President Ma Ying-jeou met on the afternoon of March 5 with world-renowned economist and "father of the creative industries" Dr. John Howkins. In addition to welcoming Dr. Howkins to Taiwan, President Ma emphasized that the government here is working to hasten industrial transformation and turn Taiwan from an efficiency-driven economy into an innovation-driven economy. The president said this effort will also help to generate higher added value for Taiwan's cultural industries.
In remarks, President Ma stated that Dr. Howkins is a world-renowned expert on cultural and creative industries. He is also an important figure in research related to the fields of copyright, media, and entertainment, he said. President Ma expressed hope that during his stay in Taiwan, Dr. Howkins will provide suggestions on the direction of the future development of Taiwan's cultural and creative industries.
President Ma commented that the ideas set forth in Dr. Howkins' 2001 book The Creative Economy: How People Make Money from Ideas were well-received, and Dr. Howkins subsequently became known as a father figure in the global cultural and creativity sector. In addition, the president stated, Dr. Howkins in 2009 published Creative Ecologies: Where Thinking Is a Proper Job, in which he shared thoughts included in lectures he had given throughout the world over the course of many years, as well as what he had learned through his observations. In particular, he focused on his experience and observations with respect to mainland China, the president noted. This second book, too, was widely discussed throughout the global cultural and creativity community, he added.
President Ma explained that the cultural and creative industries were previously singled out as being among Taiwan's "six major emerging industries" for development. The government, he said, in 2010 passed the Law for the Development of the Cultural and Creative Industries with the hope that funding, research and development, exchanges, tax incentives, and training might create more room for development of Taiwan's cultural and creative industries. At the same time, in order to safeguard the interests of persons involved in these sectors on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, the ROC and mainland China in 2010 signed the "Cross-Strait Agreement on Intellectual Property Right Protection and Cooperation," he said. While this agreement still does not fully resolve the problem of infringement of intellectual property rights, the president commented, it has already helped to improve the situation.
The president expressed his viewpoint that only an open society provides the conditions for vigorous creativity, and that a free environment is a crucial pre-condition for bold imagination. He stated that Taiwan's democratic, free, and open climate provides the environment for a diverse range of cultural and creative industries that have won the attention of the international community. President Ma stated that the government is pleased to see glass makers Liuligongfang, Tittot, and Franz Porcelain become prized brand names in the international arena. This displays a unique side of Taiwan's cultural and creative industries, and earns these firms a strong position in the greater Chinese marketplace, he remarked.
President Ma also stated that in recent years Taiwan's youth have put in outstanding performances at international invention exhibitions and design contests, thus highlighting the rich creative capabilities of Taiwan. However, commercializing Taiwan's creativity and inventiveness is an enormous challenge in the development of this sector, he added. The president noted that the emphasis in Taiwan's production model in the past was on efficiency. While this yielded considerable accomplishments, the nation's industries have now come upon a bottleneck. Consequently, the government is encouraging industries to engage in innovative research and development with the hope of transforming the current efficiency-driven economy into an innovation-driven one, he said, which will enable Taiwan's cultural industries to create greater added value, he stated.
In addition to Dr. Howkins, the delegation included Chairman Fu Sheng Chiu (邱復生) of Taiwan Land Development Corp. and Managing Director Paul Owens of BOP Consulting. The group was accompanied to the Presidential Office by Deputy Minister of Culture George C. H. Hsu (許秋煌) to meet President Ma. Also attending the meeting was National Security Council Deputy Secretary-General John C. C. Deng (鄧振中).