Taiwan pushes for Chinese characters as world cultural heritage

Jul 21, 2006, 15:05 GMT

Taipei - Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian on Friday voiced support for asking the United Nations to declare Chinese characters a world cultural heritage.

'The interest in learning Chinese is spreading around the world. Recently people began to talk about applying to UNESCO to list Chinese characters - both the complicated characters used in Taiwan and the simplified characters used in China - as a world cultural heritage,' Chen wrote in his weekly online newsletter.

'Before this, someone already suggested to me that we should join countries using Chinese characters like Japan and South Korea in applying for Chinese characters to be listed as a world cultural heritage. I think we should strive toward that goal,' he wrote.

If Chinese characters become a world cultural heritage, 'our cultural assets will become more visible on the world stage and we can share them with foreign friends,' he added.

Last week a dozen civil groups in Taiwan launched an online signature-collecting campaign to urge the United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO) to declare Chinese characters a world cultural heritage.

But analysts said that if Taiwan wants to file an application, it must go through China because Taiwan is not a member of the United Nations.

Chinese characters are used in the official written language in the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore, as well as form part of the Japanese written language and are used in Korea.

The difference between the written Chinese in Taiwan and that in the People's Republic is that while Taiwan has preserved traditional Chinese characters, China simplified the characters in 1955 to make them easier to learn.

Taiwan's insistence on using the traditional characters has added to Taiwan's isolation as non-Chinese people learning the language are learning China's simplified characters.

But the Taiwanese government insists that by preserving traditional characters, Taiwan is preserving Chinese culture. Public opinion polls have shown that most Taiwanese support preserving traditional characters, saying they are more beautiful than simplified characters.