A proposal was raised in the legislature on Friday to abolish the Republican (minguo
But nothing escapes the curse of the "Greater China" ideology.
Indeed, one would have been surprised if die-hard pan-blue-camp supporters did not jump up and slam the proposal as evidence of pro-independence sentiment and splittism.
This nation uses a dual-calendar system (not counting the still very relevant lunar calendar), and under the Republican calendar, 2006 is designated as the 95th year of the founding of the Republic of China (ROC).
Therefore, to some, abolishing this calendar is an attack on the very legitimacy, the very dignity, of the ROC, which in turn suggests that Taiwan is not part of China.
Use of the Gregorian calendar would therefore violate the "one China" principle, upsetting Beijing and Washington, despite the fact that China and the US use the Gregorian calendar.
One readily arrives at this prediction by looking at the response to the proposal to abolish the National Unification Council and the unification guidelines, or the proposal to abolish or at least curtail the teaching of classical Chinese in high school.
The council and the guidelines embody tokenism in every way. Very few people can remember when the council last convened (it was in 1999).
And everyone knows that with Taiwan's democratization, unification with China will require the consent of the electorate rather than the imprimatur of the council and its guidelines.
The legislature can hardly be credited with taking the council seriously, allotting the dormant agency an impressive NT$1,000 (US$31) budget.
Still, the proposal has attracted consternation from the US State Department, as well as the standard petulant threats of presidential impeachment from die-hards in the pan-blue camp.
Perhaps the State Department would also care to weigh in on the relevance of classical Chinese to a modernized Taiwan?
After all, much of modern vernacular Chinese is based on the classical form, it's culturally tagged to a pristine past, and -- most importantly -- it clumsily but effectively lends itself to a unificationist take on the status quo.
The beauty of literary Chinese is that it, like Latin, knew when to die.
What a pity the same truth is not self-evident for those who would treasure a government body that is riddled with rigor mortis.
Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that Premier Su Tseng-chang (
But what is most disappointing is that he did not make a firm commitment to the proposal on the spot. Surely he knows that pan-blue lawmakers will have a field day over this.
Chinese agents often target Taiwanese officials who are motivated by financial gain rather than ideology, while people who are found guilty of spying face lenient punishments in Taiwan, a researcher said on Tuesday. While the law says that foreign agents can be sentenced to death, people who are convicted of spying for Beijing often serve less than nine months in prison because Taiwan does not formally recognize China as a foreign nation, Institute for National Defense and Security Research fellow Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said. Many officials and military personnel sell information to China believing it to be of little value, unaware that
Before 1945, the most widely spoken language in Taiwan was Tai-gi (also known as Taiwanese, Taiwanese Hokkien or Hoklo). However, due to almost a century of language repression policies, many Taiwanese believe that Tai-gi is at risk of disappearing. To understand this crisis, I interviewed academics and activists about Taiwan’s history of language repression, the major challenges of revitalizing Tai-gi and their policy recommendations. Although Taiwanese were pressured to speak Japanese when Taiwan became a Japanese colony in 1895, most managed to keep their heritage languages alive in their homes. However, starting in 1949, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) enacted martial law
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The central bank and the US Department of the Treasury on Friday issued a joint statement that both sides agreed to avoid currency manipulation and the use of exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, and would only intervene in foreign-exchange markets to combat excess volatility and disorderly movements. The central bank also agreed to disclose its foreign-exchange intervention amounts quarterly rather than every six months, starting from next month. It emphasized that the joint statement is unrelated to tariff negotiations between Taipei and Washington, and that the US never requested the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar during the
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