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Taiwan could learn from Bangkok

DURING MY RECENT visit to Bangkok, I was greatly impressed by the city's development and the attitude with which its citizens have embraced multiculturalism. I believe Taiwan, which tends to neglect its immigrants, could learn a lot from Bangkok.

My first, stunning, impression of the city was its vivacity and cosmopolitanism. Of course, as one of the major Asian travel destinations, it is only natural that Bangkok is a multilingual city. Bangkok's openness and enthusiasm is demonstrated by the fact that even school campus menus are printed in both Thai and English.

Our own leaders have repeatedly stressed the importance of multiculturalism and attempted to promote a multilingual environment. But that one street name in Taiwan can have three different romanizations, as reported recently by the media, is a joke.

Encouraged by the previous government's "Go South" policy, about 140,000 Taiwanese businesspeople have emigrated to Thailand in the past dozen years. This number, combined with that of previous emigrants, should have a considerable influence on politics and business in Thailand. In addition, Taiwan is now the leading investor in Vietnam. Yet, how much effort has our government or private sector put into teaching Taiwanese to speak Thai or Vietnamese? Island peoples are notoriously adventurous: Our ancestors traveled the world with one suitcase and our generation should aspire to do no less.

Chinese universities have worked out an agreement to send law and politics students to study at Thailand's Thammasat University -- a clear demonstration of China's commitment to stronger ties between the two countries. By comparison, Taiwan lags behind -- this at a time when Southeast Asia is becoming pivotal to our own economy. Our government and private institutions need to invest immediately in the teaching of Southeast Asian languages.

Immigrants to Taiwan bring with them valuable linguistic resources. Southeast Asian spouses, the majority of whom are Vietnamese, are second in number only to those from China. However, foreign spouses' new family members tend to be either ignorant or arrogant, and often do not learn the language of these new immigrants, to the point of prohibiting their children from acquiring them. This is a waste of an incredible opportunity. Unfortunately, state or private institutions do not have the foresight to correct this problem.

A friend of mine who lives in Germany married a Polish woman, and their children, who attend German kindergartens, already speak five languages: With grandparents from their father's side they speak Taiwanese and Mandarin, with grandparents on their mother's side, Polish, and at school, German and English. I can only hope that our government would take advantage of our unique opportunity to construct a multilingual society.

Taiwan is a migrant society. Our ancestors crossed over to Taiwan to escape poverty, war and various other circumstances. Coming and going is a feature of life that has grown even easier with the advent of globalization. Not only should we not censure those who leave, but we should also welcome new immigrants with an open mind. In particular, we should take advantage of the resources brought by immigrants.

Germany once valued the imagined purity of the Aryan race, which led to the tragedy of the Holocaust. Yet today, one in five people in Germany is a foreigner and Germany has an open immigration policy.

Perhaps confidently confronting the realities of human migration would give our government and private sector the ability to sincerely accept and welcome our new immigrant groups, and their linguistic resources.

Yang Chuen-jen is director of the National Central University's Institute of Law and Government.

TRANSLATED BY ANGELA HONG
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