National consciousness can only be fostered through a Taiwan-oriented history education, said a panelist attending a forum yesterday in Taipei on how to make Taiwan a normal country.
For most of its history, the Taiwanese experience has been recorded through the colonizers' perspective and has neglected that of the Taiwanese, said Hsue Hua-yuan (薛化元), Dean of the Graduate Institute of Taiwan History at National Chengchi University.
"Without a Taiwan-oriented view of history, [we cannot] construct a confident national consciousness," he said at the forum, which was hosted by the Taiwan New Century Foundation.
"Taiwan is an independent and sovereign state, but it has yet to be a normal country," said Chen Lung-chu (陳隆志), chair of the foundation.
To become a normal country, Taiwan needs a Taiwan-oriented constitution, to become a member of the UN and, most importantly, to build a national consciousness shared by its people, he added.
Another panelist, Lin Wen-cheng (林文程), Dean of the College of Social Sciences at National Sun Yat-sen University, said that "democracy and human rights represent a county's `soft power.'"
Taiwan could use such soft power to strengthen its relartions with neighboring countries through efforts to promote democracy and human rights and participation in humanitarian aid programs, Lin said.
"The key to making Taiwan a normal country is the self-awakening of the people," said Chen Wen-hsien (陳文賢), a professor at National Cheng-chi University.
Part of this self-awakening involves the renaming of such government-run companies as China Airlines, Chinese Petroleum and China Ship Building, Chen Wen-hsien said.
People should also stop calling China the "mainland," he added.
"You never know what's going to happen until you try," a member of the audience said, adding that criticism would come, but that "it goes away quickly when you do the right thing."
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