Language Unification in Taiwan: Present and Future

For the past twenty-eight years the Nationalist government has promoted Mandarin in Taiwan under two assumptions: (1) Taiwan is a province of China, and (2) Mandarin is the national language of China. This chapter examines the Nationalist language policy in Taiwan to show that the policy neglects proper planning on other vernaculars ¹ and, in practice, seeks language unification through monolingual ism rather than through bilingualism. This chapter presents the view that unification through bilingualism will achieve the government's proclaimed goals of national harmony, political unity, democracy, and social progress much better than through monolingualism, both in Taiwan and in the whole of China. ²