Recently I received a letter from the Ministry of Education regarding what name Taiwan should use when participating in international conferences and activities. The letter said China has for many years obstructed Taiwan's participation in international activities under its formal name to create a false impression that "China means communist China," and that "Taiwan is one of its provinces."
To protect Taiwan's rights at international conferences under the principles of equality and mutually exclusive jurisdiction, the letter said we should try to get the organizers to use -- according to circumstances -- any of the following eight names: ROC (Taiwan), China (Taipei), China (Taiwan), China-Taipei, China-Taiwan, Taipei China, Taipei, Taiwan (not necessarily in that order in terms of priority).
The name issue has nagged Taiwan's academics for years. They are not only denied participation in international conferences, but also have their country's name misrepresented in their academic papers published in international periodicals. Sometimes, among a number of Taiwanese co-authoring one article, one calls his country "ROC," another "Taiwan" and still another "China."
From the above letter, we can see that the Ministry of Education would like to resolve the issue, but by proposing eight names, it has surely made the issue even more confused. Can a single country really have eight different names?
Names are important, whether they refer to a country, a person or even a pet.
The whole affair reminds me of an episode in Lieh Tzu (
Once a neighbor of Yang Tzu lost a goat. The neighbor and his whole family went out in search of the goat. Yang Tzu asked: "Why do you have to mobilize so many people to find a goat?" The neighbor replied: "Because there are many diverging roads that the goat might take. Each of the diverging roads also has many other diverging roads. So we have to spread out into all of them to find it." After a few days of searching, they were still unable to find the goat.
Yang Tzu used this story to warn his students against having too many distractions from their studies.
If many countries are still unclear about our name and won't allow Taiwan to participate in international organizations as a state, then we should look at the issue seriously and try to find a solution rather than creating eight different names to further complicate the issue. This is like the many roads that made it impossible to find the goat. Does the Ministry of Education want teachers to teach their students that our country has eight different names?
Names are a serious matter, but that does not mean they can never be changed. In his work "Tell Us Our Names," the renowned theologian Song Chuan-sheng (宋泉2? describes the christening of a child as a sacred matter. Names should reflect reality, including the current cultural and social circumstances. There were also a few cases of people changing names in the Bible (Isaac, Peter, and Paul, for example), but each of the changes reflected a shift in reality and a new beginning. Alec Haley's book Roots, which was a great sensation 20-plus years ago, describes a black slave in America, who renounced the name given to him by his master and endured all kinds of torture in order to have his original name, Kunta Kinte, restored.
Some attribute Taiwan's current chaos to a split personality created by having too many names. While split personalities can be cured, the fall of a nation cannot.
Franklin F. M. Lee is the Dean of the School of Engineering at the Chinese Culture University.
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