Museum's plan for Czech Republic exhibit sends the wrong message abroad

By Michael Riches

The recent breakage of a reported US$77 million in Chinese artifacts at the National Palace Museum is not just a misfortune, but an apt metaphor of the fragility of Taiwan’s relationship with China.

Not only should these treasures be handled with physical care, but with diplomatic sensitivity. Mishandling can result in fractures in more ways than one.

This fact should be heeded by the Czech Republic and the museum as both move toward an agreement to loan items for display in Prague.

“Czech people like the richness of the Chinese culture, and the treasures of the National Palace Museum are just something that is absolutely stunning,” Czech Representative to Taiwan David Steinke said in a Nov. 2 interview with CNA.

The article also referenced an agreement the museum signed with Prague in September to cooperate on a loan.

Both sides seem to be exercising poor judgment in allowing sovereign Taiwan to be represented abroad through the “richness” of artifacts that span China’s history.

My view on this matter might seem to casually disregard the long, complex history of the Republic of China, but what needs to be considered is not the local grasp of the museum’s meaning, but what messages the collection sends to foreign audiences viewing the artifacts half a world away.

Consider how the museum has been a cornerstone of my understanding of Taiwan since before I set foot here. When I worked in Shanghai, a friend there highlighted the National Palace Museum as prime evidence that Taiwan belonged to China. For him, it was a matter of pride that beautiful Taiwan was connected so meaningfully to his motherland through Taipei’s curation of a shared history.

Two years after hearing this perspective, it was bolstered in a 2009 New York Times article, in which then-Beijing Palace Museum curator Zheng Xinmiao said that the collection is "China's cultural heritage jointly owned by people across the Taiwan Strait.”

Back in my home city of Vancouver, another Chinese friend was not so diplomatic. He spoke about Taiwan with great hostility, citing the National Palace Museum as full of treasures “stolen” by Taiwan.

Upon my first visit to Taiwan in 2011, to study Mandarin, a new friend offered to take me to the museum. I got another taste of strong feelings about the collection when I flippantly told him that we were going to see the “stolen treasures.” He was outraged.

“Stolen? Those priceless artifacts would have been destroyed in the Cultural Revolution if we hadn’t rescued them,” he said.

Since that part of history was long in the past, I wondered if now would be an apt time to return what belongs to China. No, my friend said — the items should remain in Taiwan for safekeeping as long as the Chinese Communist Party was in power.

All of these stances made sense to me at the time, having had little understanding of Taiwanese history and culture. I eventually accepted my Taipei friend’s assertion on face value, but when I finally visited the museum myself, I had to wonder: If the collection was in Taipei merely for safekeeping, why was it being proudly displayed on ornate grounds as though it belongs to Taiwan?

As a foreigner, I realize that it is not possible for me to intuitively comprehend all the contradictions transmitted by the National Palace Museum’s existence in Taiwan. Even now, after having studied and worked in Taiwan for six years, with three visits to the museum and countless conversations on these issues with local professors and friends who hold a variety of political views, I still find it highly inappropriate for Taiwan to be putting China’s history on proud display while officially denying its historical ties with China.

If my stance demonstrates ignorance, then perhaps that should be taken as my point: Imagine what kind of naive conclusions other foreigners might reach when viewing parts of the collection half a world away.

Presenting what China calls a “jointly owned heritage” to the Czech Republic, or anywhere else, only amplifies an ambiguous message about Taiwan’s sovereignty, much to Beijing’s advantage.

Only Taiwanese can innately understand the complexities of the Republic of China’s history in Taiwan. These issues should not be exported for foreign consumption, as doing so sends a simplified and contradictory message when removed from a local context.

Outsiders should be required to view this collection from within Taiwan, where the possibility exists that they might hear differing viewpoints from locals about what the museum means to them. 

Additionally, given this year's heightened tensions with China, it would be wise to not move the collection in ways that could be considered provocative. The museum has recognized this possibility by its insistence that Prague enact an anti-seizure law before hosting the museum’s collection. Such a request only highlights to the Czech people that the collection’s ownership is contentious, and one must wonder why the government in Prague would want to move this argument onto their soil.

If the Czech Republic wants to promote the “richness of Chinese culture,” as its local envoy claims, then perhaps a loan from the Palace Museum in Beijing might be more appropriate. If the goal is to promote Taiwanese culture, there are countless local galleries that might be pleased to loan works that better represent this nation’s history.

Hanyu Pinyin as a public relations tool

By Michael Riches

I lived in China for three months before coming to Taiwan. I have now been here for six years. Considering that I quickly turned my back on a good career opportunity in Shanghai and have lasted so long in Taipei should make obvious where my allegiance lies.

Although China was not my cup of tea, some aspects of the culture rubbed me the right way. One was its universal use of Hanyu Pinyin. Having an effective, consistent pronunciation system helped me sound like an ace to those who listened to my basic Mandarin. It also helped locals teach me new words on the back of a napkin.

If someone told me to meet them on Zhongbei Lu, I knew what to look for on a street sign or a map. I would not look at Chung Pei Lu and think I was in the wrong place — a phenomenon not uncommon in Taiwan.

Despite feeling pushed away from China by other factors, the positive interactions within the language environment boosted my confidence and drew me into the culture. The fondness that remains demonstrates how Hanyu Pinyin can be an incredible public relations tool for Mandarin-speaking cultures.

Taiwanese have been warm and welcoming in all the ways that match their reputation, but this society’s refusal to use a standardized system for romanizing Mandarin has been a mild insult to foreigners. It has forced me on occasion to mispronounce names of people, places, political parties and historical events, to the point where listeners doubted my ability to speak their language.

Conflict was not unusual in my first months in Taiwan. In one instance, I explained to a friend that I wanted to visit a place I pronounced as kow-see-ung.

“No such place exists,” he said.

I kept repeating the name more slowly and with different syllable stresses. When the penny dropped, he told me I was trying to say gow-shee-ong (Kaohsiung). I then told him he was pronouncing “k” incorrectly, which did not soothe our frayed nerves.

I chose to study the effects of Chinese romanization on cultural interactions for my postgraduate research in Taiwan from 2016 to 2018. I looked at the way functional transliteration welcomes a person into the language culture, while haphazard use has the opposite effect.

I approached my research through Marshall McLuhan’s media theory, popularized by the maxim “The medium is the message.” In this case, transliteration systems such as Hanyu Pinyin and Wade-Giles, or the “mixed spellings” used in Taiwan, are media that convey a number of linguistic and cultural messages to listeners, speakers and language learners.

Some of those messages, though, can be political. When Taiwan began discussing the need for a universal transliteration system about 20 years ago, unresolved debates erupted between those who recognized the benefits of adopting the globally recognized Hanyu Pinyin system, and those who found Hanyu’s “look and feel” objectionable based on its origins in communist China.

The government in 2002 proposed a Taiwan-made compromise called Tongyong Pinyin, which eliminated the supposedly Maoist-looking “x” and “q” from its order, but was officially discontinued in 2009.

The transliteration debate partly occurred within the pages of the Taipei Times, whose editorial board in 2008 was in favor of Taiwan adopting Hanyu Pinyin, but today continues to change Hanyu-spelled place names to Tongyong. Disentangling romanization’s communicative effects from its political associations was tortuous for many, and today the establishment would rather leave the topic buried.

I return to it, though, because I was struck in my research that the pundit class fighting Hanyu Pinyin did not seem to ask foreigners — the people who need to read signs and understand that “Sindian” and “Xindian” are not two separate places — which system would best facilitate their ability to function in the national language.
 
One part of my research was to discover if Hanyu Pinyin’s supposed Maoist message was shared by average Taiwanese.

I drafted a survey, completely in Chinese, that presented a list of Taiwanese place names along with their Hanyu Pinyin equivalents — Kaohsiung/Gaoxiong, Taitung/Taidong and so on. Without mentioning the phrase “Hanyu Pinyin,” I proposed a hypothetical situation in which the government adopts these “new” spellings. I presented a list of 16 positive, negative and neutral adjectives to associate with the change.

The 30 Taiwanese undergraduate participants most commonly chose “confusing” and “unnecessary” (they could select as many options as they saw fit). About half as many chose “friendly” and “modern,” but only one selected “communist” (presented as 共產黨人 in the survey).
 
When asked why such a change would take place, the written comments emphasized standardization and foreigners’ needs. None mentioned Chinese influence.

The result seems to show that the anxiety over Hanyu’s association with China simply belongs to establishment elites.

Another survey, which had 88 respondents and five follow-up interviews, showed that about 45 percent of Chinese were comfortable using Chinese names in Western communities, mostly based on pronunciation issues, but also because Hanyu Pinyin would mentally map to Chinese characters.

Even when mispronunciations occurred, the survey participants identified the misspoken name as being generated from within the Chinese language culture. As with a respondent named Qing, after years of being called king with no complaint, he decided to teach people the pronunciation of the “Chinese Q,” helping draw local Canadians toward his culture.

Only 7.4 percent of Taiwanese survey respondents — two — said they used Chinese names among foreigners, and one used a Hanyu Pinyin spelling.

I conclude from this that a lack of Hanyu Pinyin pushes locals away from their language culture when interacting with foreigners, as when places such as Taipei or Taichung are intentionally mispronounced to be understood.

The heart of my research, though, was an experiment in which I recorded five Canadians speaking Mandarin from Hanyu Pinyin and Wade-Giles text. The participants were based in Canada and had no prior Chinese-language experience. The three native Mandarin speakers who evaluated the recordings in Taiwan found 73 percent of the Hanyu Pinyin pronunciations were intelligible, while Wade-Giles scored 52 percent.

The raters looked uncomfortable hearing certain words mispronounced, while the speakers developed positive impressions of Chinese when associating articulation with Hanyu Pinyin.

Another survey presented a similar group of participants with Hanyu and Wade-Giles text, categorized by each system, along with a pronunciation chart. The words selected focused on each system’s most unique phonetic aspects. When asked which system they believed would elicit the most accurate pronunciation, 11 of the 12 participants chose Hanyu Pinyin.

The benefits of the system extend beyond foreigners being able to read signs. Locals also would likely enjoy hearing place names and personal names spoken correctly, and perhaps Taiwanese would have fun teaching newcomers new words using the alphabet.

Using Hanyu Pinyin is not akin to bowing to China. It is bowing to the rest of the world and welcoming newcomers into the local culture, creating lasting first impressions for foreigners and locals alike.

China’s Scotland analogy supports Taiwanese sovereignty

By Michael Riches

Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Wang Wenbin on Aug. 11 compared Taiwanese independence efforts with Scotland’s attempts to split from the UK.

Scotland held a referendum on independence in 2014, and the result was close. About 45 percent of voters checked the “yes” box to split from the UK. Hoping that the tide has turned in favor of independence, the Scots are angling for a second try.

The Canadian province of Quebec went through two independence votes as well. The first, in 1980, saw the “yes” camp garner about 40 percent of the votes. In 1995, the share climbed to 49.5 percent — although in that case, the "new strategic partnership" described on the ballot left some voters confused about whether an actual split from Canada was on the cards. The Canadian government accepted the ambiguity and campaigned against independence on Quebec's terms.

If Scotland "split itself from the UK, would the UK remain calm, show restraint, sit by and watch the situation deteriorate?” Wang asked.

I have heard a similar argument from Chinese who evoked Quebec’s struggle when discussing Taiwanese sovereignty.

“How would you feel if Quebec separated?” they asked.

Sad, I would reply, but respectful of their decision.

Wang and others in China do not realize how much they are defeating their own claims to Taiwan when they make such comparisons. If they want to draw parallels between Taiwan, Scotland and Quebec, then the Chinese would do as the British and Canadians do, and offer Taiwan a vote on independence — and then be willing to honor the result if (and when) it does not go in their favor. 

Given that the CCP believes Taiwan is Chinese territory, then it should be able to swallow its own analogy and provide its so-called "province" with the same peaceful territorial dispute mechanism that the UK grants Scotland.

Wang asked if the British would show "restraint" and "calm" in the face of losing Scotland. In fact, restraint and calm is exactly what they and the Canadian government did during independence campaigns. Instead of sending in their militaries, the central governments conducted measured campaigns to persuade residents to vote “no” and made their arguments with confidence. 

The UK and Canada may not have “sat by,” to use Wang's words, when faced with separatist campaigns, but they did work to convince their territories to remain united. Neither did they consider sovereignty movements a “deterioration.” Rather, the calls for independence were treated as good-faith appeals for self determination.

In fact, Canada passed a post-referendum law in 2000 that outlined how negotiations should take place if any province voted to separate. They do not use anti-secession laws, which would be abhorrent to Canadian and British values.

Wang should realize that Canada and the UK have indeed demonstrated how to “remain calm” in the face of separatist campaigns. Granting the privilege to leave is in fact what fosters goodwill and makes the population feel valued. The hostility shown toward Taiwan, on the other hand, has not exactly cultivated much love. 

Not that Taiwan needs China's permission to be independent, but if Beijing wants to make such comparisons, then by their own argument they should show the same goodwill to Taiwanese and stop making claims on a nation that would overwhelmingly reject Chinese control in a hypothetical referendum.

Perhaps I am naive to say that if China truly cared about the people of this nation, it would put its ego aside and offer Taiwanese the same dignity that the UK and Canada offer its people. 

Of course, I understand why that would never happen, and I am aware of the multitude historical and cultural issues that emerge when that surface is scratched.

But any time a Chinese leader or pundit compares Taiwan with Scotland or Quebec, they sound ridiculous. Canada and the UK learned long ago how to settle nationhood disputes peacefully, an approach China has yet to attempt with Taiwan.

US only after its own interests in Taiwan

By Michael Riches

Like a bull in a china shop, the second in line to the US presidency barreled through the nation, departing as suddenly as she arrived, expecting Taiwan to deal with the aftermath.

The US has called China’s response to the visit “provocative” and “irresponsible.” One could have said the same about the Aug. 2 drop-in by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi. China’s simulated blockade and missile firings over Taipei, rather than being “provocative,” would be better described as “entirely predictable.”

Pelosi’s overnight layover had no stated purpose. It was left for Taiwanese to read between the lines and view the visit as symbolic, a way of letting China know “who’s boss.” It was an extravagant game of “I dare you to knock this chip off my shoulder,” except Pelosi put the chip on Taiwan’s shoulder and fled.

At a news conference with President Tsai Ing-wen at the Legislative Yuan on Aug. 3, Samson Ellis of Bloomberg News told Pelosi that Taiwan has paid a cost for her visit, and “is likely to continue to do so over the coming days and weeks.”

Ellis asked: “What concrete, tangible benefits can you promise Taiwan to offset the cost of your trip?”

Pelosi could name none in her rambling answer. The most she could muster at the beginning of her response was that the US “has just passed the chips and science act,” something not contingent on her visit, implying that the “good economic exchanges” she continually referred to in the remainder of her reply could be undone if Taiwan becomes difficult in its relationship with the superpower.

Anyone who views the US as Taiwan’s friend should remember that partnership with a world power is always conditional. Taiwan supplies its protector with much-needed semiconductor chips and buys its weapons in return. That is the gist of Taiwan’s meaning to the US.

More than that, keeping Taiwan out of the hands of China is essential to US interests in the Indo-Pacific region. If it were not, Taiwan’s “freedom and democracy” would be of no significance. Witness Iran in 1953, Brazil in 1964, Indonesia in 1965, Chile in 1970, Argentina in 1976, Ukraine in 2014 — each having a democratically elected government overthrown with US involvement simply because they stopped playing ball with the West.

Even Western allies are not immune from US meddling. The Australian Financial Review uncovered covert CIA participation in successful efforts in 1975 to remove Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam from power. Former CIA contractor Christopher Boyce later supported the claim, saying that Whitlam’s plans to close US military bases threatened US interests in the region.

The pieces being played on this board have nothing to do with Washington's concern for Taiwan’s freedom, democracy or human rights, or Beijing's fond regard for Taiwan’s historical significance to the motherland. The game is all about the US and China preventing each other from establishing military outposts in Taiwan.

Hawaii provides a comparative example. The US annexed the country in 1898 for the islands’ strategic importance in the Spanish-American War. US business stakes in Hawaii aided efforts to oust the royal family, who by all accounts were providing well for their people, but were also curbing foreign capitalist influence on the nation’s values.

The illegal US takeover was all about money and military might, not freedom or democracy.

Annexation of Hawaii has given the US — and the West by extension — invaluable influence and jurisdiction throughout the Pacific. “Occupation” of Taiwan would extend that domination right up to China’s doorstep.

I do not support China’s claim to Taiwan, but it takes a certain degree of blindness to think that Beijing would not do its utmost to prevent an enemy superpower from establishing bases 180km away across the strait — something that would surely follow from Taiwanese independence.

Being a vassal state of the US would certainly be a more favorable situation for Taiwan than being absorbed by China. However, Taiwanese should not be naive about what the US wants.

Washington is beating the drums of war in the strait as loudly as Beijing, and Taiwan is simply a pawn. Pelosi, as a rook on this chessboard, engaged in a selfish ploy to burnish her legacy by demonstrating that she alone could goad China into encircling Taiwan and setting off thousands of tonnes of gunpowder.

Washington might try to pass off the fireworks as a celebration of freedom and democracy, but those watching the missiles fly over their homeland should at least be skeptical of US intentions.