Taiwan to stop calling Mandarin Chinese its national language

Mar 20, 2007, 8:11 GMT

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.