Taipei - Taiwan took another step towards proclaiming its
sovereignty Tuesday by announcing that the government will stop
referring to Mandarin Chinese as Taiwan's national language.
Under the revised Language Development Bill, Taiwan will stop
defining Mandarin Chinese, the lingua franca of China, as the
'national language.'
Instead, it will list Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese, Hakka and
Taiwan's aboriginal tongues as its national languages, Chiu
Chuang-liang, director of the cabinet's council for Cultural Planning
and Development, said.
Taiwanese, also called Fukienese, is the dialect spoken by Taiwan
natives and by people in China's Fujian (Fukien) Province. Hakka is
the dialect spoken by Taiwan's 2 million Hakka people.
Taiwan has about a dozen aboriginal tribes, but their languages
are extinct or near extinction.
Mandarin Chinese has been Taiwan's official language since 1949,
when the Chinese Nationalist Government lost the Chinese Civil War
and fled to Taiwan to set up its government-in-exile.
Speaking in parliament on Tuesday, Chiu denied that scrapping
Chinese as the national language is part of Taipei's policy of
disowning Chinese influence, but to protect endangered languages.
'UNESCO has listed Taiwan's aboriginal languages as facing
extinction. So the amendment is to protect different languages and to
make them equal,' he said, referring to the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
The Chinese Nationalists ruled Taiwan, formally called the
Republic of China, until 2000 when the Democratic Progressive Party
won the presidential election and DPP leader Chen Shui-bian became
president.
Chen has been promoting Taiwan as a sovereign state, not part of
China. In October last year, Chen launched the name-change campaign
to remove 'China' and 'Chinese' as well as the name of the Chinese
Nationalist president Chiang Kia-shek from enterprise names.
So far Chen has renamed the Chiang Kai-shek International Airport
as Taoyuan International Airport, Chinese Petroleum Corp as Taiwan
Chinese Petroleum Corp, China Shipbuilding Corp as Taiwan
International Shipbuilding Corp, Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall as
Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall, Chunghwa Post Co Ltd as Taiwan Post
Co Ltd. 'Chunghwa' means 'Chinese.'
China, which sees Taiwan as its breakaway province, has warned
that it will use force to recover Taiwan if Taipei declares
independence or seeks formal separation from China by changing
Taiwan's name 'Republic of China' or amending Taiwan's constitution.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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