Salaries would tank. I know mine will. Heck, I’d be out of a job pretty soon.
It won’t be as easy to become citizen of the PRC in Taiwan.
Economic activities will depen even more on guanxi and hongbaos than ever before.
Economic activities as a whole will freeze over as salaries dunk. Crime will spriral out of control. Martial law makes a comeback, more for economic/security reasons than political.
Pollution will reach even more unbearable levels as all factory owners try to emulate the conditions in the Mainland, costwise. Mafia rules.
That random tapping of your phone once in a while will become permanent.
Your internet access will be monitored, though it will take time for the great firewall to be deployed.
Self-censorship will become second nature to you as a consequence of Taiwanese hissing in your ear continually not to say this or that in earshot of ‘Mainland compatriots’.
It will suddenly become much more difficult for a Taiwanese enterprise to prove it could not fill a particular job with either a local or a ‘Mainland compatriot’ and therefore foreign experts and managers without Open Work Permits will disappear from local companies.
Your bank details, transaction history etc. will be passed as a matter of course to the Public Security Bureau.
Your medical records will be passed on to transplant hospitals all over China, just in case you should be involved in an accident.
Your local friends will gradually be much less interested in discussing politics with you as people start disappearing in the middle of the night again.
That old custom of poor people jumping in front of your car in order to win huge payouts for their families will make a sudden comeback.
All that time you invested in learning Taiwanese will be seen as wasted when the local language is stamped out once and for all.
Your Taiwanese spouse will suddenly have far more trouble applying for foreign visas than he/she does now, and the countries which now allow him/her visa-free entry will revoke that privilege.
You will no longer be able to afford real estate when the newly rich hordes arrive with suitcases full of ill-gotten cash arrive to make a quick buck in the housing market.
Waitaminit, that shit is already starting to happen.
That random tapping of your phone once in a while will become permanent.
Your internet access will be monitored, though it will take time for the great firewall to be deployed.
Self-censorship will become second nature to you as a consequence of Taiwanese hissing in your ear continually not to say this or that in earshot of ‘Mainland compatriots’.
It will suddenly become much more difficult for a Taiwanese enterprise to prove it could not fill a particular job with either a local or a ‘Mainland compatriot’ and therefore foreign experts and managers without Open Work Permits will disappear from local companies.
Your bank details, transaction history etc. will be passed as a matter of course to the Public Security Bureau.
Your medical records will be passed on to transplant hospitals all over China, just in case you should be involved in an accident.
Your local friends will gradually be much less interested in discussing politics with you as people start disappearing in the middle of the night again.
That old custom of poor people jumping in front of your car in order to win huge payouts for their families will make a sudden comeback.
All that time you invested in learning Taiwanese will be seen as wasted when the local language is stamped out once and for all.
Your Taiwanese spouse will suddenly have far more trouble applying for foreign visas than he/she does now, and the countries which now allow him/her visa-free entry will revoke that privilege.
You will no longer be able to afford real estate when the newly rich hordes arrive with suitcases full of ill-gotten cash arrive to make a quick buck in the housing market.
Waitaminit, that shit is already starting to happen.[/quote]
I don’t agree with much of what you write, but this is spot on. I’m in China at the moment and yes it is palpably different here to Taiwan.
You forgot to add that we’d all become obsessed with Japanese war crimes.
Yep. The changes would be incremental and pernicous and you’d wake up one day to discover that you where you were once living in a country you could make a contribution to and even become a citizen, you are now a permanent outsider because of your race.
We’d also not be able to read The View From Taiwan anymore.
Oh. I should go back and check my post in that case.
If you think Taiwanese = Minnan then I guess I don’t need to address your point, but I will indulge myself today.
Is Minnan in Fujien (or any other province of the PRC) an icon or rallying point in a struggle for independence or differentiation from the Chinese state? If not, your observation is irrelevant.
I dunno. I spend a lot of my time at work railing aginst the censorship that goes on there. Maybe under the reds it would be worse? I don’t know. Won’t bother me, though. I’ll go on doing what I’m doing. I don’t give a fuck whether the person censoring me is a commie or a fascist. GIMME THE MONEY!
[quote=“redwagon”]
If you think Taiwanese = Minnan then I guess I don’t need to address your point, but I will indulge myself today.[/quote]
Taiwanese most certainly refers to the variant of Minnan spoken in Taiwan.
Sorry, I can’t see how that makes my observation irrelevant.
I very much doubt that the PRC would “stamp out the local language once and for all”. They haven’t done that anywhere else in China, even in Tibet. The KMT have a far worse record on this.
Again, is the Minnan dialect acting as a rallying point for an independence movement in Fujian or any other PRC province? If it were you would see it being stamped out very quickly. Ignorance of Beijing’s efforts to wipe out Tibetan culture or language is not an argument for whether or not this sort of cultural extermination would occur in Taiwan.
[quote=“Mawvellous”][quote=“redwagon”]
All that time you invested in learning Taiwanese will be seen as wasted when the local language is stamped out once and for all.
[/quote]
No, Minnan is in a much more healthy state in China than Taiwan.[/quote]
As someone who takes a keen interest in this subject, this is news to me. All the indications I have from Fujian are that things are looking pretty grim there for the future of the language, despite occasional obligatory noises to the contrary from public officials and academics. According to personal communication I have with people in the know in Xiamen, the kind of mother-tongue movements which exist in Taiwan have been forcibly disbanded (officially under the pretense of publishing regulations) and the language has been pushed from public life into the private sphere, where it is also on the wane. The occasional cute Xinhua news story about Minnanhua uniting the people across the Strait aside, I don’t see any reason for optimism about the future of Minnan in China.
Isn’t all this comparison between mainland China and Taiwan stretching it a little too far? Surely if the PRC did take over Taiwan, it’d be much closer to a Hong Kong situation than a Tibet situation? Comparisons between HK now and TW would be more accurate.
[quote=“Taffy”][
As someone who takes a keen interest in this subject, this is news to me. All the indications I have from Fujian are that things are looking pretty grim there for the future of the language, despite occasional obligatory noises to the contrary from public officials and academics. According to personal communication I have with people in the know in Xiamen, the kind of mother-tongue movements which exist in Taiwan have been forcibly disbanded (officially under the pretense of publishing regulations) and the language has been pushed from public life into the private sphere, where it is also on the wane. The occasional cute Xinhua news story about Minnanhua uniting the people across the Strait aside, I don’t see any reason for optimism about the future of Minnan in China.[/quote]
From conversations I have had, Minnnan is in a better position in Fujian. However, I agree that this probably despite the efforts of the government. The reason is that (at least outside the cities) there are so few non-Minnan speaking outsiders. Therefore, Minnan remains a natural common language. Taiwanese is stronger in the south of Taiwan for the same reasons.
Yes. They have all those propaganda slogans pontificating about how China treasures it’s diversity and so on. Meanwhile in the background the message to the minorities themselves is that Putonghua is the language of the smart and successful while the dialects are somehow inferior, and speaking them marks one as such.
Moving on, also expect:
Your kids to come home even more confused than they are now, trying to match their history lessons to what anyone actually born here remembers.
The phrase ‘deported for activities incompatible with visa status’ to make a comeback.
TV news to slowly but surely morph into CCTV rebroadcasts and the ‘green’ stations to disappear altogether.
Endless queues at hospitals that can only be avoided by paying large red envelopes through various ‘agents’ to get you an appointment.
You’ll start smuggling your own medicines in from home because locally available drugs will be suspect and still ludicrously expensive.
Queuing to become a fond but distant memory.
Arbitrary and ever-changing limits on who can or cannot wire money in or out of the country and in what amounts.
Interacting with blue-collar workers will require a knowledge of a dialect from China’s deepest interior provinces or a translator.
‘Service’ as you know it will join ‘queuing’ in the ‘sadly missed’ category of your memories.
The end of domestic travel unless you enjoy jostling with the hordes of ‘Mainland compatriots’ and avoiding puddles of phlegm.
Are you talking about dialects of Chinese that are spoken by a majority of the people, or languages other than Chinese spoken by minorities?
[quote]
That random tapping of your phone once in a while will become permanent.
Your internet access will be monitored, though it will take time for the great firewall to be deployed.
Self-censorship will become second nature to you as a consequence of Taiwanese hissing in your ear continually not to say this or that in earshot of ‘Mainland compatriots’.
It will suddenly become much more difficult for a Taiwanese enterprise to prove it could not fill a particular job with either a local or a ‘Mainland compatriot’ and therefore foreign experts and managers without Open Work Permits will disappear from local companies.
Your bank details, transaction history etc. will be passed as a matter of course to the Public Security Bureau.
Your medical records will be passed on to transplant hospitals all over China, just in case you should be involved in an accident.
Your local friends will gradually be much less interested in discussing politics with you as people start disappearing in the middle of the night again.
That old custom of poor people jumping in front of your car in order to win huge payouts for their families will make a sudden comeback.
All that time you invested in learning Taiwanese will be seen as wasted when the local language is stamped out once and for all.
Your Taiwanese spouse will suddenly have far more trouble applying for foreign visas than he/she does now, and the countries which now allow him/her visa-free entry will revoke that privilege.
You will no longer be able to afford real estate when the newly rich hordes arrive with suitcases full of ill-gotten cash arrive to make a quick buck in the housing market.
Your kids to come home even more confused than they are now, trying to match their history lessons to what anyone actually born here remembers.
The phrase ‘deported for activities incompatible with visa status’ to make a comeback.
TV news to slowly but surely morph into CCTV rebroadcasts and the ‘green’ stations to disappear altogether.
Endless queues at hospitals that can only be avoided by paying large red envelopes through various ‘agents’ to get you an appointment.
You’ll start smuggling your own medicines in from home because locally available drugs will be suspect and still ludicrously expensive.
Queuing to become a fond but distant memory.
Arbitrary and ever-changing limits on who can or cannot wire money in or out of the country and in what amounts.
Interacting with blue-collar workers will require a knowledge of a dialect from China’s deepest interior provinces or a translator.
‘Service’ as you know it will join ‘queuing’ in the ‘sadly missed’ category of your memories.
The end of domestic travel unless you enjoy jostling with the hordes of ‘Mainland compatriots’ and avoiding puddles of phlegm.
Hell, that last one is coming true already…[/quote]
I wonder how many of the above have come true in Hong Kong? Your usual mixture of truths, half-truths, hysteria, and borderline racism.
In the follow-the-money culture that rules ALL on the two sides of the strait, I simply cannot comprehend how anyone could possibly think things would change that much. Its almost as if some you have the weird idea that the fuckwads ruling this side are somehow different to the fuckwads ruling over there. Face it. They’re the SAME people. They want MONEY. Full stop.
Sure, some poor people will get right well fucked in the process. None of the people posting here will be in that category, though, or even close.
[quote=“sandman”]In the follow-the-money culture that rules ALL on the two sides of the strait, I simply cannot comprehend how anyone could possibly think things would change that much. Its almost as if some you have the weird idea that the fuckwads ruling this side are somehow different to the fuckwads ruling over there. Face it. They’re the SAME people. They want MONEY. Full stop.
.[/quote]
That’s not even close to being true. This is a much saner (much less insane) society than China’s. The people here have a respect for culture that didn’t get beaten out of them during the GPCR, and democratic values have kind-of caught on here. Plus, the attitude towards foreigners is somewhat different. Sandman, you are ranting dangerously!
