Abstract
“The Regeneration of Historic Sites” is a competitive subsidy program initiated by Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture in 2016. In 2017, it was incorporated into the Executive Yuan’s “Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program.” As of the end of 2024, the program has approved 96 projects across all 22 counties and cities in Taiwan, with a total subsidy exceeding NT$9 billion. This study employs discourse analysis to examine how local governments articulate historical narratives, uses of heritage, and scalar strategies in their proposals. Through this approach, it seeks to reveal how these locally grounded initiatives function as a cultural project aimed at reconstructing national history and collective memory, while uncovering the politics of scale and place imagination embedded in heritage preservation. The findings indicate that most local proposals construct relational frameworks of “grand history” and “large-scale” interpretation to justify the cultural and spatial value of heritage use. These projects exhibit diverse narrative strategies—including linear modernization, fragmented reconstruction, and multi-temporal collage—demonstrating how local histories are upscaled into the domain of national history and even inscribed within global cultural discourses. Overall, the program reflects a national consciousness pursuing multiculturalism, Taiwanese subjectivity, the construction of Taiwanese history, and de-Sinicization since the 1990s. It also embodies a cultural policy thinking centered on the local, linking local cultural characteristics and subjectivity to broader Taiwanese and global contexts. Through unique local cultures, Taiwan is presented as a place of global significance.