Comments on: Chinese Character Reform Movements in Taiwan

By: Prentiss Riddle

Prentiss Riddle — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve heard it claimed that mainland China and Taiwan have competing systems, and in particular competing digital encodings of their writing systems, because each side wants to make it hard for its own citizens to read the other’s propaganda. Any truth to that?

And does the reform in China impose a serious barrier to comprehension of pre-reform texts? Can people educated since the reform manage to follow older texts?

By: Kmlawson

Kmlawson — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

It is true that they use different characters for some things (simplified vs. trad) and encodings (GB vs. BIG5 and also HZ) but I don’t think this has anything to do with reading propaganda. Both sides can usually read the other sides characters, even if they often can not write the characters in the other form.

By: Kerim Friedman

Kerim Friedman — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

One small comment: You cite Sugano as saying that Mainlanders were “raised on the old characters while the native Taiwanese, many of which were illiterate, would have nothing to lose from the reform.” While it might be correct to say that the ruling Mainlander elite – those with leadership positions in the KMT – were raised on the old characters, many of the (as many as) two million soldiers who came over were illiterate or had received only minimal education during the turbulent years of Civil War, while the Taiwanese had a well established education system in place during the last years of the Japanese Colonial era. While Japanese Colonial statistics probably overstate the extent of literacy in Japanese, it is sufficient to say that by by 1944 over 70% of the school aged population was in elementary school – levels that had never been reached on the mainland. Of course, literacy was in Japanese, not Chinese. But that doesn’t mean they were illiterate.

By: Muninn

Muninn — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

My bad, you are right, I shouldn’t have used the word illiterate here, as indeed many were learning Japanese in the schools. Also, to be fair to Sugano, I didn’t quite understand the subtleties of his argument on this point and perhaps should not have quoted it all. Most shocking was the statement of a Taiwanese student in the post-presentation discussion claiming that “no one was literate in Taiwan” before Japan’s colonial period. I found this to be a ridiculous claim as it ignores the elites already there. I was surprised when no one challenged her claim. Perhaps it was to spare her any further embarrassment.

By: Atsushi Sugano

Atsushi Sugano — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This is Atsushi Sugano, and first I would like to thank Mr. Lawson for showing interest to my research, and posting this topic on his website.
My paper, “Taiwan ni okeru ‘kantaiji ronso’-kokuminto no ‘mikan no mojikaikaku’ to sono yukue”(Rethinking the Debates of Promoting Simplified Characters in Taiwan: KMT’s Unrealized Character Reform) will be published on the end of this month, in the JATS (“The Japan Association for Taiwan Studies”) journal No.6 (「台湾における『簡体字論争』―国民党の『未完の文字改革』とその行方」『日本台湾学会報』第6号、2004年5月末刊行予定), so if anyone has further interest on this topic, please refer the article for more details (Sorry the articles in the journal are all in Japanese).
Well, until few years ago, I also did not know that there was a time in the history when Chiang Kai-Shek and some progressive intellectuals were looking very forward to implementing character reform in Taiwan. As I found out the historical fact by reading references from Taiwan, I was really fascinated by the topic, since most of us foreigners and even many young people in Taiwan do not know the historical fact and believe that KMT consistently kept the policy of protecting traditional characters. So, I hope my article can broaden the horizons of Taiwan Studies.
I really thank Mr. Lawson for this special introduction of my paper, and I would like to post some corrections and comment to it.
Firstly, character reform became as ‘movement’ in mainland China which became the driving force to make KMT to announce the list of Simplified Character in 1935(but it’s soon abolished). However, in Taiwan, although ‘Committee for Researching Simplified Characters’ was established in the Ministry of Education, things did not go that far as in the mainland and remained only as the level of ‘debate’, because of two factors: one, strong resistance from conservative intellectuals, two, advanced character reform by CCP. Although ‘Committee for Researching Simplified Characters’ was soon abolished and things remained only in the state of ‘debate’, there was a great possibility for KMT to perform character reform with Chiang’s support, and that’s what happened in 1953-1954.
Secondly, I have also clearly stated in my paper that the reason KMT could not implement its character reform was simply because CCP was in advance for implementing character reform (and CCP implemented the reform in 1956), which conservative intellectuals also used it as the opposing reason. Actually, character reform plan was firstly made by KMT in 1935 when they were the ruling party in mainland, and CCP’s reform plan was basically using most part of KMT’s former reform plan. So, to say correctly, reform plan originally belongs to KMT, but because of the confrontation to CCP, KMT had to abandon it.
Thirdly, in my paper, I did not use the word ‘illiterate’, and I did not discuss the issue with literacy. I totally agree with Mr. Friedman that literacy rate in Taiwan was much higher than which in mainland at that time. In my paper, the article that I cited only discussed the situation of ‘intellectuals’ of both ‘Taiwanese’ and ‘Mainlanders’, so the situation of soldiers, farmers etc. were not in the discussion. Actually, promoting character reform does not quite influence literacy directly–since improving literacy is purely dependent on the matter of spreading education.
I thank Mr. Lawson again for his interest to my research and this nice introduction on his website. I appreciate it very much, and hope many other people will become interested on the history of Taiwan.

By: Googl

Googl — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Googl

By: languagehat.com

languagehat.com — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

CREATING THE QIANG.
Konrad Lawson of Muninn has a fascinating post about the construction of the Qiang (K’iang) nationality out of an ancient catchall term.The Qiang, which are now one of 55 recognized “nationalities” in China, with a population of about 220,000, have…

By: Keywords

Keywords — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Language Reform
Konrad Lawson, who I’ve long known only as the person behind the Macintosh software company Fool’s Workshop, has an excellent blog, Muninn, which I will soon be adding to my blogroll. LanguageHat brought my attention to two posts in particular: One on …

By: a better tomorrow

a better tomorrow — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Language reform
Interesting post about how Chiang Kai-Shek was actually in favor of Chinese character reform (the conventional wisdom among non-linguists like myself being that Chiang must have obviously been against character reform because the communists were in fav…