I wonder what proof he has for that assertion, it sounds ridiculous.
Found this in an on-line etymology:
China
Interestingly, China is not a Chinese word. The OED2 says that it is found in Sanskrit writings from about two thousand years ago, and appears in various forms in several Asian languages. The earliest European usage is by Marco Polo, and the earliest cited English usage dates from 1555.
The American Heritage Dictionary gives the origin as being a corruption of the name of the Qin dynasty, which ruled China in the third century BC.
Certainly Chinese followed right after. I doubt there was any negative connotation that could have been made at that early year. It’s a normal construction in English, Portugese comes to mind of the top of my head. It seems to predominate for Asian countries where a final “n” is present, though there are exceptions Javanese Balinese and the other way for The Phillipines, Phillipinese would seem to be a convenient term actually, there’s no analagous English term that I can think of.
There is no proof. It is ridiculous.
What’s the Taipei Times doing publishing crap like that? What’s next? UFO conspiracy theories? 
Any one have any idea why we use -ese for some countries but not for others, why don’t we say Americanese ? How would Portugese and Maltese fit into that ?
If we invented -ese for inferior countries, why don’t we say Francese, Walesese ? Isn’t -man more offensive ? Chinaman vs Chinese. So why did he use the word “Englishman” ?
There is no proof. It is ridiculous.
What’s the Taipei Times doing publishing crap like that? What’s next? UFO conspiracy theories? [/quote]
Thanks Cranky, you stated that more clearly than I did 
As Taiwan corresponds to Iran in being a two-syllable word ending in an, why not follow that example and call them Taiwanians?
Or we could follow the model of Pakistan (plus a host of other “stans”) and call them Taiwanis. Hmm, I rather like that sound. It’s very similar to Taiwanese, but with the stress shifted to the second syllable. And perhaps it would have the advantage of being easier for non-native speakers to spell.
But one thing is certain: there is no order of ranking in the suffixes applied - whether ese, ian, man, er, or whatever, they all enjoy the same level of dignity. To suggest otherwise is sheer stupidity. The only thing that matters is what sounds right and trips most easily off the tongue.
There was a thread on this years ago on Oriented and someone did some research and came to the conclusion that it has to do with the period of time that these words entered the English language. The fact that the period of time that they were deciding to denote peoples and products of countries with an ‘ese’ suffix (as opposed to ‘an’ or something) coincided with the period of colonisation of Asia has led people to the erroneous belief that ‘ese’ somehow denotes supposedly inferior countries. It’s stupid.
Brian
Thanks, Brian.
I’d done a search for the other thread but didn’t find anything. (I don’t understand why the search function on this site is so hit or miss.)
So I went through pages one by one until I found it: earlier “Taiwaner” thread.
[quote=“cranky laowai”]
I’d done a search for the other thread but didn’t find anything. (I don’t understand why the search function on this site is so hit or miss.)
So I went through pages one by one until I found it: earlier “Taiwaner” thread.[/quote]
That’s a really good thread – quite a classic, indeed. I hadn’t seen it before, so thanks for digging it up for us, Cranky.
God, but there’s so much treasure buried here on Forumosa and its preincarnations. Dig around at random and you almost can’t help but turn up at least a few sparkling nuggets.