Sports Department》Local election campaigns continue to bring out sports beef. It’s time for Sports Minister Li Yang to serve

Li Yang. (File photo)

This year's Asian Games has a total of 55 medals, including 5 golds, 17 silvers and 33 bronzes, ranking 15th in the medal list. For the sports department that has celebrated its first anniversary, it is definitely not a "good-looking" report card. Minister Li Yang promised to review the training plan and hopes to cultivate Taiwanese sports talents from grassroots training stations. However, the athletic department should do more than just increase grassroots training. How to establish communication channels between the central and local governments, take stock of the needs and capabilities of local sports, and understand the vision of future sports development in municipalities, counties and cities are even more urgent tasks.

In particular, as the local elections on November 28 are approaching, candidates in various municipalities, counties and cities have come up with their own campaign policy arguments to actively win the support of voters. For example, Taipei Citizen Progressive Party candidate Shen Boyang proposed the vision of a city with unlimited sports, connecting community sports communities with parks, riversides and fitness minibuses, building a super citizen sports center at the Yuanshan Flower Expo as a city base, and building a football stadium in Guandu to connect with international standards. Yunlin County Kuomintang candidate Zhang Jiajun mentioned that the emerging sport of pickleball would be the main axis, extending from one township and one stadium, community leagues to brand events combined with agricultural tourism, and advocated the construction of the Daxiluo National Sports Center to complete the county's sports center layout.

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Candidates' policies, from evaluation to implementation, must be coordinated across bureaus after selection. However, the Sports Ministry should also take these "complete" sports policies seriously and carefully assess whether they are consistent with the department's internal policy direction. As scholars Jonathan Grix and Lesley Philpots pointed out using the UK as an example, sports policy seems to be moving toward multi-party governance, but in fact the central government still controls the policy direction through resource allocation. In this case, the Sports Ministry should play the role of a locomotive. The minister should prioritize resource inventory and policy guidance, rather than just focusing on the Asian Games results.

Since the last century, Australia has gradually established a division of labor network between the central and local governments. The federal government is responsible for the development of competitive sports through the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS); states and territories have established their own sports academies and built large venues, forming a national sports academy network with the AIS. As for the more than 500 local councils across the country, they are responsible for community facilities such as swimming pools and golf courses. In order to avoid fragmentation, Australia has established a ministerial conference since 1973 to allow federal and state sports ministers to regularly communicate with each other's needs. In 2011, governments at all levels signed a policy framework to define the division of labor roles. In the same year, a cross-government agreement was entered into to standardize how various sports academies jointly support individual sports associations.

The Dutch experience is jointly planned by the government and the National Olympic Games. By listening to local opinions, the national and grassroots sports policies are connected from the bottom up. In June 2018, the Dutch Sports Ministry, the Netherlands Olympic Games (NOC*NSF) and the Dutch Municipal Sports Association signed the "National Sports Agreement", setting out six major directions including sports equality and venue sustainability. Each city or town hires an independent coordinator with central subsidy funds, and drafts a local movement agreement with local groups, describing the local movement development goals, work projects, division of labor methods and budget planning, and then applies for central implementation funds accordingly.

The author took stock of 47 major county and mayor candidates and found that only 8 mentioned a relatively complete discussion of sports politics. More than half cited the construction of sports centers or domes as their main demands. 14 talked about national sports and health, but only 4 touched on the cultivation of athletes. When the democratically elected local heads are about to take office at the end of the year with these political views, the most important thing for the central government to do is to take stock and provide guidance. However, it seems that the Sports Ministry is still exploring its role. Even the newly established National Sports Industry Development Center has recently focused on the "Asian Games Elite Athletes Card" jointly launched with the Chinese Olympic Games. Compared with the plans for venues and events that are in full swing by candidates in various counties and cities, it is inevitable that there is overestimation of talents.

Minister Li Yang's sister recently revealed on social media that her brother was worried that he might step down at any time due to poor performance when he took office, triggering many netizens to leave messages of encouragement. Now that he has been in office for more than a year, the minister might as well use the Ministry of Sports' Asian Games image advertisement to encourage himself: "Don't underestimate yourself." In the past, Li Yang challenged himself to become a top player. Now, as the head of a sports agency, in addition to reviewing the "unsightly" results of the Asian Games and insufficient player training, what is more urgent is to repair the tense relationship between the sports department and individual sports associations, and take the initiative to take stock of development needs for each county and city. In this way, the Sports Department can find its role between the central and local governments and shoulder the social responsibility of Taiwan's sports development vision for the next decade.

Author: Lin Junjie (Assistant Professor of the Master's Degree Program in International Sports Affairs at National Sport University)