Well, that made me sad and angry so here's my letter I wrote to the Taipei Times in response:
Dear Sir,
Name Games
It is claimed that Confucius once said to change the names of an environment would be to change the way people thought about it, and themselves. The news that National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) has dropped the word ‘national’ from its promotional posters aimed at Chinese students as ‘a means to demonstrate goodwill to China’ should come as no surprise. It is the logical extension and outcome of the KMT administration’s soft push for self-annexation via economic incentives. It also illustrates how two different administrations have strategically fought over names as a means to determine the identity of the nation and shape its future.
Under Presidents Lee and Chen, administrations proud of Taiwan, the government led efforts to change names to better encourage and support the rising Taiwanese national identity that accompanied the transformation of the nation from KMT dictatorship into a democracy. This was a top down approach to nation building. The best Taiwanese could do with the amendments however was to draw from them a feeling a national pride. It was thus more superficial than substantive. Crucially there were few economic incentives for Taiwanese to ‘bank‘ the changes or convert them into opportunities for income creation.
KMT President Ma’s approach has, in contrast, been the opposite whilst retaining a similar goal. Whilst claiming that he would not engage in ideological name games (a lie belied by his administration quickly acting to change back the names of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and the Chunghua Post Office), Ma has sought to encourage Taiwanese to ditch their national identity via the chimerical economic incentives of his disastrously short-sighted and naive cross-strait policy.
First, he manufactured in Taiwanese imaginations a collapse of the Taiwanese economy under Chen’s administrations despite growth figures that suggested the opposite. Under this excuse of a collapsed and soon to be ostracised economy, Ma pushed for economic agreements with China which grossly overstated the benefits and encouraged Taiwanese businesses to make themselves dependent upon a slowly stagnating Chinese economy. Ma called on Taiwanese to be ‘pragmatic’ so as to take advantage of the untold riches that would come their way if they simply set aside contentious and ‘controversial‘ adherence to nomenclature that stressed the primacy of a Taiwanese national identity. We were told ad nausea that we were all Chinese now. Those that got ’on message’ would benefit whilst those holding to their pride in Taiwan as a nation would lose out.
Ma's strategy has been clever, knowing full well Taiwanese inclinations to economic insecurity, pessimism and short-term thinking. Taiwanese have not been slow to get the message. Many now believe that if they can appease Beijing and avoid ‘upsetting the Chinese people‘ they too can strike gold. So it is that NTNU have dropped the ‘N’ to gain a few more students and increase income. I suggest that since they are changing their name, perhaps they should just go all the way and now call themselves Taiwan Province Subjugated University.