More on Romanization
If and when Taiwan ever sorts out the Romanization issue, a related matter will have to be tackled before street signs become useful for visitors.
Many road signs are part-Romanized, part-translated -- Minchuan East Road being a good example. This practice adds to the confusion. Saying "Minchuan East Road Section 1" to a monolingual taxi driver is likely to result in a blank stare, even if "Minchuan" is pronounced perfectly.
If road names were fully Romanized -- to "Minquan Dong Lu Yi Duan," say -- communication would probably become easier for those who do not speak Chinese.
Steven Crook
Tainan County
There is just one point I would like to add to the ongoing Pinyin debate. Many letter writers in recent days have mentioned that the only reason for using Pinyin in the first place is to accommodate foreigners in Taiwan. Wrong!
The real reason for teaching Pinyin in schools is to equip Taiwan's students with the skills needed to communicate Chinese-language ideas, names, etc to people who cannot read Chinese characters. Period. Street signs in Taipei are just one isolated "special case" of such communication.
The fact that the education system has completely ignored this essential skill of international literacy is nothing short of criminal. When local university students ask me how to spell some Chinese word "in English" for them, I just shake my head and sigh as I answer their questions.
How can this country let students into colleges or universities without even knowing a single Romanization system? How can students be expected to compete in the international marketplace when they don't even know the accepted standard for romanizing their own language?
I am familiar with three or four different Romanization systems and I'm not even a native speaker of Chinese. Do you think there are Japanese kids (or Chinese, Korean, whatever) going out into the world who don't know how to Romanize everything they can say? No.
Do you think there are Ger-man, French, Italian, Brazilian, Russian, or even Chinese kids graduating from university who don't know how to write their own language in "English" letters? Why should Taiwan be so lame in this regard?
Does it not embarrass the Ministry of Education that people in Taiwan are the only Chinese speakers in the world who don't know Hanyu Pinyin? Are Taiwanese people not angry at being deprived for so long of such a handy tool for communicating with foreigners?
Adding yet another Romanization system to the existing confusion would only make Taiwan a laughing stock.
Honestly, the fact that this idiotic debate is still going on might just be the single most astonishing thing about this (otherwise) wonderful country.
John Diedrichs
Taipei
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
During the “426 rally” organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party under the slogan “fight green communism, resist dictatorship,” leaders from the two opposition parties framed it as a battle against an allegedly authoritarian administration led by President William Lai (賴清德). While criticism of the government can be a healthy expression of a vibrant, pluralistic society, and protests are quite common in Taiwan, the discourse of the 426 rally nonetheless betrayed troubling signs of collective amnesia. Specifically, the KMT, which imposed 38 years of martial law in Taiwan from 1949 to 1987, has never fully faced its
RSS