Really? What reasons did they cite?
Thanks for sharing. That’s more of a “Han is an idiot” polemic than anything.
The Hong Kong village idea does not contain any sign of long-term friendliness toward Hong Kong. Trying to attract Hong Kongers by offering 48 Chinese-English bilingual schools only reveals Han’s inability to understand why people want to move away from Hong Kong, the main reason why Hong Kongers are attracted to Taiwan, or what they want. Even if a Hong Kong village is built, it would very likely be empty and deserted.
I wish he would’ve gone one step further and explain why.
I read this as chances for
Taiwan becoming a bluegrass nation
Just as likely
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Hkers wanted a clearer path to residency in Taiwan.
They wanted clearer support of their aspirations for an open and fair political system in HK.
They did not ask for—and after Han was turfed out of Kaohsiung, they did not receive—a dedicated “HK zone” in Taiwan. No one asked for it, but the Kaohsiung government at that time thought that’s what was needed, while at the same time authorizing the tearing down of the Lennon Wall in the tunnel connecting NSYSU to the city.
Guy
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Han’s idea is crazy, my idea is better.
Since immigrant communities tend to cluster together, I would imagine a HK village would grow organically.
I would make an easy pathway to residency and citizenship, make Cantonese a national language.
Most HongKongers moving to Taiwan speak fluent Mandarin.
The main friction points for Hong Kongers is low salary, lack of internationalization, lack of good jobs for those coming from HK key industry(mainly finance), route to citizenship and then the worry that they are moving to another potential warzone.
Hong Kong and Taiwan are very different places. Hong Kong was a booming international metropolis attracting global talent and Taiwan is still very much a provincial backwater with very archaic and traditional values. Despite similar backgrounds many HK people feel more at home In NYC or London.
They don’t want or need a Hong Kong ghetto
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They sure like to cluster into Chinatowns.
Bilingual Taiwan is possible, just not by 2030
I got offered one of these, unfortunately I just have personal connections in Taipei
On the government’s planning and spending in the higher ed context:
Lol. Knowing how well a lot of Taiwanese University professors who “teach in English” speak English, this is going to be another case of checking boxes to fulfill requirements without doing anything at all to address the issue.
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If addressing the issue includes training for professors in using English as a medium of instruction, that is what some of the money is for. Obviously this doesn’t mean that every professor currently working will be teaching 100% in English by 2030. But, the government is using policies and financial incentives to support the vision and I’m not sure what else they could do…
To be honest, professors really should have a better grasp in English since research papers are supposed to all be published in english. It’s a universal Standard for science.
You’re right in that the best journals are in English for this reason, and certainly publishing in English will provide the widest audience (most papers are never cited, though).
However, many countries have local journals in the local language, this makes sense for topics of local interest; these aren’t generally going to be high impact papers. Papers written in Chinese for example can be published in Taiwan and probably other countries.
There are also some journals that are flexible on having perfect English, and others that provide language support. I suspect a few of our fellow Forumosans either work professionally as editors, or have done some editing work as a favour or as a side gig.
Before I got my current teaching job, I considered an editing job in Taipei but in the end didn’t do it because I hate editing and love teaching. On the road to bilingualism, there will likely be a lot of jobs for English language editors.
I just checked, they’re still hiring (or again):
https://www.editing.tw/en/recruitment
But if you raise this point some people around this board get offended. My ancestors are not British but I accept that English is the language used in Business, Academics and as a bridging language etc. And likewise Taiwan improving its English skills would improve its attractiveness.
I think Taiwan as well reach Bilinguism when the little kids ie in Elementary are in their 20s. Barring PRC invasion of course lol. they seem more confident in their english compared to most adults or young adults in their 20s as of now.
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… which has spurred a niche industry for editors of academic papers, for which AI will never replace this type of job. A bonus to native English-speaking people who do this job.
Reading and writing in English is much easier than speaking as a foreign language. In the 60s, Russian was the language of science, and later Japanese in the 80s. It is possible that in 20 years English will be supplanted by another language.
I think Mandarin should not be displaced. Too much local culture exists in it.
But a funny story. .
My first born spent most of the day at the grandparents family while we were working and we spoke all English in our house in the evening.
One day we took our child to McDonald’s to see Uncle Ronald.
We realized that she did not understand a word that he was saying.
That was because my child was being raised with Taiwanese during the day and English in the evening but no Mandarin.
We had to seriously rethink our plan.
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I don’t know about that - did academics/scientists around the world really have a working knowledge of Russian in the 60s and Japanese in the 80s? I suspect the majority wouldn’t have been able to read papers in those languages, let alone write them, right?
In my field (chemistry), I believe that German was pretty common until World War II, to the extent that most of the older professors at my uni (in the early 2000s) could read some German and we had to learn a few abbreviations and stuff so that we could understand a few famous old books and journals, before the internet and search engines revolutionized everything. And I think 100-150 years before that it was French.
But I believe that English has been the language of science, at least in chemistry, since German fell out of favor for, you know, obvious reasons.
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