Recent efforts by President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) government to emphasize Chinese studies in school curricula have led some people to warn of a possible “brainwashing” of the nation’s youth and the eventual dissolution of national identity. While the government’s measures are a cause for concern, their effectiveness in undermining Taiwanese identity is questionable.
For decades following its relocation to Taiwan in 1949, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) imposed strict controls on education and the media to re-sinicize Taiwanese after half a decade of Japanese colonial rule. However, even in an authoritarian and pre-Internet society, those efforts failed to transform Taiwanese into something they were not (for another example of the failure of government propaganda to turn people into mindless automatons, even in closed societies, just ask any cab driver in Cuba for his views on Fidel Castro and communism). However, despite the KMT’s repressive tactics, Taiwanese identity flourished, first as an underground movement and, after the lifting of Martial Law in 1987, as part of national politics with the emergence of the Democratic Progressive Party.
Gone are the days where state control of education can fundamentally shape young people, if it ever did. What the government failed to accomplish in a closed society with limited external sources of information has become an even more formidable task today, thanks to the multiplicity of electronic sources from which young people can access information. One need only look at China, where dissidents continue to defy the Chinese Communist Party thanks to social media, mobile phones and various Internet platforms, despite strict controls on information.
The implication of this radical change in how young people learn about their surroundings cannot be overstated and has direct ramifications in terms of how they develop their identity, both as individuals and members of a shared community. However hard a teacher might try to inculcate the view that apples are blue, young people will have access to innumerable sources of information to discredit that contention. In the electronic age, the environment that shapes young people has become much larger than the classroom. Unless the KMT turns back the clock and cracks down on freedom of expression — and does so far more successfully than even the most repressive of authoritarian regimes — convincing young Taiwanese that they are Chinese will be an exercise in futility. The genie of identity is out of the bottle and it is not going back in.
Admittedly, resistance to the kind of top-down educational propaganda feared by the more alarmist among us requires a modicum of critical thinking, but there is every reason to believe that today’s youth have the ability to do so. After all, their parents and teachers experienced the passage from authoritarian rule to democracy, a key element in the nation’s consciousness and one whose impact has been passed down by that generation. It is the responsibility of adults to ensure that such values continue to flourish. There is no reason to believe they intend to do otherwise.
The claim that young Taiwanese can somehow be “brainwashed” and will receive information uncritically not only counters the evidence, seen in public opinion polls, but is also insulting and condescending. Such views echo the contention by some in the older generation that young Taiwanese are disinterested in politics and apathetic to issues of national concern. However, the young not being easily mobilized or vocal on matters of, say, sovereignty, does not mean that they do not care or are wavering when it comes to fundamental issues. Their apparent disinterest could stem from the fact that the issue of identity is already resolved in their minds and therefore does not necessitate action.
There is little reason to believe that today’s young Taiwanese do not have what it takes to confront those who would engage in historical revisionism and turn back the clock, if that is indeed what the Ma administration hopes to accomplish.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) founder Morris Chang (張忠謀) has repeatedly voiced concern over the weakening cost competitiveness of its US fabs and challenged the US’ “on-shore” policy of building domestic semiconductor capacity. Yet not once has the government said anything, even though the economy is highly dependent on the chip industry. In the US, the cost of operating a semiconductor factory is at least twice the amount required to operate one in Taiwan, rather than the 50 percent he had previously calculated, Chang said on Thursday last week at a forum arranged by CommonWealth Magazine. He said that he had
The Twenty-Four Histories (中國廿四史) is a collection of official Chinese dynastic histories from Records of the Grand Historian (史記) to the History of the Ming Dynasty (明史) that cover the time from the legendary Yellow Emperor (黃帝) to the Chongzhen Emperor (崇禎), the last Ming emperor. History is written by the victors. These histories are not merely records of the rise and fall of emperors, they also demonstrate the ways in which conquerors embellished their own achievements while deriding those of the conquered. The history written by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is no exception. The PRC presents its
In August 2013, Reuters reported that Beijing had been gaining soft power with investment commitments and trade with countries in Latin America. However, instead of jumping on the chance to make new allies, China stalled requests to establish diplomatic relations with the countries to avoid galling Taiwanese voters. Beijing was also courting then-president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), and the tactic left China with a trump card if cross-strait relations turned cool. China had rebuffed at least five countries’ requests to switch diplomatic recognition to Beijing, the report said, quoting a China analyst. Honduras could become the ninth diplomatic ally, and also the fifth
OpenAI has announced a major upgrade to the technology that underpins ChatGPT, the seemingly magical online tool that professionals have been using to draft e-mails, write blog posts and more. If you think of ChatGPT as a car, the new language model known as GPT-4 adds a more powerful engine. The old ChatGPT could only read text. The new ChatGPT can look at a photograph of the contents of your fridge and suggest a dinner recipe. The old ChatGPT scored in the 10th percentile on the bar exam. The new one was in the 90th. In the hours since its release,
RSS