I am very impressed by the Taipei City Government's Mainlander-dominated policy and strategy of "sinicization and unification." What I wonder is why Taipei offers scholarships for Mandarin-language training. After all, isn't Mandarin associated with Communist China? Everyone in the world knows Mandarin is the national language of 1.3 billion Chinese.
The city's offer of Mandarin scholarships is a waste of resources and money. It it hard to see how Mandarin will benefit Taiwan more than it would China.
If the city wishes to offer scholarships for language courses, it should be offering Hoklo (also known as Taiwanese), Hakka or other Aborigine languages. After all, these have been Taiwan's languages for more than 400 years.
This will at least reverse the trend of the decline in Hoklo and Hakka language speakers, rather than helping China promote Mandarin Chinese.
Only the Hoklo, Hakka and Aborigines are the sons of the land (han ju in Hoklo). Using Chinese Language to promote Taiwan is a blatant disrespect to 87 percent of the population.
All this can accomplish is please Beijing. What about the 70 percent of the population who are Hoklo speakers and the 15 percent who are Hakka speakers?
The Taipei City Government continues to implement its chauvinistic Chinese policy without showing any sensitivity to the ethnic majority. Using Mandarin to promote Taiwan is helping to promote unification of a Greater China.
This plot must be stopped immediately.
Like the Japanese, Chinese are colonialists. Mandarin is a foreign language that was forced upon the reluctant Taiwanese population, introduced to Taiwan after the 228 Incident and in 1949 by the Chinese Nationalist Party forces who fled to Taiwan.
As a result of "Mandarinization" and suppression of indigenous languages, less than 31 percent of Hakka descendants today speak Hakka as their principal language. Aborigines have not fared any better. This shows a blatant disregard for the nation's languages and culture.
One country on each side of the Taiwan Strait also means one language on each side. There is no such thing as Taiwanese-Chinese language or China-Chinese language.
It means the same language. To foreigners, the Mandarin will always be the national language of China.
Foreign students will always associate the language with China rather than Taiwan. Foreign students wishing to learn the languages that are best associated with Taiwan should therefore study Hoklo and Hakka.
Taipei should not waste the scholarships it awards trying to be more Chinese than China. If China wants to offer scholarships to foreign students, that's its business. It is, after all, their language. Even Hong Kong promote studies in Cantonese rather than Mandarin overseas.
For the moment, Taipei is acting more for Beijing than for Taiwan. Taiwanese languages are taught in many universities in North America, Europe and Japan -- even at Harvard University. Why couldn't Taipei do as much? The nation's identity is linked to its native languages, not that of China.
Michael Lin
Kuala Lumpur
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