The UN has rejected an application from Taiwan to have a collection of oracle bone scripts listed as a world documentary heritage item, a UN official said on Friday.
The collection, preserved by the Taipei-based Academia Sinica's Institute of History and Philology, was not nominated for inclusion in the Memory of the World Register for next year because China had already made two submissions, the maximum number allowed by each country, according to Joie Springer, an official at the Secretariat of the Memory of the World Programme.
Taiwan is not recognized as a country by the UN and is not a member of the organization.
Springer suggested that Taiwan could consider making a joint submission with China in the future.
The program, established by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in 1992, is aimed at the preservation and dissemination of valuable archive holdings and library collections worldwide.
Every even-numbered year, the program accepts up to two submissions from each country. The program's International Advisory Committee then meets the following year to decide on the new items to be included on the register.
The next committee meeting is scheduled for next year, which means that new submissions will not be accepted again until 2012.
The two submissions by China that have been nominated for inclusion are Ben Cao Gang Mu (本草綱目, Compendium of Materia Medica) and Huang Di Nei Jing (黃帝內經, Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon).
National Cultural Association secretary-general Yang Tu (楊渡) said in Taipei that he was surprised Taiwan's submission was not nominated this year.
On the suggestion of making a joint submission with China, Yang said the issue would require careful deliberation in light of the sensitive nature of cross-strait relations.
Institute of History and Philology director Huang Chin-shing (黃進興) expressed regret over the outcome, which he blamed on China's obstruction.
The oracle bone scripts are ancient Chinese characters inscribed on oracle bones — animal bones or turtle shells used in divination in China between 1400BC and 1100BC. The script is considered a forerunner to modern Chinese characters.
To date, about 5,000 oracle bone characters have been identified, although only 1,500 of them are recognizable. Academia Sinica holds the world’s largest collection of oracle bone scripts.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS