Expanding Taiwan's publishing industry to help promote the core values of Taiwanese culture is a major objective of the Ministry of Culture, Minister Lung Ying-tai said at an Executive Yuan meeting today.
Overseas Chinese-speaking markets are the key targets of Taiwanese publishers, Lung pointed out, adding that the export of Taiwan-published books to Singapore and Malaysia in particular has the potential to double in the near future. Thus, the Ministry has plans to continue developing these two neighboring markets, she said.
On the other hand, the export of Taiwan publications to mainland China accounted for only 6.2 percent of the total mainly because of China's censorship on imported books and the high customs tariffs that amount to 10-18 percent of the book prices, the Minister noted.
These problems cannot be solved in a short time, but the Ministry will continue to help Taiwan's publishing companies remove such obstacles through negotiations under the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), a trade pact Taiwan and mainland China signed in 2010, Lung said.
Publishing is also a national security issue, the Minister pointed out. For example, although mainland Chinese establishments are not allowed to invest in Taiwan's publishing industry, they can still do it indirectly in the name of foreign investors. The Ministry has found a case in which the exclusive copyright of an international journal's traditional Chinese-character edition was bought by mainland Chinese investors, Lung said.
The Minister added that as Korean pop culture and mainland Chinese television series became more popular in Taiwan, translated foreign books now dominate local bestseller lists. In 2011, up to 80 percent of the best-selling books in local bookstore chains were translated works, while the value of Taiwan imported book copyrights was 4.78 times that of the country's export, according to Lung.
The Minister indicated that agents often assist writers in many other countries such as the United States and Japan in negotiating for the global copyright sales of their new books, but such international brokerage system is just getting started in Taiwan. Therefore, the Ministry is working hard on an international copyright export program to help Taiwanese publications become better known worldwide, Lung said.