Debate On Traditional and Simplified Chinese Characters - Developments in Recent Years - 2009

2009

In early 2009, the ROC (Taiwan) government launched a campaign to obtain World Heritage status for Traditional Chinese characters in a bid to preserve them for the future.

During Lianghui Meeting 2009, Member of Lianghui, Mr Pan Qing-Lin proposed a bill to abolish Simplified Characters successively and reintroduce Traditional Characters step by step within the next 10 years. He explained his three major reasons for the proposal in terms of the destruction of the scientific and aesthetic aspects of Chinese characters, the enhancement in technology diminishing the fast handwriting advantage of Simplified Characters, and the potential benefit for Taiwan unification progress. He also believes that the name used in Taiwan for Traditional Characters, Orthodox Characters, is very meaningful indeed. Furthermore, he explicitly supports Taiwan's Campaign for World Heritage Status for Orthodox Characters and feels the pressure on Mainland Chinese Government from the Campaign. In addition, another Member of Lianghui, Ms Chen Jun followed Pan's moves and called for Mainland Chinese Government's supports for the Campaign. Along with the support for the Campaign, Ms Chen suggested the introduction of Traditional Characters education into the primary and secondary education. She expected the introduction of Traditional Characters education would increase and improve schoolchildren's and teenagers' passion for and understanding of traditional Chinese culture and language. Again, like the similar proposals in the previous year of Lianghui Meeting, these proposals caused heated public debates across Chinese communities around the globe and was rejected by the Mainland Government.

In April, Mr Lee Yu-Ming, the undersecretary of the Board of Language Usage & Applications, confirmed to the media that the Mainland Government would release a new measure regarding usage of Chinese characters within a year. Under the new policy, a new Table of Standardised Characters would be created to restrict people from using any ‘non-standard characters’. Mr Lee estimated the Table would consist of more than 8,000 characters. He emphasised that the new policy would not permit anyone to use ‘non-standard characters’, especially for their names. People would have to use characters straight from the Table. The undersecretary also pointed out that the Government would not reintroduce Traditional Chinese after serious considerations. However, probably for the very first time, experts and officials from the Board admitted some Simplified Characters had been oversimplified and made imperfectly, and consequently, more difficult to learn, apply, and use. Hence, the newly created Table would provide an opportunity to redress the problems. In addition, these professionals agreed the priceless values of the informative nature of and the cultural inheritance borne within Traditional Characters and the necessity of being able to recognise them. In order to form better evaluations of the suggestion to reintroduce Traditional Characters, the officials invited 91 senior students to sit for an exam testing the knowledge of Traditional Characters. These students are potential teachers with outstanding GPA in majors of Ancient Chinese Language and Ancient Chinese Literature from Beijing Normal University. Only 3 students passed. These officials then concluded the suggestion of reintroduction of Traditional Characters would cost a lot. However, they agreed the policy of ‘Knowing Traditional; Using Simplified’ would be a feasible policy.