Taiwan Waves Linguistic White Flag

Deng Xiaoping, the late leader of China, is about to arrive in Taiwan. So is Jiang Zemin, China’s president.

Well, not in the physical sense, but in written English and other Western languages.

For many decades, Taiwan has operated with a different Romanization or spelling system from China. Deng’s name has been spelled Teng Hsiao-ping in Western-language publications, and Jiang is Chiang Tse-min--even though the names are pronounced just as they are on the mainland. The same is true for many thousands of other Chinese names.

Now, in this one tiny respect, Taiwan is preparing to surrender to the mainland. It has tentatively decided to adopt China’s Pinyin Romanization system, the one in use throughout most of the rest of the world.

“We know it’s not a good system, but it’s widespread,” sighs Lee Hsien, the chairman of a special committee for Taiwan’s Ministry of Education that recently recommended the changeover.

And therein lies an important tale: how the global marketplace and the Internet are prompting standardization throughout the world, even between old adversaries like China and Taiwan.

China’s Communist government adopted the Pinyin system in the 1950s, along with a new, different way of writing Chinese characters. These competing Romanization and writing systems have long been a symbol of the broader struggle between China and Taiwan.

Virtually all American newspapers have been using the Pinyin system since the 1970s, when the United States normalized its relations with China. The system sometimes seems bewildering to Americans because of all the X’s (the Pinyin symbol for the sound “sh”) and Q’s (the symbol for the sound “ch”).

Meanwhile, Taiwan has clung to a version of the old Wade-Giles system used in mainland China in the early 20th century. Thus, the name of the last Chinese dynasty has been rendered as the Qing dynasty in China, but the Ching dynasty in Taiwan. China’s ancient imperial capital city is spelled Xian on the mainland, but Sian in Taiwan.

The pressures for Taiwan to change began to build about four years ago, when the government launched a campaign to make Taipei a “regional center” for international business operations. The idea was that Taiwan should compete with Hong Kong and Singapore as an Asian base for multinational corporations.

Officials discovered that one of the difficulties foreign companies confront on Taiwan is that the street names are confusing. Visitors trying to find their way around Taipei don’t understand the old Wade-Giles system.

The problem is compounded by the fact that there are even variant spellings for the same street name from block to block: One of Taipei’s biggest streets is spelled both “Jenai Road” and “Renai Road.”

But street names are only one part of Taiwan’s growing problem. The spread of the computer and the Internet have vastly accelerated the pressures on Taiwan to drop its separate spelling system.

Let’s say, for example, that you want to research on the Internet a paper on Deng Xiaoping. Whatever search engine you use won’t pull up articles from Taiwan because for those you need to type in Teng Hsiao-ping.

“From the point of view of computerization, if we used the same system as the mainland, it would make things more convenient for transliterating Chinese personal names and place names,” says Lee.

Still, this change hasn’t been easy for Taiwan. Some scholars and intellectuals have voiced the fear that adoption of China’s Pinyin system might be misperceived as an admission that Taiwan is part of China.

One group of Taiwan language scholars argued in the Taipei Times last month that Taiwan should try to preserve a system with “distinctive features that set it apart from China . . . Pinyin.”

To Western eyes, this spirited debate may seem odd. After all, the outcome won’t greatly impinge on ordinary Taiwanese because not many of them spend their days writing Western languages.

And to Westerners, Romanization can be seen as merely a tool of convenience, not a political symbol. But that viewpoint ignores matters of Asian culture and history.

“It’s deeply embedded in Chinese culture that the way you write your language represents morality and appropriate behavior, including political behavior,” observes Perry Link, professor of East Asian studies at Princeton University.

“There’s the whole tradition of calligraphy showing the moral worth and character of an individual. . . . The whole computer revolution is going to eat away at these notions.”

Despite Taiwan’s qualms, the change is coming. Yet Lee says it won’t go all the way. Taipei will keep its familiar spelling, not become Taibei in Pinyin.

And residents of Taiwan won’t have to change the Romanized spellings on their existing passports. If President Lee Teng-hui should ever come to the United States again, for example, he can travel under his old name.

Otherwise, in Pinyin, he would become Li Denghui.

Jim Mann’s column appears in this space every Wednesday.