The Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Communication and Culture Committee director Lee Chien-jung (李建榮) yesterday said Ma’s idea that both sides jointly edit and compile a “Zhonghua Dictionary” (中華大辭典) will be included on the list of items to be discussed during the upcoming KMT-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forum next month.
Lee said that the KMT-CCP forum will be conducted in an open setting and that it did not have an official capacity.
However, if both sides of the strait reach a consensus on the proposal, the semi-official Straits Exchange Foundation would be entrusted by the government to sign an agreement with its Chinese counterpart, Lee said.
Meanwhile, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday reiterated that he would not promote simplified Chinese characters in Taiwan, adding that his proposal that people should be able to read traditional Chinese characters but write simplified ones was not political.
The proposal has been misconstrued as promoting simplified Chinese, he said yesterday while having lunch with members of the National Council of Associations of Chinese Language Schools at the Presidential Office.
Ma said that during his stint as Taipei mayor, he vetoed a proposal to print tourism pamphlets in simplified Chinese for Chinese tourists. He thought the best way to address the problem was to print comparison charts for them.
Ma yesterday said the time was right for “all Chinese” to ponder the future of the Chinese language as some Chinese have expressed the hope to see the abolition of simplified Chinese.
Ma said that Pan Qinglin (潘慶林), a member of the consultative committee that advises China’s government, has submitted a proposal calling for a return to the traditional script within 10 years.
Taiwan and Hong Kong use traditional Chinese but have higher literacy rates than China, he said, disproving Beijing’s argument that using simplified characters allows more people to achieve literacy.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
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