The judges for the Ministry of the Interior’s increase-the-birthrate slogan contest have chosen 20 slogans that will now be voted on online this month by the public. Take a look at the ministry’s Web site — 100.moi.gov.tw — to find out which 20 slogans made the final round. While many of them are cute, funny and warm-hearted and some are even creative, not one slogan chosen by the judges for the final 20 was in Hoklo, Hakka or any of the many Aboriginal languages spoken in this country. Why?
All 20 slogans are in Mandarin. It’s hard to understand why in a nation as ethnically and linguistically diverse as Taiwan that no slogans in Hoklo, Hakka or any of the Aboriginal languages were chosen. Surely of the estimated 28,000 entries submitted last month many slogans must have been in languages other than Mandarin. So why did the judges only choose Mandarin slogans for the public to vote on in the final round?
Can this happen in this day and age in Taiwan? Of course it can and did.
Now some readers of this newspaper might think my comments are just sour grapes on my part since I entered the contest and sent in a slogan in Hoklo that I was sure would be a winner — “bon lah gyam seiko” (摸蛤兼洗褲) — but, alas, my witty entry did not make it through to the final round. That’s okay, but surely there should have been some slogans in the top 20 list in Hoklo, Hakka or Aboriginal languages for the public to vote on. Unfortunately that was not the case.
“Bon lah gyam seiki” is Hoklo slang for “when you go down to the river, you use your pants as a fishing net and therefore you can do two things at once, wash your pants and catch fish or most literally, clams.”
What I meant by submitting that slogan to the birthrate contest was that a man and a woman, by having a larger family, could do two things at once: Add to their family’s happiness and at the same time help boost the nation’s birthrate. Humor helps.
Some of the top 20 slogans chosen for the final round in Mandarin include (and please excuse my poor translations):
• 多生寶貝,寶貝台灣 — Have more children, treasure Taiwan.
• 人生要美好,養兒育女不可少 — Children are essential for a happy life.
• 幸福很簡單,寶貝一,二,三!! — Happiness is simple; babies one, two and three.
• 孕釀~~下一個希望 — Giving life to future hope.
• 孩子~是我們最好的傳家寶 — A child is the best kind of family heirloom.
• 誠徵下一代! — Calling the next generation.
You catch the drift. Cute, warm, fuzzy slogans. The questions is why couldn’t there have been at least one slogan in the final round in a language other than Mandarin?
In case you missed the news, the ministry plans to award NT$1 million (US$31,000) to the winning slogan that is to be used as part of a campaign to boost the nation’s dwindling birth rate, one of the lowest in the world.
A government statement earlier this year noted: “We are seeking a creative slogan that would appeal to the public and make everybody want to have children.”
In the past, the government has offered various incentives in an unsuccessful bid to boost birth rates amid growing concern that a severe manpower shortage will trigger social and economic problems in the future.
Last year, Taiwan’s birthrate stood at 8.29 births per 1,000 people, compared with a global average of more than 20 births per 1,000 people.
In the end, however, as many pundits have said, this contest is not really going to boost the birthrate at all because public relations campaigns do not translate into larger families or even inspire young women to want to have children. As in Japan and other wealthy nations, modern women simply do not want to be baby factories anymore.
Let’s face facts: Until Taiwanese men are willing to share the housework, cleaning, cooking and other chores of a modern household, the birthrate is going to continue to plummet.
There is a reason that the birthrate in Japan is in free fall. Japanese women are not stupid and the same goes for Taiwanese.
Marriage, of course, will continue as an institution and happily so in most cases (the divorce rate be damned), but no amount of creative public relations campaigns are going to persuade couples to have more children than they want, if they want any at all. Not even financial incentives will boost the birthrate. It’s not your grandfather’s Taiwan anymore.
Dan Bloom is a freelance writer in Taiwan.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has prioritized modernizing the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to rival the US military, with many experts believing he would not act on Taiwan until the PLA is fully prepared to confront US forces. At the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th Party Congress in 2022, Xi emphasized accelerating this modernization, setting 2027 — the PLA’s centennial — as the new target, replacing the previous 2035 goal. US intelligence agencies said that Xi has directed the PLA to be ready for a potential invasion of Taiwan by 2027, although no decision on launching an attack had been made. Whether
A chip made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) was found on a Huawei Technologies Co artificial intelligence (AI) processor, indicating a possible breach of US export restrictions that have been in place since 2019 on sensitive tech to the Chinese firm and others. The incident has triggered significant concern in the IT industry, as it appears that proxy buyers are acting on behalf of restricted Chinese companies to bypass the US rules, which are intended to protect its national security. Canada-based research firm TechInsights conducted a die analysis of the Huawei Ascend 910B AI Trainer, releasing its findings on Oct.
In honor of President Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday, my longtime friend and colleague John Tkacik wrote an excellent op-ed reassessing Carter’s derecognition of Taipei. But I would like to add my own thoughts on this often-misunderstood president. During Carter’s single term as president of the United States from 1977 to 1981, despite numerous foreign policy and domestic challenges, he is widely recognized for brokering the historic 1978 Camp David Accords that ended the state of war between Egypt and Israel after more than three decades of hostilities. It is considered one of the most significant diplomatic achievements of the 20th century.
In a recent essay in Foreign Affairs, titled “The Upside on Uncertainty in Taiwan,” Johns Hopkins University professor James B. Steinberg makes the argument that the concept of strategic ambiguity has kept a tenuous peace across the Taiwan Strait. In his piece, Steinberg is primarily countering the arguments of Tufts University professor Sulmaan Wasif Khan, who in his thought-provoking new book The Struggle for Taiwan does some excellent out-of-the-box thinking looking at US policy toward Taiwan from 1943 on, and doing some fascinating “what if?” exercises. Reading through Steinberg’s comments, and just starting to read Khan’s book, we could already sense that