A famous Chinese dissident takes a foreign journalist to account over a recent article giving China several advantages over Taiwan.
The News Lens
Date: 2016/09/02
By: Wu’er Kaixi
Forbes contributor Ralph Jennings has whipped up a social media storm with a brief, apparently off-
Photo Credit: Corbis/達志影像
the-cuff, article on three areas in which mainland China outdoes Taiwan. What are they? Pinyin, Chinese culture, and easy-stroll sidewalks courtesy of China’s chengguan — city law enforcement officers.
To be sure, Pinyin is a good Romanization system — easy to learn and easy to input Chinese with — but other Romanization systems work equally well when they’re implemented properly. Wade-Giles is a case in point. It was used by foreign learners of Chinese before the development of Hanyu Pinyin in the 1950s, and is the basis of Taiwan’s poorly implemented Romanization system. Unfortunately, the latter has arguably has been worsened by successive government-led policy moves to impose uniformity without caving in and adopting the mainland-developed system. It is indeed an area in which there is room for improvement.
Jennings’ two other arguments for mainland China are, however, dismal fails.
Taking the issue of Chinese culture first, I was born and raised in China, lived there for 21 years, and I have lived in Taiwan for an equal length of time. I can confidently report to the world that Chinese culture has been systematically destroyed in the People’s Republic. I think even the most diehard “motherland-loving fifty-cent loyalist” would agree that Taiwan has done a much better job of preserving Chinese culture than the mainland has. This can be seen in the way people here treat their families, the way they treat each other, the respect with which they interact with their peers, the tomb sweeping and Chinese New Year traditions, and even superstitions that date back thousands of years. [FULL STORY]