Abstract
This study explores the potential and challenges of Taiwan’s cultural diplomacy flagship mechanism through the case study of Taiwan NOW, a Taiwan-Japan cultural exchange arts project designed to respond to the Tokyo 2020 Cultural Olympiad in the first place. Although delayed and decoupled from the Olympics due to the pandemic, the project adopted a ‘co-production and co-creation’ approach to showcase Taiwan’s contemporary, diverse, and innovative cultural values.
The paper reviews theories of cultural diplomacy and flagship mechanisms firstly, positions the Cultural Olympiad as a significant arena for Taiwan’s cultural diplomacy practice, and explains the pandemic’s influence on the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 as contextual background. Using the flagship mechanism as an analytical framework, the study examines Taiwan NOW across contextual influences, multiple purposes, multilevel governance, and tool selection. Through this case study, the paper examines the characteristics of Taiwan’s cultural diplomacy, its interrelations with domestic cultural governance, and the opportunities and challenges in its implementation mechanism.
The findings indicates that Taiwan NOW can be viewed as a cultural diplomacy “quasi-flagship” mechanism. Despite constraints on sovereignty and pandemic challenges, the project expanded Taiwan’s international visibility and diplomatic space through arts and cultural performances, demonstrating adaptive resilience, domestic exemplarity, and transnational and cross-departmental collaboration. The project also leveraged innovative digital tools in the post-pandemic era. Moreover, its implementation through a cultural intermediary organization demonstrates the strategic advantages of the arm’s-length principle in ensuring professional quality. However, the project lacks an impact assessment and demonstrates weak bureaucratic stability, and the cultural values it conveys are not grounded in public engagement. Accordingly, this study recommends establishing a long-term, institutionalized flagship mechanism and adopting impact assessment frameworks to sustain cultural diplomacy practices through governance innovation.