Taiwan finally passed its general budget in August almost a year after its initial submission to the legislature, but public media isn’t out of the water yet. The new budget included significant cuts and freezes to its Public Television Service (公共電視台), or PTS, which includes TaiwanPlus, an English-language television channel and video platform. The cuts, proposed by the opposition Kuomintang (國民黨) or Chinese Nationalist Party, slashed NTD 21.9 million from PTS and NTD 200 million from TaiwanPlus — roughly 700,000 and 6.35 million dollars, respectively.

An additional NTD 300 million of PTS funding, or roughly nine million dollars, has been frozen. Apart from PTS, the budget slash included a cut of nearly NTD 50 million for media promotion by the Ministry of Culture. Culture Minister Li Yuan (李遠) said it was “a loss of Taiwan’s voice on the global stage.”

But the cuts were seen as a victory for the opposition KMT, which has for years accused PTS of political bias under the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (民進黨) or DPP. TaiwanPlus was founded in 2021 with an initial budget of NTD 5.8 billion (180 million dollars) under then- President Tsai Ing-wen, who later described the channel’s goals as “sharing Taiwan’s perspective, expanding the power of Taiwan’s voice, and telling Taiwan’s story” (分享台灣觀點，擴大台灣聲量，講述台灣故事). 

KMT accusations that TaiwanPlus acts as a “state propaganda outlet” — as one legislator alleged in 2024 — and repeated attempts to scrap the channel altogether were predictable. But the channel has also found itself embroiled in public controversy over media scandals, public staff exits, and overall poor performance based on app downloads and geographic distribution, falling far below its viewership goals. In the face of its mission to “bring Taiwan to the world,” staffers have complained, according to a 2025 Commonwealth Magazine (天下雜誌) story, about a lack of understanding of Taiwan among foreign staff and leadership.

PTS was established under the Public Television Act (公共電視法) in 1998, but public broadcasting was first initiated by the KMT in the 1980s under the Government Information Office (GIO), while Taiwan was still under martial law. Today, it relies on funding from the Ministry of Culture and is mandated under the Act to operate “independently without interference.” In 2023, the Act was amended to eliminate a two-decade-old funding cap of NTD 900 million, more than doubling the fund to NTD 2.3 billion.

In order to restore frozen funds, the Legislative Yuan has requested the formation of the PTS board, which has been absent since May 2025. The formation of the board, comprising 11 to 15 directors, is required by law to get approval by a Legislative Yuan review committee. Only four board members, nominated by the Executive Yuan, were approved last December. 

This is not the first time that PTS board formation has seen political intervention. In 2008, under the KMT-led government, the Public Television Act was amended to expand the PTS board from 11-15 to 17-21 members. The KMT-led government subsequently appointed eight more members before Taiwan’s highest supervisory body, the Control Yuan, found the appointment process was not entirely legal. A new board eventually formed in June 2013 after over 900 days of political standoff. The number of board members was changed back to 11-15 in 2023.

In April this year, eight members of the Legislative Yuan’s review body for PTS — all nominated by the opposition — resigned after the Ministry of Culture proposed another list of nominees, stating that Minister Li had refused to follow the practice of cross-party consultation of the list before bringing it to the committee for review and stalling the appointment process. Thanks to a new amendment to the Public Television Act passed earlier this year, which removed a provision allowing board terms to be extended, the board also lacks a chair, though Hu Yuan-hui, the previous chair, remains listed on the PTS website. He was asked to leave the parliament in May when attempting to answer lawmakers’ questions about the Culture Ministry’s budget and operations.