Academia Historica (AH,國史館), Taiwan's highest-level national archive administered directly by the Presidential Office, said that the move was in accordance with government regulations and is equivalent to mainland China's restriction of archive access to Taiwanese scholars.
Scholars from the United States, Japan, Germany and Singapore retain access to the archives due to reciprocal access agreements.
Wu Mi-cha (吳密察), director of the AH, said that the restrictions were in line with the Freedom of Government Information Law (政府資訊公開法) and that previous archive non-compliance was ilegal.
"National policy governing archives is applied under one set of laws. The AH cannot violate the law in this respect. We cannot have 'one country, two systems' in this regard," Wu said.
Wu defended the move, saying that he had sent inquiries to the Justice Ministry, which confirmed residents of mainland China were restricted from accessing the archives and that access for non-residents and foreigners was based on reciprocal agreements.
Scholars said that Wu's leadership has also increased waiting times by up to 15 days for domestic scholars seeking to browse government documents. Previous policies afforded local scholars access to documents on an ad-hoc basis.
News of the restrictions were interpreted differently by legislators. Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators called the policy "rational" due to unknown political motives of mainland scholars. The opposition Kuomintang (KMT) decried the move as "backpedaling" on cross-Sstrait relations and dubbed it a move to reduce interaction between Taiwan and China.
KMT Legislator Apollo Chen (陳學聖) said that the AH's archives were important in preventing "one-sided" historic accounts. The new restrictions would prevent scholars from accessing these sources.
Former Education Minister Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝), an Academia Sinica scholar who served in the Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) administration, said he thought that less sensitive documents should remain available to scholars. Tu said that a four-level rating system used to classify the sensitivity of government documents could also be applied to the AH, giving scholars access to less sensitive information.
The AH was established after the founding of the R.O.C. and relocated to Taiwan following the retreat of the Nationalist-led government in 1949. Its archives are frequently perused by scholars on both side of the Taiwan Strait for subjects related to modern Chinese history.
Fuente: http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/local/taipei/2016/07/30/473868/Top-archive.htm
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