Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Gao Jyh-peng (高志鵬) on Tuesday announced the winners of a banknote design contest, which he held up as part of an effort to remove authoritarian symbols from the nation’s currency.
The DPP has over the past year taken aim at various authoritarian symbols as part of implementing transitional justice, most notably calling for the removal of statues and other references to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) from the nation’s schools. The issue has been a major point of contention as activists vandalize statues and push the government to act quickly to remove them, while the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and older veterans strongly condemn such actions.
A pro-independence group called the Taiwan Nation Founding Engineering Team (台灣建國工程隊) in April last year decapitated a statue of Chiang on Yangmingshan (陽明山), in December student activists broke the cane off of a bronze Chiang statue on the Fu Jen Catholic University campus, and activists believed to be members of Taiwanese independence group From Ethnos to Nation splashed paint on Chiang’s sarcophagus in Taoyuan.
Removal of the statues is inevitable, but the removal of symbols from currency, the postal service, and other things encountered on a more frequent basis is of even greater importance. Unlike statues of former leaders, money is used on a daily basis and can even be found outside the nation.
The fifth series of the New Taiwan dollar banknote removed most depictions of Chiang, but his image remains on the NT$10 coin and the NT$200 banknote, while the more ubiquitous NT$100 banknote features Republic of China founder Sun Yat-sen (孫中山). While Sun is more fondly remembered than Chiang, his image on the nation’s currency serves more to facilitate China’s “one China” assertions than to represent the nation’s modern values.
Part of the aim of transitional justice efforts is to remove all symbols of historical oppression and authoritarianism, which would ultimately require renaming the nation. The name “China” itself is a symbol of authoritarianism, originally in the form of the brutal oppression imposed on Taiwanese by the former KMT administration after World War II, and today in the form of the People’s Republic of China squeezing Taiwan out of the international community and continually threatening military conflict.
Truly achieving the aims of transitional justice therefore means that the nation will need to be renamed, but getting there must be done one step at a time as Taiwanese slowly remove the symbols that confuse the national consciousness.
The DPP is doing this by renaming institutions and reducing the emphasis placed on classical Chinese texts in high-school literature classes. These and other efforts will mean that future generations will not need to question why they are required to honor historical figures and cultural ideas with which they share no connection.
When symbols of China are fully removed from the nation, China’s “soft” unification strategies will be rendered futile. When Taiwan in the future shares nothing in common with China outside of language, China’s leadership talking to Taiwanese youth about unification will sound as nonsensical to them as Australia suggesting unification with Canada.
In the interim, the government wants to continue reforming education, relegating Chinese history to the world history curriculum, teaching classical Chinese as an optional class, and removing the word “China” from the names of all public institutions and organizations.
Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) attempted to rename Chunghwa Post as “Taiwan Post,” but KMT opposition stopped him. It is now time to revive the issue, to put it to a public vote and to show the KMT that in a democracy, government parties work for the people, not the other way around.
The image was oddly quiet. No speeches, no flags, no dramatic announcements — just a Chinese cargo ship cutting through arctic ice and arriving in Britain in October. The Istanbul Bridge completed a journey that once existed only in theory, shaving weeks off traditional shipping routes. On paper, it was a story about efficiency. In strategic terms, it was about timing. Much like politics, arriving early matters. Especially when the route, the rules and the traffic are still undefined. For years, global politics has trained us to watch the loud moments: warships in the Taiwan Strait, sanctions announced at news conferences, leaders trading
Eighty-seven percent of Taiwan’s energy supply this year came from burning fossil fuels, with more than 47 percent of that from gas-fired power generation. The figures attracted international attention since they were in October published in a Reuters report, which highlighted the fragility and structural challenges of Taiwan’s energy sector, accumulated through long-standing policy choices. The nation’s overreliance on natural gas is proving unstable and inadequate. The rising use of natural gas does not project an image of a Taiwan committed to a green energy transition; rather, it seems that Taiwan is attempting to patch up structural gaps in lieu of
The Executive Yuan and the Presidential Office on Monday announced that they would not countersign or promulgate the amendments to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) passed by the Legislative Yuan — a first in the nation’s history and the ultimate measure the central government could take to counter what it called an unconstitutional legislation. Since taking office last year, the legislature — dominated by the opposition alliance of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party — has passed or proposed a slew of legislation that has stirred controversy and debate, such as extending
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators have twice blocked President William Lai’s (賴清德) special defense budget bill in the Procedure Committee, preventing it from entering discussion or review. Meanwhile, KMT Legislator Chen Yu-jen (陳玉珍) proposed amendments that would enable lawmakers to use budgets for their assistants at their own discretion — with no requirement for receipts, staff registers, upper or lower headcount limits, or usage restrictions — prompting protest from legislative assistants. After the new legislature convened in February, the KMT joined forces with the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and, leveraging their slim majority, introduced bills that undermine the Constitution, disrupt constitutional
RSS