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May 21, 2008

Ma's baby steps

The Youth Daily, a government-run newspaper connected with the military news network, has slashed "Taiwan" from it's mast and replaced it with "Republic of China." A sign of things to come?

I can't click the video so can't provide many more details. If someone else watches this, let me know. I'd like to know when or if Chen changed this during his term, or if it's had "Taiwan" there since earlier.

4 comments:

Tim Maddog said...

I watched the video. The best part is DPP legislator Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯) saying telling the new Minister of National Defense, Chen Chao-ming (陳肇敏) that he doesn't want to "play word games."

In similar news via today's Liberty Times (自由時報), the Presidential Office web site has removed "台灣" ("Taiwan," for those who can't see or read it) from the Chinese part of the header banner, though it's still there in parentheses at the end of the English part.

I uploaded a before and after image of the changes since it wasn't online (sorry for the blur), and here's today's Liberty Times editorial cartoon about the topic (from their site).

The word "Taiwan" was added to the Presidential Office web site in July, 2005, a year into Chen Shui-bian's second term [bold emphasis mine]:
- - -
Sunday, Jul 31, 2005, Page 3

In a bid to avoid the confusion between "Republic of China" and "People's Republic of China," the Presidential Office decided to add the word "Taiwan" next to "Republic of China" on its Web site yesterday.

With that word, the country's formal title now reads as the "Republic of China (Taiwan)" rather than "Republic of China" in the English vision. Traditional and simplified Chinese characters are also included on the Web site also have the word "Taiwan."

- - -

Why remove the Chinese but not the English? Is it to fool those who wouldn't be looking at the Chinese, to fool those who wouldn't be looking at the English, or to fool both of those groups?

Yes, this is just the very beginning of the things that we all knew would happen.

Why do they hate Taiwan?

Tim Maddog

Raj said...

Why do they hate Taiwan?

They don't "hate" Taiwan - that's the core of the Republic of China after all!

But I think they prefer the ROC's title as it is and are happy to change things the DPP did because to them the DPP years were "bad". So theyre turning everything back to the "good old days" of the KMT ruling.

Tim Maddog said...

A-gu, a clip from SET News shown on Talking Show Wednesday night mentioned that "Taiwan" was added to the centerpiece of the Youth Daily in August, 2007.

Excuse the typo in my earlier comment -- "saying telling" should read "telling" only.

Ironic Raj, are you just pretending not to remember all the times that the Chinese Nationalist Party and Ma Ying-jeou himself said that it was "childish" and "meaningless" when the DPP rectified names?

Tim Maddog

Raj said...

Ironic Raj, are you just pretending not to remember all the times that the Chinese Nationalist Party and Ma Ying-jeou himself said that it was "childish" and "meaningless" when the DPP rectified names?

No, because I never said the KMT or Ma were mature. They doubtless have a you-started-it mentality that "justifies" them undoing such changes.