The fifth round of talks between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continued in Changsha earlier this month, with more discussion on cultural matters. Aside from calling on academics and researchers from both sides of the Taiwan Strait to collaborate on standardizing scientific and specialized Chinese terms and to develop software that translates traditional Chinese characters into simplified form, a joint statement called on both sides to “gradually reduce the differences between traditional and simplified Chinese characters.”
This statement can only mean one thing: One does not reduce differences between two systems by adding complexity to the simpler one; rather, they are reduced by dumbing down the more complex of the two. In other words, Taiwan’s use of the more complex traditional Chinese would be simplified, one stroke at a time, in line with the simplified Chinese characters introduced by the CCP after it came to power in 1949.
While one should avoid equating language with ethnicity (eg, French as a defining factor in Quebec identity vis-a-vis Canada), the fact remains that language provides a direct link to the cultural baggage of a people; it serves as a bridge to the past, whereby ancient wisdom is kept alive, passed on from one generation to another.
When it comes to traditional Chinese, Taiwanese did not retain the more complex version for the sake of complexity, or as a means to prove their intellectual superiority vis-a-vis people in China. Nor, conversely, did the CCP adopt the simplified form solely for the purpose of helping to educate the masses. Rather, it’s the importance a people gives to the past that matters.
While one system of government (Taiwan) chose to maintain ties with ancient times (both as a source of knowledge and as a means by the KMT to “resinicize” Taiwanese after five decades of Japanese colonial rule), the other (China) sought to reinvent the national discourse by disconnecting the population from the past.
By abandoning the traditional system and imposing the simplified form, the CCP made sure that it could gradually engineer a population that did not know where it came from and therefore would be less likely to question authority based on the lessons of history (under authoritarian systems, ignorance is bliss — for those in power).
Of course, ancient texts written in the traditional form could be translated into simplified characters. However, this would take time, and the government could control which texts were allowed to be translated.
“Dangerous” or “polluted” ones — works that did not dovetail with the CCP’s version of history after Year Zero, if you will — would be barred from translation and further recede into oblivion as generation after generation grew up under the system of simplified characters.
There is a reason why many people today will say that Chinese do not know their history — it was stolen from them after 1949.
Symbolically, the more Taiwan drifts toward simplified Chinese, the more it will be seen as doing so politically and culturally as well. If this came about, it would also threaten Taiwanese people’s understanding of their past. If a people don’t know where they are from, it will be hard for them to dispute claims that they belong to another.
J. Michael Cole is a writer based in Taipei and the author of Democracy in Peril: Taiwan’s Struggle for Survival from Chen Shui-bian to Ma Ying-jeou.
The saga of Sarah Dzafce, the disgraced former Miss Finland, is far more significant than a mere beauty pageant controversy. It serves as a potent and painful contemporary lesson in global cultural ethics and the absolute necessity of racial respect. Her public career was instantly pulverized not by a lapse in judgement, but by a deliberate act of racial hostility, the flames of which swiftly encircled the globe. The offensive action was simple, yet profoundly provocative: a 15-second video in which Dzafce performed the infamous “slanted eyes” gesture — a crude, historically loaded caricature of East Asian features used in Western
Is a new foreign partner for Taiwan emerging in the Middle East? Last week, Taiwanese media reported that Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) secretly visited Israel, a country with whom Taiwan has long shared unofficial relations but which has approached those relations cautiously. In the wake of China’s implicit but clear support for Hamas and Iran in the wake of the October 2023 assault on Israel, Jerusalem’s calculus may be changing. Both small countries facing literal existential threats, Israel and Taiwan have much to gain from closer ties. In his recent op-ed for the Washington Post, President William
A stabbing attack inside and near two busy Taipei MRT stations on Friday evening shocked the nation and made headlines in many foreign and local news media, as such indiscriminate attacks are rare in Taiwan. Four people died, including the 27-year-old suspect, and 11 people sustained injuries. At Taipei Main Station, the suspect threw smoke grenades near two exits and fatally stabbed one person who tried to stop him. He later made his way to Eslite Spectrum Nanxi department store near Zhongshan MRT Station, where he threw more smoke grenades and fatally stabbed a person on a scooter by the roadside.
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
RSS