The freedom to spell
The other day your paper reported that the government has set guidelines for the use of the Tongyong Pinyin in various areas of the administration, among them the spelling of names of individual citizens ("Cabinet spells out rules to standardize Romanization," Oct.1, page 3).
I'd like to call attention here to something that would concern all ROC citizens. The government certainly has the right to decide the spelling of place names and road signs and also to keep records of the names of its citizens, for example the names that are used in household registration books or in passports, in Chinese charac-ters as well as in Romanized form, according to an official Romanization.
But at the same time, I want to stress, ROC citizens should have the right, clearly stated by law, to spell their names when using the Roman alphabet as they prefer and to use this personally chosen spelling in all transactions with foreigners.
PRC citizens are not free to spell their names as they like; they have only one choice -- to follow China's official Romanization. Unlike them, citizens here should be given the opportunity to have a Romanized name of their own choosing.
So in official documents here, I suggest, there should be three blanks for a citizen's name: the name in Chinese, the name in official Romanization and the name in the spelling that the citizen wishes to use. In addition, of course, every citizen may also have an alias or "bie-ming" (
Colman Bernath
Taipei
The wrong side of history
The PRC stood up and took notice when the Soviet empire collapsed. It realized that lies and force alone cannot ensure the survival of a dictatorial regime. It is the people that play the dictatorial role in the end. That is called democracy.
Beijing has since accelerated its move to a market economy, hoping the spill of new fortunes to its people would help preserve its authoritarian regime. So far, it seems to be working. However, like the KMT in Taiwan, prosperity can prolong its rule, but corruption and incompetency will eventually lead to the inevitable.
Like most dictatorial regimes, the inevitable will come. Nobody knows when or how it will come to an end, but it most certainly will. The PRC's continued suppression of the Falun Gong and its ethnic minorities, its censorship of the Internet and its lies will eventually prove too much for Beijing to bear.
The dictatorial communist doctrine and regime is a proven failure and Beijing will be no exception. It is sitting on the wrong side of the history.
Who knows how many more Oct. 1 ceremonies will be left for the Chinese communists to celebrate?
Yang Ji-charng
Columbus, Ohio
US making dangerous move
I am writing in response to a letter you published (Letters, Sept. 28, page 8) regarding evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The writer did not specify what the consequences of having such wea-pons would be, but it can be inferred that an attack on Iraq was being supported. The list of weapons allegedly possessed by Iraq is indeed impressive, but the concrete proof has not yet been validated.
Yet this is really beside the point. Iraq is seen as a threat to world peace by the international community (the Bush administration), but who is the real threat to peace? Israel, has far more devastating weapons at its disposal and has proved time and again to be willing to use them against its own citizens. Comparing the formidable arsenal of the US to that of Iraq is a laughable exercise. Former South African president Nelson Mandela recently pointed out the obvious in stating that the US is now the biggest threat to world peace on the planet.
The spiral of foreign relations blunders by the US needs to stop now. Yet US President George W. Bush has outlined a plan for a pre-emptive attack of self-defense against Iraq. It would set a precedent for attacking other countries just as easily. It would also open the door for the international rule of law that we've been carefully nurturing to be squashed. A country which perceives another as a potential threat would, by the same logic, be free to act as it sees fit.
What this means to the people of Taiwan is that the thread of self-restraint keeping China from attacking would get that much thinner. This threatened war is not just an isolated event halfway around the world. It could have dramatic results on the lives on everyone.
Jeff Bachiu
Kaohsiung
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