I attended a recent fundraising dinner on the invitation of a well-known Hakka entrepreneur. The keynote speech was delivered in Hoklo, commonly known as Taiwanese. Neither the entrepreneur nor I understood what the speaker was saying and we both felt that speaking in Mandarin would have communicated the message more effectively. This is a weakness that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and its allies in the pan-green camp should consider fixing.
After the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) retreated in defeat to Taiwan in 1949, it vigorously promoted Beijing-style Mandarin as the “national language,” implanting it in schools and strictly banning the use of “dialects” in public settings. More than seven decades later, nearly everyone in Taiwan understands Mandarin, but a disastrous effect of that policy is that the younger a Taiwanese is, the more alienated they are from “dialects.”
Ever since the pre-1986 dang-wai (黨外, “outside the party”) opposition to the KMT, pan-green figures have mostly used Hoklo in their election campaigns. Yet even among ethnic Taiwanese, the younger they are, the less of the language they understand, and what is true of Hoklo is all the more true for Hakka, indigenous people, Mainlanders and new immigrants.
No matter how great the pan-greens’ policy proposals might be, they would be less effectively communicated if they are always presented in Hoklo. If two competing parties are close in the polls, the political proposals of the party that mostly uses Mandarin would be understood and supported by more people, and that party might well win the election.
Every country has different group and community divisions. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the migrants who crossed the sea from China’s Fujian and Guangdong provinces to till the land in Taiwan often fought each other. Hakka, being relatively few, often lost these fight and had to move elsewhere, while those who remained dared not speak Hakka for fear of being beaten again, and parents advised their children to do likewise. This made a lasting impression on Hakka Taiwanese and further alienated them from the Hoklo language so that they naturally felt more comfortable speaking Mandarin. Consequently, they were more willing to accept the Mandarin-speaking KMT. The result is that relatively more Hakka support the KMT, and they are thought of as “blue-leaning.”
The pan-green camp’s election campaign activities take pride in Hoklo, but under the previous KMT government’s promotion of Mandarin as the national language, many ethnic Taiwanese are no more capable than others of understanding the pan-greens’ political proposals. The pan-greens, with their emphasis on integrity, diligence and love of homeland, have achieved much more in government than the pan-blues, and the rational and achievable government blueprint proposed by DPP presidential candidate Vice President William Lai (賴清德) and his running mate, former representative to the US Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴), is far better than any of the opposition candidates, who have failed to make any decent policy proposals.
Yet the green camp has so far failed to dispel the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party’s “war and peace” sophistry, and this has caused the DPP’s standing in opinion polls to hover, with the KMT nipping at its heels.
This might well be a result of the pan-greens’ overemphasis on Hoklo, a repeat of the KMT’s promotion of Mandarin. If the pan-green camp were to use more Mandarin in its campaign speeches, it would more effectively communicate with the widest possible audience and boost its chances of winning.
Jhang Shih-hsien is a former board member of the Taiwan Hakka Association for Public Affairs.
Translated by Julian Clegg
RSS