The Presidential Office yesterday said it was not against calling Chinese “Huayu (華語)” or “Huawen (華文),” but said that the Executive Yuan must explain the government’s position to the public. Presidential Office Spokesman Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) said “Guoyu (國語)” refers to the national and official language of a country, a principle that should be reflected in school textbooks. Chinese courses for elementary and junior high schools next year will still be called “Guoyuwen (國語文)” but be changed to “Huayuwen (華語文)” in guidelines for teachers and textbook writers and editors. Huang Kuang-kuo (黃光國), a national policy advisor, threatened to resign should the Ministry of Education decide to change “Guowen” to “Huawen.”To my suspicious mind, a ROC loyalist administration like the present one should in theory wish to defend use of the term 'Guoyu' denoting as it does a 'national' language thereby reinforcing the impression of the ROC as a functional nation-state. However, could it be that there is a growing emphasis on Huayu and Huayuwen for another purpose? Is it in fact a preparation of the ground to shift Taiwanese consciousness post-ROC 100 year anniversary in a subtle downgrading of Zhonghua MinGuo to just simply Zhonghua, paving the way for a reworking of the title of the country vis a vis unification by any other name?
So I checked some articles looking for the key phrase 'Greater China', the use of which I believe would best facilitate such a move. It seems the term has been in use for some time amongst analysts, academics and particularly business people (but too sensitive for Taiwanese politicians?):
- Peter C Y Chow utilises it to discuss the threat of a Greater China Economic Zone (April 2010)
- APF out of Shanghai highlighted the use of Greater China region in discussing the launch of a new stock index that included China, Hong Kong and Taiwan (January 2010)
- KMT favourite Japanese persona Kenichi Ohmae referred to a Greater China Area in which he thought Taiwan had a chance to become a significant hub of (June 2010)
- Robert Kaplan thinks here and here that Greater China is forming at sea (April 2010)
- A business brief talks of DBS Group Holdings seeking to expand its footprint in the Greater China region and in South Asia (February 2010)
- Chan Tze-ching (陳子政), country officer of Citibank Taiwan and the then new head of the bank's global corporate investment banking saw his priority being facilitation of a Greater China platform to integrate businesses in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan (January 2005)
- In contrast AFP Taipei noted that the erosion of Aboriginal culture has been somewhat reversed as since the 1980s people in Taiwan have started adhereing to a 'Taiwanese consciousness' rather than a 'greater China consciousness' (April 2010)
- Huang Tien-lin (黃天麟) hoped that politicians would discard the greater-China ideology that underpinned their encouragement of businesses to move assembly to China (August 2010)
- Samsung apparently calculates revenues for a 'Greater China region' (March 2010)
- The Liberty Times worried way back in the day that Taiwanese would become entranced by a Greater China nationalism and would be absorbed unless they were able to reject the one country two systems model (July 2003)
- The Taipei Times worried in an editorial that Bob Dylan's no-show in Taiwan owing to Beijing cancelling his potentially 'sensitive' performances sent the signal that Beijing's dictate extended outside it's borders and and applied to a Greater China artifice (April 2010)
- 20th Century Fox has a company called the Greater China Region distributor (July 2010)
- Lu Xiongwen of Fudan University School of Management thinks that Greater China needs to step up efforts to nurture management talents (April 2010)
- German Author Tilman Aretz published a new 'Greater China Factbook' for sinologists which itself was not welcomed in China owing to its focus on PRC human rights abuses and its definition as Taiwan as a part of an independent and sovereign ROC (November 2007)
- Woo Swee Lian (Malaysian Chinese) of Perfect (China) Co. Ltd. visited Taiwan this year to promote its annual conference, part of the company's deployment in the Greater China area of which Taiwan is a very important market (July 2010)
- This year, Cisco also restructured its operations in which China, Hong Kong and Taiwan would fall under the Greater China Division. They also have a Japanese Division and all other countries will be handled by a Asia-Pacific Division (January 2010)
- According to Elaine Huang, 54 year old Kim Heung Soo, President of Dongbang CJ (Subsidiary of South Korean consumer goods conglomerate CJ Group) has spent 17 years in Greater China, working in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China (June 2010)
- Andrew Sheng thinks that the 'great modern Chinese philosopher' Nan Huai-chin has a huge following in Greater China (May 2010)
- Ericsson's Philip Tseng served as the company's Greater China vice executive from 2006 til this year (June 2010)
- In 2002, Goldman Sachs was already calculating the GDP growth rates of the greater China region that was formed of Taiwan, Hong Kong and China (March 2002)
- Duncan Levine wrote how talks between ARATS and SEF would pave the way for closer transport and communications links between Taiwan and China's airports and harbours, further integrating Taiwan into the greater China region (November 2008)
- Finally, Wikipedia even has a Greater China article on 大中華地區 (Da Zhonghua Diqu). It describes it as 'a term used to refer to commercial ties, cultural interactions, and prospects for political unification among ethnic Chinese'. It also states that the actual region is ambiguous and whilst it is commonly used to mean China, Hong Kong and Macau, it is also used to include Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia and indeed any overseas Chinese community. The most common Geographic uses include areas claimed by the PRC (by default also Taiwan). The term was first used by George Cressey in the 1930s to refer to the entire Chinese Empire (which at the time did not include Taiwan) and began to appear in Chinese language sources in the 1970s in reference to growing commercial ties between Hong Kong and China with the possibility of extending it to include Taiwan. In the 1980s it began to have the connotation of political unification between Taiwan and China. However, it is not an institutionalised entity such as the EU and does not imply sovereignty. Interestingly, the concept was criticised in the 1980s in China by scholar Huang Kunzhang who thought that Taiwan liked the Greater China view solely because it allowed it to capitalise on China's economic development
Here's my crystal ball moment ... I think that after the ROC 100 year anniversary, Ma and the KMT will use their perceived momentum to talk of economic integration post ECFA as tying Taiwan irrevocably to the Greater China region and thus political reforms (careful and slowly of course) would have to begin. But don't worry folks, we'll be part of Greater China but not subsumed into the PRC because we'll have a different name ... something like Taiwan Special Administrative Region or Chinese Taiwan Special Economic Zone.
