30 Second Overview:
The "Taiwan Encyclopedia," launched in 2004, was a milestone in Taiwan's attempt to establish cultural subjectivity, with a total budget of 520 million yuan. Starting from the grand blueprint envisioned by publisher Wang Rongwen—1.4 billion yuan (including 30 large volumes, 100,000 entries, and an English edition)—the project repeatedly struggled between the "authority" verified by experts and the "freedom" of online collaboration during actual implementation. After three systematic iterations (self-developed, MediaWiki, independent system), changes in licensing mechanisms (from GFDL to CC), and reductions in the print plan, the independent website was finally closed on July 15, 2014, and integrated into the "National Cultural Database." This experiment demonstrated a national role transformation in the digital age: shifting from attempting to monopolize "definitive interpretation" to providing "open resources" for public and AI collaboration.
"President Chen always believed that we should have a Taiwan Encyclopedia, an encyclopedia capable of faithfully capturing the trends and local customs of Taiwan."1 On May 13, 2004, then-President Chen Shui-bian formally elevated the compilation of the encyclopedia to a national strategic level in the 135th issue of the "Chen's E-newsletter," emphasizing its importance as a "complete search engine for researching Taiwan" and a "collection of Taiwanese culture knowledge."12
This five-hundred-million-yuan project was a gamble on "Taiwanese subjective interpretation rights." As one of the sub-projects of the "National Digital Archiving Project," it was closely related to the nation's concurrent promotion of digitalization, cultural and creative industries, and open data policies.2
Vision: The Publishing Tycoon's 1.4 Billion Yuan Grand Blueprint
The soul behind this massive undertaking was Wang Rongwen, Chairman of Yuanliu Publishing Company. For him, the encyclopedia was the ultimate achievement for a publisher. The vision Wang Rongwen proposed in the early stages was highly ambitious: he aimed to complete the online Chinese version within 4 years, the online English version within 5 years, and publish the print edition within 6 years (with at least 30 large volumes and 50 million Chinese characters, printing 10,000 copies for schools and international distribution).2
Content goals included a clear knowledge tree structure (Propedia) and over 100,000 entries. Referencing the budget revision of the 16th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, he estimated the total six-year budget to be 1.4 billion yuan, and suggested establishing an endowed foundation for long-term maintenance.2 To ensure authority, the project invited Nobel laureate Li Yuan-che to serve as the Chief Supervisor of the Editorial Review Committee in May 2007.13
However, there was a significant gap between reality and ideals. The actual total budget for execution was approximately 520 million yuan.1 The original plan to publish 20 print volumes in 2008 was ultimately not realized as scheduled because of funding constraints and the shift in focus to digital; only 6 volumes were compiled by Yuanliu's subsidiary, "Smart Archive Learning Technology," during the process, and the large-scale print publication plan did not materialize.124
📝 Curator's Note: When publishing dreams meet national budgets, this gamble seemed backed by the strongest support, yet it was destined for a ten-year negotiation with bureaucracy, technological change, and community culture.
Turning Point: The Tug-of-War of Three System Iterations and Licensing Mechanisms
The project initially adopted a "mass audience first" strategy and underwent three major technical system iterations and licensing evolutions:
- Self-Developed System (Activated in January 2005): Undertaken by the Taiwan Twenty-First Century Agenda Association. Registration for this system required providing a name, phone number, and even a National ID card number, raising serious privacy concerns.12 The initial policy of "payment upon submission approval" led to a flood of entries, causing severe delays in review.5
- MediaWiki System (Revised in 2007): The website switched to the MediaWiki system, using the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) for licensing.2 During this period, due to high openness, "user-generated content was almost unchecked," and it became plagued by infringing copied articles, which constituted the project's biggest quality crisis.12
- Independent System (Revised in October 2009): To solve issues of infringement and quality, the website was redeveloped into an independent system (taiwanpedia.culture.tw), and the licensing mechanism was adjusted to CC BY-NC-SA 2.5 Creative Commons License, clearly establishing a stance of "open but non-commercial use."12
"The public who enjoys using the internet tends to reject knowledge written and reviewed by official bodies."5 This became a consensus after discussions involving experts and scholars in 2006 by the Ministry of Education (now the Ministry of Culture). Experts were concerned not only about authority but also whether "Taiwanese subjectivity" might be diluted by noise.2
Outcomes: Knowledge Output Under the Pyramid Style
Despite the bumpy process, the Taiwan Encyclopedia left behind valuable academic heritage. The professional edition emphasized the "Pyramid Style": the first three sentences must contain concrete facts, followed by in-depth yet accessible explanations, and concluding with further reading guidance.6 In the latter half of the 2000s, this project systematically organized 16 fields including Taiwan's history, geography, customs, and literature.57
| Category | Data Content |
|---|---|
| Mass Audience Plan | 15,036 entries |
| Mass Audience Submissions | 11,793 (approx. 10,648 approved early on)2 |
| Cumulative Data | Approximately 50,008 entries accumulated by the end of 2011 (including unstrictly reviewed volume)2 |
| Professional Output | Over 13,000 high-quality entries reviewed by experts5 |
| Multimedia Resources | 8,929 images and some video files2 |
📝 Curator's Note: The most precious thing about this encyclopedia was not the five hundred million yuan, but that it forced experts from various fields to conduct a thorough knowledge examination of Taiwan during the early stages of digital transformation and attempt interaction with online communities.
Conclusion: Digital Retreat in 2014 and Paradigm Shift
In June 2014, the Ministry of Culture formally integrated the Taiwan Encyclopedia's entries into the "National Cultural Database" (nrch.culture.tw), ceasing community collaboration.12 On July 15, 2014, the independent website officially closed.12
This was a significant turning point: the nation chose to acknowledge the limitations of maintaining a single "definitive encyclopedia" in the Web 2.0 era, instead treating the content as part of "Open Data." Today, these entries are integrated into the "National Cultural Memory Bank 2.0," shifting from an "expert definitive edition" to a "public resource pool," and incorporating NLP and AI applications, emphasizing the sharing and re-creation of "cultural DNA."89
Challenges and Controversies: The New Battlefield of Knowledge Sovereignty
This knowledge war did not end. At the end of 2025, the China Encyclopedia Press released Taiwan Encyclopedia: History, with 960,000 characters, emphasizing the "One-China Principle."10 This proved that when we do not define ourselves, others will define us for us.
The future of Taiwanese knowledge sovereignty may not lie in a "national definitive edition," but in how local content can be effectively seen and maintained on global platforms (such as Wikipedia or large AI models). This five-hundred-million-yuan experiment left a profound lesson: the most suitable role for the nation is that of a guardian of basic archives and open data, not a monopolist of knowledge interpretation.
📝 Curator's Note: This experiment proved: the nation is suited to be a custodian of basic archives and open data, not a monopolizer of definitive interpretation. In an era of distributed collaboration, the vitality of knowledge comes from openness, not control.
Further Reading:
- Ministry of Culture — The government agency that led this project
- Wikipedia — Web 2.0 collaborative encyclopedia paradigm from the same period
- General Science — A comparative case of a civilian popular science community and knowledge platform, showing how knowledge is transformed in the platform economy through articles, courses, videos, and creator services
- National Cultural Memory Bank — The successor platform that received the entries from this project
References:
- Taiwan Encyclopedia - Wikipedia — A complete timeline of the 520 million yuan budget + three system iterations + closure in 2014↩2345678910
- Traditional Encyclopedia and Wikipedia Editorial Development - NTU Library News — An academic paper comparing the editorial paradigms of definitive and collaborative encyclopedias↩23456789101112131415
- Li Yuan-che - Wikipedia — Nobel laureate in Chemistry, who served as the Chief Supervisor of the Taiwan Encyclopedia Editorial Review Committee in 2007↩
- Taiwan Encyclopedia - Douyin Encyclopedia — A record showing the reduction of the print plan from 30 large volumes to the first 6 volumes by Yuanliu's subsidiary "Smart Archive"↩
- Taiwan Encyclopedia Revision and Removal of Review Mechanism - Taiwan Law Net — A record of the consensus reached in 2006 when the Ministry of Education invited experts to discuss "the tendency of online citizens to reject official supervision"↩234
- Taiwan Encyclopedia Professional Edition Writing Style - Smart Archive Encyclopedia Blog — The writing standard requiring the first three sentences to contain concrete facts ("Pyramid Style")↩
- Taiwan Encyclopedia History and Classification Index — A guide to entries systematically organized across 16 fields↩
- National Cultural Memory Bank 2.0 Fully Launched - Ministry of Culture Press Release — Announcement of the transition from "expert definitive edition" to "public resource pool" + NLP/AI integration↩
- National Cultural Memory Bank Subject Website Entrance — The successor platform that received the entries from the Taiwan Encyclopedia↩
- China's 960,000-Character Taiwan Encyclopedia: History Emphasizes One-China Principle - Feng Media — Released by China Encyclopedia Press in 2025, highlighting cross-strait competition over Taiwanese knowledge sovereignty↩