Luo Dayou blasted receiving cultural subsidy as "shameless"! Li Yuan counterattacks head-on: That’s competition

Minister of Culture Li Yuan attended the opening ceremony of the 2026 Taiwan Annual Meeting of the Museum Personnel Training Committee of the International Council of Museums today.

[Reporter Dong Baiting/Taipei Report] Luo Dayou recently criticized the younger generation on a radio program for taking government subsidies to call themselves cultural figures after only a few years of creation. It is "shameless" to receive cultural subsidies. The Internet has once again ridiculed them as "blue bird fodder". In an interview on the 11th, Minister of Culture Li Yuanjin expressed his sympathy for young creators and bluntly stated that the outside world has a huge misunderstanding of cultural subsidies. This is by no means a benefit that falls from the sky, but extremely strict professional competition.

Li Yuan pointed out that different eras have different definitions of cultural people. In the past, society regarded cultural people as elites with a guiding nature. However, in contemporary times, culture is a job, and it is often the industry with the least security. General workers or office workers enjoy labor health insurance and institutional benefits, but creators who choose to write, draw comics, make sculptures or make movies full-time have almost no way out once they give up work.

Li Yuan took Yang Shuangzi, a writer who has won international awards in recent years, as an example. He revealed that it was not until Yang Shuangzi received the first pot of gold subsidy from the Ministry of Culture eight years ago that he was able to quit his odd job of delivering goods and devote himself to creation. Li Yuan stressed that literature subsidies often require 500 or 600 people to compete for 10 to 20 places, and more than 90% of applicants will be eliminated. All the Ministry of Culture can do is to find potential new blood among limited resources and provide initial support.

"I wish that everyone in Taiwan could be a cultural person and that everyone has the opportunity to create." Li Yuan said that the current level of literature, comics and music among young people is far more ideal and talented than that of the poor generations in the past. Many people are gritting their teeth and persevering despite extremely low incomes. What he is most worried about is not that the budget will be criticized, but that funding cuts will directly stifle youth opportunities. For example, if the short film subsidy quota is cut from 20 to 8, the ultimate victim will still be Taiwan's overall cultural competitiveness.