When Chen Jin-yuan (陳晉源), chief of the Directorate General of Highways, told reporters last month that all new license plates for cars and motorcycles will no longer indicate the areas where the vehicles are registered, his words signaled a new era in Taiwan's evolving history.
For the first time, license plates around the country will no longer state -- above the assigned numerals and in Chinese characters -- that Taiwan is a province of China.
The new policy, which went into effect on New Year's Day, will apply to all new license plates issued in Taiwan, Chen said. He added that all old plates will eventually have to be replaced.
So goodbye "Taiwan Province" on the old license plates and welcome to reality. All new licenses will just display numerals, with cities such as Taipei, Kaohsiung and Taichung also no longer serving as "area" marks for vehicles registered there.
All across the country, the new license plates will usher in a new era of consciousness and symbolism, not so much for the city area marks, but for the "Taiwan Province" mark that always seemed so out of place in the new Taiwan of the 21st century.
News reports say that drivers long questioned the necessity of printing "Taiwan Province" above the numbers on the plates since the Taiwan Provincial Government was officially downsized, or frozen, in 1998.
Basically, the provincial government no longer exists, and the new license plates being issued this month will reflect that reality.
Changes in public consciousness and national feelings of patriotism and identity occur in small steps and this new license plate policy is one of them.
No longer will Taiwanese have to explain to their foreign friends why their cars or scooters bear license plates with a "Taiwan Province" mark on them, since everyone knows there is no Taiwan Province anymore, thanks to former president Lee Teng-hui's (李登輝) progressive initiative when he was in office.
Maybe you have not seen the new license plates yet. They have been printed and are being issued.
The streets of Taiwan will be the same, crowded and noisy and bustling with traffic, but they will have a new look and feel to them, as the remnants of an earlier chapter in this nation's history slowly fades away.
The new plates signal a new era in Taiwan's history and drivers nationwide -- even on Green Island, Kinmen and Matsu -- will have something new to be proud of.
All nations evolve and change in small, incremental steps, from the design of flags to the words of national anthems and license plate slogans.
This month, Taiwan takes a small -- but important -- step in the right direction.
Dan Bloom is a freelance writer based in Taiwan.
China badly misread Japan. It sought to intimidate Tokyo into silence on Taiwan. Instead, it has achieved the opposite by hardening Japanese resolve. By trying to bludgeon a major power like Japan into accepting its “red lines” — above all on Taiwan — China laid bare the raw coercive logic of compellence now driving its foreign policy toward Asian states. From the Taiwan Strait and the East and South China Seas to the Himalayan frontier, Beijing has increasingly relied on economic warfare, diplomatic intimidation and military pressure to bend neighbors to its will. Confident in its growing power, China appeared to believe
Taiwan-India relations appear to have been put on the back burner this year, including on Taiwan’s side. Geopolitical pressures have compelled both countries to recalibrate their priorities, even as their core security challenges remain unchanged. However, what is striking is the visible decline in the attention India once received from Taiwan. The absence of the annual Diwali celebrations for the Indian community and the lack of a commemoration marking the 30-year anniversary of the representative offices, the India Taipei Association and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center, speak volumes and raise serious questions about whether Taiwan still has a coherent India
Recent media reports have again warned that traditional Chinese medicine pharmacies are disappearing and might vanish altogether within the next 15 years. Yet viewed through the broader lens of social and economic change, the rise and fall — or transformation — of industries is rarely the result of a single factor, nor is it inherently negative. Taiwan itself offers a clear parallel. Once renowned globally for manufacturing, it is now best known for its high-tech industries. Along the way, some businesses successfully transformed, while others disappeared. These shifts, painful as they might be for those directly affected, have not necessarily harmed society
Legislators of the opposition parties, consisting of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), on Friday moved to initiate impeachment proceedings against President William Lai (賴清德). They accused Lai of undermining the nation’s constitutional order and democracy. For anyone who has been paying attention to the actions of the KMT and the TPP in the legislature since they gained a combined majority in February last year, pushing through constitutionally dubious legislation, defunding the Control Yuan and ensuring that the Constitutional Court is unable to operate properly, such an accusation borders the absurd. That they are basing this
RSS