The first meeting of a collaborative governance platform for the Romantic Highway No. 3 program was held today at the Executive Yuan, with participants pledging to stimulate rural economic development and revitalize Hakka culture.
Ministers without portfolio Lin Wan-yi and Chang Ching-sen presided over the meeting, which included participants from 11 Cabinet ministries and agencies, the cities Taoyuan and Taichung, Hsinchu and Miaoli counties, and five experts.
The Executive Yuan said that program responsibilities will be spread among three action task forces. The Hakka Affairs Council will be in charge of cultural modeling—researching and promoting cultural content and concepts, with the Council of Agriculture handling environmental development, and the Ministry of Economic Affairs guiding industrial development.
The Hakka Affairs Council is also charged with resource planning at the central and local levels, using joint governance methods to implement an overall strategy focusing on travel packages with cultural and ecological themes. The Council will apply innovative rural development models to link cultural and industrial chains, and set up rural Hakka community demonstration sites. These methods will subsequently be applied in other Hakka communities such as Liudui in the Kaohsiung-Pingtung area and the East Rift Valley in eastern Taiwan.
Revitalizing Hakka culture is a long-term project that takes more than just hardware infrastructure. It also requires sustained, long-term efforts to foster a greater awareness of Hakka lifestyles and aesthetics, bring communities together in creative ways, and develop environmental factors that will foster the development of local industries.
At today's meeting, Cabinet-level government agencies and local governments exchanged ideas about cycling trails, eco-friendly bus routes, creating scenic agricultural and woodland sites, and horticulture-related activities. Their goal was to reach a consensus on joint approaches to creating dynamic rural Hakka communities with vision, and the ability to generate momentum that will develop local economies and revitalize Hakka culture along the provincial highway.
The Hakka Affairs Council also said that the first phase of the Romantic Highway No. 3 program, from 2016 through 2019, includes over 100 projects with a total budget of NT$5.6 billion (US$181.23 million). In conjunction with the Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program, the Executive Yuan has also earmarked a special budget of NT$2 billion (US$64.73 million) to back Hakka culture initiatives from 2017 to 2020, with rolling reviews and annual budget adjustments.
The first phase of the program focuses on building hardware and software infrastructure that embraces a "slow food, slow travel and slow living" ethos. These efforts will include surveying, selecting and publishing works about the cultural history of Hakka communities along Provincial Highway No. 3, creating music, literature and artists' villages, optimizing natural and cultural scenic spots, and linking convenient, seamless transportation networks.
The Romantic Highway No. 3 program, along with complementary plans to promote cultural creativity, new agriculture, youth entrepreneurship, industry clusters and cultural and eco-tourism, is projected to attract over 900 young people to return to their Hakka communities, create over 2,600 job opportunities, and generate about NT$28.2 billion (US$912.62 million) in tourism revenues.