agreement of any kind was issued. The summit was clearly symbolic, communicating a narrative about Ma's desired legacy, rather than substantive. Despite this, over 1,000 protestors still gathered in Taipei to express their opposition to the meeting.Footnote 19
Against this backdrop, Taiwan continued to encourage visitors from the PRC to visit the island. In 1988, just 386 Chinese tourists visited Taiwan. In 2008, after Taiwan's government passed legislation to open the island to Chinese tour groups and allow direct flights to Taiwan from the PRC, the numbers grew – from 329,000 in 2008 to 1.6 million in 2010.Footnote 20 In July 2011, independent travellers from China were permitted to visit Taiwan.Footnote 21 By 2015, over 4 million Chinese tourists arrived in Taiwan, while visitors from elsewhere declined.Footnote 22
Tourism is an important method of increasing familiarity with Taiwan among Chinese from the PRC. While there is only largely anecdotal evidence of the impact of visiting Taiwan on Chinese tourists,Footnote 23 researchers have found that curiosity about Taiwan and the people who live there and a willingness to see and understand the differences between Taiwan and the PRC are cited by tourists from the PRC as reasons for visiting the island.Footnote 24
Domestic challenges
The above changes in Taiwan's external environment have impacted on the continuing consolidation of the island's democratic culture. In particular, Ma Ying-jeou's policies towards the PRC inspired the reappearance of protest politics, especially among the young, who feared the president and the KMT were “selling out” Taiwan.Footnote 25 The most visible manifestation of this was the Sunflower Movement in early 2014, during which students occupied the Legislative Yuan – the first time this body has been occupied in the history of the Republic of China – in protest against the passing of the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement (CSSTA) by the Ma administration without clause-by-clause review in the Legislature. Protestors worried that this trade pact with the PRC would damage Taiwan's economy and make it vulnerable to political pressure from Beijing. On 29 and 30 March 2014, rallies were held in 49 cities in 21 countries in support of the protests, with participants mobilized through new communications technologies.Footnote 26
The Sunflower Movement confirmed Taiwan's status as a consolidating democracy. A democratic political culture encourages the participation of its citizens. It demands transparency in its legislative processes and accountability when controversial decisions are taken. Democracy provides the space for disagreement, debate and dissension. Protest is permitted. Democracy is chaotic and rarely orderly, but this does not translate into “insecure” or “unstable.” This was a strong message – an appealing soft power narrative – that was not communicated. When asked during interviews in 2015 and 2016 about the absence of protest stories in governmental communications, officials observed that they were discouraged from publicizing bad news or any story that might portray Taiwan in a negative way. However, the history of propaganda and public diplomacy confirms that by providing an accurate and rounded account, including coverage of difficult and sensitive news stories, sources are deemed to be more credible by audiences.Footnote 27 Long-term trust, an absolutely essential component for the success of government-led external communications, grows as a natural consequence of such credibility.
The domestic political culture plays an excessive role in Taiwan's external communications. When asked in interviews why certain themes are used and not used, members of the bureaucracies responsible for Taiwan's overseas projection expressed anxiety about the way competing political interests (including civil society groups), as well as the media, would react. Taiwan's public diplomacy is therefore subject to self-censorship as its work is conditioned by government anticipation of how political interests will react. This overrides any suggestion that (a) debate and dissension reveal a compelling narrative about the strength of Taiwan's democracy; and (b) Taiwan's public diplomacy should be concerned with explaining policy to international audiences rather than the domestic public.
The communications landscape
Shifts towards digital, internet-based and dialogical platforms and social media have not only transformed the communication landscape but have also impacted on diplomacy.Footnote 28 Instant 24/7 communications and the declining relevance of time and space as barriers to interaction have altered the way foreign policy is constructed and how diplomacy is practised. In particular, social media have compressed the space diplomats need to reflect on issues and unfolding events before responding in an official capacity. The instantaneous nature of news and communications means that narratives are shaped long before governments and foreign ministries have agreed and approved a reaction. Instant communications impress upon political actors the need to be both relevant and attractive. While diplomats and foreign ministries have always engaged in communication – private and public, bilateral and multilateral, truthful and deceitful – the velocity at which news and information now flow around the world has both broadened and complicated the work of every emissary. Not only have the size and scale of conversations about diplomacy expanded to include audiences who were previously excluded from discussions, but members of a diplomatic mission, regardless of rank, function or responsibility, must also be aware of the public diplomacy swirling around them as well as the impact of what they do and what they say on public opinion (at home and overseas).
In short, the communications revolution has multiplied the number and type of actors involved in the foreign policy process. Public diplomacy is no longer the preserve of states, governments, foreign ministries and press officers. Now, the non-state sector, including civil society and just about anyone with a smart ‘phone capable of accessing the internet, can also insert their voice in the diplomatic process.Footnote 29
Taiwan has been slow to adapt to this information revolution and has only a small official presence in the conversations taking place in the social media (in interviews, MoFA officials expressed concerns about “cyber security” and appeared anxious about the possible response of legislators and domestic media to social media posts). This is owing to the structures and mindsets that define Taiwan's bureaucratic arrangements, which I will discuss in more detail below.
A new model of external communications
Taiwan's external communications have shifted from a model based on political warfare (rationalized by the prevailing Cold War-like context that has structured the confrontational Beijing–Taipei relationship) to one oriented around public and especially cultural diplomacy. When external communications are used as instruments of political warfare,
the overall objective is defeat of the opponent. Political warfare aims at the overthrow of the opponent by aiming at fomenting a rebellion or other transformation in domestic political arrangements … Communication in conflict focuses on three objectives, demoralizing an opponent, mobilizing allies and supporters, and managing the actions of neutrals by preferably mobilizing them to our cause or at least preventing them from going over to our opponents.Footnote 30
It is possible to argue that Taiwan's external communications are still best understood via a Cold War prism, defined by competition and confrontation between the PRC and Taiwan.Footnote 31 In this framework, visibility is crucial for building and maintaining international authority, status and legitimacy. Joseph Nye notes that “Not only do actors try to influence each other directly and indirectly … they also compete to deprive each other of attractiveness and legitimacy, thus creating a disabling environment either in public opinion or in the country, and/or in the eyes of relevant third parties.”Footnote 32 So, in this context, we need to adjust our understanding of political warfare to suit the conditions of a post-Cold War environment where attention, legitimacy, status and credibility are the principal currencies of competition, rather than the demoralization, defeat or subjugation of the enemy.
The reorientation of Taiwan's external communications from political warfare towards public and cultural diplomacy reflects how successive governments have recognized that the exercise of soft power depends on other actors seeing, recognizing and responding to it. According to Garth Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell, public diplomacy
deals with the influence of public attitudes on the formation and execution of foreign policies. It encompasses dimensions of international relations beyond traditional diplomacy; the cultivation … of public opinion in other countries; the interaction of private groups and interests in one country with another; the reporting of foreign affairs and its impact on policy; communications between those whose job is communication, as diplomats and foreign correspondents; and the process of intercultural communications.Footnote 33
During the Ma administration, responsibility for this activity was diverted from the former GIO and placed within MoFA. The reorientation from political warfare to public diplomacy is indicated by the creation of the Public Diplomacy Coordination Council within MoFA. This should help Taiwan integrate its external communications with its diplomatic ambitions and practice. However, as I shall discuss below, these structural adjustments have created their own problems.
The reorientation of external communications under Ma is also represented by the creation of the Ministry of Culture. Cultural diplomacy, defined as “the exchange of ideas, information, art and other aspects of culture among nations and their peoples in order to foster mutual understanding,”Footnote 34 is considered an important means of accumulating and projecting soft power, as one report of the US State Department Advisory Committee on cultural diplomacy observed. The same report also notes that cultural diplomacy is the “linchpin of public diplomacy,” adding that “it is in cultural activities that a nation's idea of itself is best represented.”Footnote 35 Below, I shall also discuss the Ma administration's emphasis on cultural diplomacy.
Objectives
Finally, it should be noted that more attraction or familiarity does not necessarily translate into more influence.Footnote 36 External communications, including public and cultural diplomacy, will not persuade other governments to establish diplomatic relations with Taiwan. If skilfully designed and executed, a programme of external communication activities will, however, contribute to the creation of an environment in which people may become familiar with Taiwan and therefore be more willing to engage with Taiwan in some form. This correlates with the “hierarchy of impacts” developed by Leonard, Stead and Smewing in their discussion of public diplomacy. This hierarchy identifies four possible results: increasing familiarity among publics; increasing appreciation (seeing an issue or challenge from the perspective of another actor); engagement (which may lead to attraction, and then possibly impact on trade relations, educational opportunities, tourism, etc.); and, ultimately, influence.Footnote 37 While public diplomacy programmes do not necessarily follow this hierarchy in a linear fashion, it is impossible to expect to “influence” another state or foreign public without prioritizing familiarity as a first crucial step in any communication strategy. As the Gallup polling data cited earlier in this paper suggest, this is where Taiwan remains in the hierarchy.
For Taiwan, this is a crucial issue. While the island seeks more visibility, this does not automatically confer additional power or status. This is explained by the “disabling environment”Footnote 38 – the specific set of structures and relationships in which Taiwan is located, namely:
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• relations with Beijing and the US;
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• the absence of formal diplomatic relations with major powers;
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• omission from the most important international organizations, including the United Nations;
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• a national identity that is contested and largely undefined at home and abroad;
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• an international news environment that tends to report Taiwan only through specific conflict-driven “geopolitical frames,” namely Taiwan's relationship with the PRC and the US;Footnote 39
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• vigorous democratic competition between parties pursuing very different political and strategic agendas which, in part, still revolve around the issue of Taiwan's identity.Footnote 40
I also add to this list the architecture of Taiwan's foreign policy making, implementation and projection – and especially the bureaucratic relationships between diplomacy and external communications – that prevents Taiwan from developing a public diplomacy strategy appropriate for the information age. Most important is the reorganization of Taiwan's external communications under President Ma Ying-jeou, especially the abolition of the GIO and the transfer of its responsibilities to MoFA and the new Ministry of Culture. The consequences of this restructuring on Taiwan's ability to transit from the invisible to the visible will form the core of the remaining discussion below.
The Dissolution of the GIO
Established in the Nationalist capital Nanjing in May 1947, the GIO reported to the Executive Yuan. Its director-general, appointed on the premier's recommendation, was a member of the Cabinet, which ensured that communications and public diplomacy were represented in discussions about policymaking at the highest level.
The GIO's Department of International Information Service (IIS), which still exists within MoFA today, had clear responsibility for public diplomacy. Its duties included “the international dissemination of information and making a balanced use of audio-visual and printed materials to present the state of affairs in the ROC [Republic of China] to foreign countries, and for directing, supervising and evaluating the GIO's representatives abroad.”Footnote 41 The IIS was only one department within the GIO whose activities related to Taiwan's international communication. Others were responsible for compiling and translating foreign language materials, supervising the production and distribution to representative offices of a range of multi-media resources, and serving the needs of foreign correspondents in Taiwan. In 1995, the GIO described its public diplomacy functions in the following way:
The GIO disseminates to the international community the Republic of China's goals and the fruits of its hard work, emphasizing that the ROC is marching toward political democratization, economic liberalization, and social openness. The GIO also stresses that the ROC is participating in the activities of the international community, performing its duties as a member of that community. The GIO maintains and enhances friendly relations with the mass media abroad, providing them with a variety of materials at all times so as to make the international community speedily and fully understand the ROC government's policies and achievements …
The GIO cooperates with and assists our overseas organizations in strengthening and expanding the use of audio-visual materials through such channels as the news media, scholarly circles, the world of education, the overseas Chinese community, student groups abroad, etc.Footnote 42
The closure of the GIO in May 2012 was part of a broader set of cuts in the number of agencies reporting to the Executive Yuan, from 37 to 29, in an effort to encourage greater government efficiency. Broadcasting, films and publications were transferred to the new Ministry of Culture; the responsibilities of the GIO's international information departments were relocated to MoFA (which now hosts the departments of international communications and the Co-ordination Council for Public Diplomacy); and the domestic information department now resides in the office of the Executive Yuan's spokesperson.
Few democracies have such a separate institution tasked with designing and coordinating external communications, but few democracies face the political challenges in the international system that Taiwan confronts on an almost daily basis. The closure of the GIO by the Ma administration and the transfer of its responsibilities to MoFA and the Ministry of Culture reveal a clear and significant vision for the organization of Taiwan's external communications. In particular, the Ma government decided to privilege culture, and especially “traditional Chinese culture,” in Taiwan's international strategy, thus downplaying the more political-oriented (and some would say deliberately provocative) narratives of Chen Shui-bian's 陳水扁 presidency (2000–2008). Interviewees in both the GIO and MoFA were aware of the problems facing American public diplomacy following the closure of the United States Information Agency (USIA) and its merger with the US State Department on 1 October 1999,Footnote 43 and they worried that Taiwan's public diplomacy would face similar difficulties. In particular, former GIO officers, interviewed in 2011, were anxious that MoFA's much larger bureaucracy would swallow up public diplomacy.
The closure of the GIO and the reorganization of the structures responsible for external communications have impacted on Taiwan's ability to project internationally its “soft power.” First, there is a sharp discrepancy in the culture and working practices of the GIO and MoFA. Public diplomacy depends on, and promotes, transparency and publicity. MoFA represents a more traditional, closed-door approach to diplomacy, preferring to work with other career diplomats rather than with the media or general public. Career MoFA officers consider it a good day when Taiwan does not make the news, an attitude that is almost the absolute opposite to public diplomacy practice. Diplomats and public diplomats see the world and how to engage with it in very different ways. As William P. Kiehl has noted in his discussion of the USIA's closure, when the State Department “looks to public diplomacy, it sees public affairs and focuses on immediate gains when it should be looking at long term engagement, measuring ‘success’ in decades, not hours.”Footnote 44 This worldview and the clash of approaches to diplomacy helps to explain why, during interviews conducted for this paper in 2016, one set of actors in MoFA described another group within the same ministry as “amateurs” in public diplomacy. Clearly, former members of the GIO still feel they represented the professionalization of Taiwan's public diplomacy, and there is a lingering perception that this status has been downgraded, if not abandoned altogether. At the same time, interviews with members of MoFA, also conducted in 2016, revealed their frustration that sometimes their former GIO colleagues focus only on the media and presentation, and often lack political or diplomatic judgement about particular issues. Before the abolition of the GIO, a member of the Information and Liaison Office confessed to the author that “we are more like journalists” than bureaucrats, a claim that continues to aggravate the relationship between MoFA and the former GIO.
The second consequence of this restructuring is that Taiwan's government has lost the possibility of reforming the GIO to become a central, specialist centre that sits outside the other departments and ministries, and which can design and potentially co-ordinate the full spectrum of communication activities on behalf of the administration as a whole. Now, MoFA needs to coordinate with a host of other departments, including the Ministry of Culture, the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission, the Mainland Affairs Commission among others, without having the power to steer public diplomacy activities across government. Moreover, the dispersal of effort prevents the design and communication of consistent themes and messages around unified purposes and principles. Former members of the GIO highlighted in interviews their frustration at the mixed messages, aimed at both domestic and international audiences, which are sometimes communicated by different ministries and government departments. This was confirmed by interviews with members of the foreign press corps who were exasperated by the mixed messages they received from different branches of government – both prior to and following the closure of the GIO.
More importantly, there is no longer a senior member of the government with the equivalent authority and responsibility of the former director-general of the GIO who can contribute to the planning and execution of government policy. The premier advised the president whom to appoint as head of the GIO; the latter then had a seat in Cabinet. The government clearly recognizes the need to influence public opinion abroad in ways that are favourable to Taiwan's interests. However, there is also a need for those with the expertise in communications to advise every level of government, at home and abroad, about the implications of foreign public opinion on present and future policies, programmes and statements. The director-general of the GIO occupied such a senior advisory position. In other words, it is important to recognize that not only should external communications be concerned with reflecting and reporting foreign policy, but that they should also guide it. Interviews in 2016 revealed that the MoFA spokesperson “from time to time” talks with the minister of foreign affairs about the official response to foreign policy stories covered by the media but rarely discusses with him communication with publics overseas. It is clear that the primary function of Taiwan's public diplomacy is the distribution of messages about policy crafted further up the chain of command (one member of an overseas mission with responsibility for press relations confirmed in interview in 2016 that Taiwan remains committed to one-way messaging – “we speak, you listen”). Relevant members of MoFA voiced their frustration that their expertise in external communications is not represented at senior levels when policy is being made. Edward Murrow, head of the USIA under President Kennedy, insisted on participating in the “take-offs” and not just the “crash landings,” and history records that a more integrated approach to policy and public diplomacy contributed to the successful management of several international crises during Kennedy's presidency.Footnote 45 The sporadic conversations that took place about public diplomacy at the highest levels of government during the Ma administration, revealed during interviews at MoFA, suggest that the government structure was unable to understand the connection between foreign policy making and foreign policy communication.
Finally, MoFA's internal structures and processes hamper Taiwan's response to the current trend towards “digital diplomacy.” Interviewees in 2016 defended the absence of a single, coherent digital strategy by referring to the hierarchical and deferential nature of Taiwan's bureaucracy. While speed is clearly the defining characteristic of the modern information environment, all official statements and releases originating within MoFA must be scrutinized and approved before their publication – by which time the story has moved on and Taiwan's position has been defined by others in the social media.Footnote 46 One reason Taiwan's representative office in the US, TECRO, maintains an active social media presence (on Twitter and Facebook) is its recognition that when news media coverage focuses on China, Taiwan needs a voice. Few of Taiwan's overseas missions are active on social media, with the Taipei representative office in the UK noticeably absent from Twitter and Facebook until 2017 (during an interview for this paper, one member of the office asked, “what is the difference between an email and Twitter?”). Following MoFA's absorption of the GIO, interviewees in the ministry shared their concerns that colleagues with responsibility for communication remain preoccupied with traditional print and broadcast media and lack the necessary understanding of digital media.
Emphasizing Culture
The dissolution of the GIO coincided with the creation of the Ministry of Culture, suggesting a shift in emphasis under Ma towards cultural diplomacy (implying a government-led programme in pursuit of national objectives, for example, the “Spotlight Taiwan” projectFootnote 47 ) and cultural relations (undertaken by the cultural industries for the sake of cultural engagement, for example, the world famous Cloud Gate Dance Theatre). Here, we can identify the other communicative activities that may contribute to raising Taiwan's international profile: culture, food, tourism, charity, film and film festivals, etc. – all of which are only possible because of a strong base of support outside the state. Perhaps the most high-profile development in Taiwan's cultural diplomacy under Ma Ying-jeou is the creation of the Taiwan Academies in 2011. At the time of writing, 11 such academies were open in Europe, Asia and North America. They are designed to act as a “platform where the international community can learn about the comprehensive development and accomplishments of Taiwan.”Footnote 48 However, most academies operate only online or on paper and only a few have a tangible physical presence, and they have been criticized for their lack of activity.Footnote 49 The Ministry of Culture identifies the value of the academies to Taiwan's cultural diplomacy and cultural relations in the following terms:
Taiwan's unique Chinese culture adds sparkle to the global cultural spectrum. In the future, the resource centres of the Taiwan Academy will hold hands-on cultural activities such as calligraphy and painting appreciation, floral arrangements, film lectures, and other artistic exhibitions and performances. By cooperating with local professional arts and educational organizations, the Taiwan Academy plans to offer high-quality art performances and educational activities to systematically introduce the various aspects of Taiwanese culture.Footnote 50
At the same time, the ministry implies that the academies help to promote a different Chinese culture from their direct competitors, the PRC's Confucius Institutes: “Taiwan is the major Chinese cultural centre where Confucianism, Buddhism, Zen, literature, architecture, arts and crafts, and traditional customs are promoted and preserved more completely as compared to the many regions influenced by Chinese culture” (emphasis added).Footnote 51 In interviews in 2011, members of MoFA and the Council for Cultural Affairs were adamant that the Taiwan Academy programme was not created to compete with the Confucius Institutes.Footnote 52
Cultural diplomacy can make a positive contribution to Taiwan's international communications. It can help with the problem of familiarity and compensate for the deficit in media attention Taiwan faces on a daily basis. However, cultural diplomacy does not operate in a vacuum from either the political and cultural contexts of both the sending and receiving agents, or from other types of engagement and communication. Culture is not and should not be considered as a solution to diplomatic, political or even presentation problems. And while the strategic reasons for Ma's emphasis on culture are reasonable given the wider political problems Taiwan faces, the subjectivity of our responses means that outcomes are “more in control of the subject than is often the case with hard power.”Footnote 53 This means that although cultural diplomacy may, in the long term and with patience and innovation, create the conditions for greater familiarity, empathy and understanding, there is no guarantee that cultural interest will translate into concrete results. There is no certified direct correlation between consuming a cultural product and a change in opinion or behaviour towards the source.Footnote 54 Cultural diplomacy is not a substitute for other types of communication and engagement, but rather it complements and can reinforce and add value to work done elsewhere. By dissolving the GIO, burying its work in MoFA, and creating a Ministry of Culture, the Ma administration communicated a strong, but misplaced, faith in the power of cultural diplomacy in foreign policy and international relations (in 2011, a member of the GIO's Department of International Information suggested to the author that “sooner or later” international audiences would “get used to” Taiwanese movies). Interviewees expressed concern that a Ministry of Culture is unable to consider the intersection of political objectives and communication strategy, and this makes such a body an ineffective agent of diplomacy.
Conclusion
Taiwan is soft power rich but public diplomacy poor. Its liberal democratic political culture confers upon Taiwan a soft power capacity that should be attractive to other members of the international community. Yet, Taiwan remains largely invisible in international political and media discourses, while the low level of popular familiarity with Taiwan is the starting point for the design of a new external communications strategy. It is possible to argue that Taiwan's position in the international system – the “disabling environment” – hinders any attempt to raise the island's profile and progress towards engagement and, ultimately, influence. It is important to be realistic and recognize that the “hard power” domain does have an effect on how successful Taiwan may be in exercising “soft power.” Yet, this research has demonstrated that structural and cultural arrangements within Taiwan's government bureaucracy also continue to have a detrimental effect on international communication. Responsibility for this situation cannot be conferred entirely upon the Ma administration, for the bureaucratic structure has long had a negative impact on Taiwan's international performance.Footnote 55 The GIO was a problematic institution – in an interview conducted in 2011, one foreign journalist in Taiwan described the GIO as “completely useless.” He explained that, when securing interviews and gaining access to stories, “we [journalists] don't need them” (correspondents had the mobile ‘phone numbers of the key government figures and could therefore bypass the GIO). Also in 2011, interviews with members of the GIO's Department of International Information revealed some of the main problems: the office maintained no relationships with foreign journalists based in Taiwan, preferring instead to invite and take care of foreign correspondents on short visits; the interviewees claimed that they were responsible for only providing information and protocol; and the office did not suggest any stories to foreign correspondents in Taiwan as it considered them to be “local journalists.” Moreover, interviews with both officials and foreign journalists confirmed that the GIO was unable to coordinate a single consistent message across government departments (each department would communicate different and contradictory messages). So, complicating the GIO's ability to perform its public diplomacy was a deep-rooted structural confusion within its architecture. Lines of decision making and accountability were blurred or overlapping, while the change of government in 2000 from KMT to DPP brought to the surface questions about the identity of the territory that the GIO represented and promoted. This is very clearly visible in the shift from the more political warfare model of external communications,Footnote 56 oriented around Taiwan's Cold War with the PRC, to one focused much more on global public diplomacy, as well as in the GIO's diminishing use of the term “Republic of China” in favour of “Taiwan.”Footnote 57
Yet, for all these problems, one cannot help but conclude that by abolishing the GIO, the Ma government threw the baby out with the bathwater. The government's decision to close the GIO and share out its responsibilities for external communications to both the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a new Ministry of Culture has not remedied any of the difficulties. In fact, my interviews conducted over five years have revealed that serious tensions still exist between personnel based on different perceptions of their aims and objectives and the methods of achieving them. One member of an overseas mission acknowledged in 2016 that there is “still a long way to go” before MoFA and members of the former GIO can work together towards full and constructive integration.
A well-designed and appropriately resourced external communications strategy can raise awareness of Taiwan's economic power and its democratic credentials, and encourage more knowledge of, and discussion about, its political and strategic predicament. It can publicize the values, ideas, culture and positive behaviour that defines Taiwan's soft power capacity; it can help make sure Taiwan's voice is heard on the relevant issues; and can help build the relationships and collaborative activities than can manage, if not solve, the most pressing problems Taiwan faces. If skilfully designed and executed, an external communications strategy can contribute to the creation of an “enabling environment” that will help Taiwan to manage in the short term, and perhaps surmount in the long term, the more disabling conditions of the international system in which it currently operates. These are not the problems of any one president or administration representing any single political party. Rather, they are issues that Taiwan's government, media system and cultural industries must consider as the integrated beneficiaries of a long-term investment and coherent vision.
Biographical note
Gary Rawnsley is professor of public diplomacy in the department of international politics, Aberystwyth University, UK. Working at the intersection of international communications and international relations, Professor Rawnsley has published extensively on propaganda, public and cultural diplomacy, soft power, and the media and democracy. He has particular interest in East Asia, as demonstrated by his co-editorship of the Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media (2015) and Taiwan Cinema: International Reception and Social Change (2017). He is the author of “To know us is to love us: public diplomacy and international broadcasting in contemporary Russia and China,” published in 2015 in Politics 35(3–4).
