Taiwan needs to blend its cultural values to create a strong base for the nation's cultural individuality in the new era of globalization, according to the Taiwan New Century Foundation.
The remarks came as academics met to discuss the restoration of Taiwan's cultural values at the foundation's Reconstructing Taiwan's Cultures forum in Taipei yesterday.
Lee Min-yung (李敏勇), a renowned poet and president of the Deng Liberty Foundation, addressed the forum, saying, "Taiwanese people haven't developed a national identity in their long history. It is a cultural issue that involves the formation of our national identity."
"The formation of national identity is made up by the cohesion of Taiwan-centered cultural concepts," said Lee, who dedicates his literary creations to Taiwan's culture and history.
"Taiwan has lacked an identity for its mother culture and is prone to accepting foreign influences brought to the island. People's cultural attitude toward Taiwan strongly adheres to its colonial past," Lee added.
"That is why many people choose to emigrate to foreign countries and adhere to a foreign nation's identity," he said.
Lee pointed out that Taiwan needs to vitalize the part of its culture and memory that marks the island's historical passage from the aboriginal period and the early settlement of the Holo and Hakka immigrants from southeastern China, to the the Japanese colonial rule from 1895 to 1945 and the KMT government that retreated to Taiwan in 1949 and ruled Taiwan for 50 years.
"We need an icon for Taiwan that is culturally Taiwan-oriented," Lee said.
However, Lee stressed that the "Taiwan cultural sense" is different from a Chinese one, which, Lee said, is associated with political forces in China.
Many people confine the concept of globalization solely to economic development and to our trade with China, Lee said.
He added that this way of thinking has hampered the development of localization, which promotes Taiwan's own values.
"We cannot see this as a natural path for globalization," Lee said.
Professor Liao Ping-huei (廖炳惠) from the foreign language department of the National Tsing Hua University said, "Globalization and localization are not necessarily contradictory."
"It's through the interaction of globalization and localization that we develop symbols of Taiwan and reassure our cultural identity," Liao said.
However, Liao also warned that the notion of globalization should not be narrowed to economic activities, such as the WTO, or business investment in China only.
He urged the government to pay heed to the growing problem of educational reform, which he sees as an unbalanced distribution of political resources.
"For example, the government spends a lot of money on the English education programs or putting up English signs for directions. It's not through reinforcing our English ability that we realize our efforts in upholding globalization," Liao said.
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