President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday lauded the Overseas Compatriot Affairs Commission (OCAC) for juxtaposing traditional and simplified Chinese in its textbooks for schools for overseas Taiwanese.
Ma said the two sides of the Taiwan Strait use different Chinese characters, with Taiwan using traditional and China simplified.
Taipei and Beijing have yet to reach an agreement on the teaching of traditional and simplified Chinese characters at schools for overseas Taiwanese and Chinese, he said, but the situation is changing.
“I find it very interesting and meaningful that the [commission] has placed traditional and simplified Chinese characters in its textbooks this year,” Ma said.
“Most people in Taiwan and Hong Kong know traditional Chinese characters and are used to them. Now the problem [recognizing/understanding traditional and simplified Chinese] has been solved by putting them together,” he said.
Ma made the remarks in a meeting with overseas Taiwanese residing in Asia at the Presidential Office yesterday morning.
Ma urged overseas compatriots associations to observe a “truce on expatriate affairs” because he hoped that Chinese “from the mainland and Chinese from Taiwan can all get along and help each other, so we will not be ridiculed by foreigners.”
Ma said that while he realized the goal could not be achieved overnight, both sides could find the answer to the question with the collective wisdom of the “Chinese nation.”
Ma said he was concerned whether Chinese living in China and overseas could read traditional Chinese characters.
“Academics from the mainland said many young people now read traditional Chinese because they listen to Jay Chou’s [周杰倫] songs so much that they just learn it like that,” he said.
Many people in Singapore and Malaysia also learned Mandarin by watching Taiwanese TV programs, he said, and many Chinese living in North America watch Taiwanese political programs more frequently than those living in Taiwan.
“It is a good thing to see a common language bridge the gap between Chinese around the world through modern technology,” he said.
Ma caught the ire of lawmakers across the political spectrum in June last year when he expressed the hope that Taipei and Beijing could reach an agreement on the teaching of traditional and simplified Chinese characters at schools for overseas Taiwanese and Chinese, so that students would be taught to read traditional characters and write simplified characters.
Costa Rica sent a group of intelligence officials to Taiwan for a short-term training program, the first time the Central American country has done so since the countries ended official diplomatic relations in 2007, a Costa Rican media outlet reported last week. Five officials from the Costa Rican Directorate of Intelligence and Security last month spent 23 days in Taipei undergoing a series of training sessions focused on national security, La Nacion reported on Friday, quoting unnamed sources. The Costa Rican government has not confirmed the report. The Chinese embassy in Costa Rica protested the news, saying in a statement issued the same
Taiwan’s Liu Ming-i, right, who also goes by the name Ray Liu, poses with a Chinese Taipei flag after winning the gold medal in the men’s physique 170cm competition at the International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation Asian Championship in Ajman, United Arab Emirates, yesterday.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
RSS