Two countries...
both called “China”.
Taiwan and China are not the same...
In more ways than you might realize.
Hi, welcome back to China Uncensored,
I’m your host Chris Chappell.
This is China.
But it’s complicated,
since there are two governments that claim to
represent the legitimate China.
After the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911,
China was known as the Republic of China,
led by the KMT.
Until 1949,
when the KMT lost a civil war against the Communists.
Then they fled to the island province of Taiwan,
where they set up the new government of the Republic of China.
Today, Taiwan is still officially the Republic of China.
And the rest of China is the People’s Republic of China,
which is still communist.
Which you can tell because Mao Zedong’s portrait
is still in Tiananmen Square.
So is his embalmed corpse.
But a lot has changed since the Civil War
ended seven decades ago.
Taiwan—and what’s now called mainland China—
have become very different.
Here are five major differences.
Number 5
Chinese Writing
In George Orwell's classic 1984,
the totalitarian party creates Newspeak,
a modified form of English created to control how people think.
It was doubleplusgood.
In mainland China, the Communist Party dramatically changed
the traditional written language that had been used
throughout much of Chinese history.
They replaced it with simplified Chinese characters.
So for instance, this is the traditional Chinese character for love.
This radical here means heart.
The Communists did this,
and left us with the simplified character for love.
It was truly heartless.
The idea of modifying Chinese characters didn’t start with
the Chinese Communist Party.
But Mao Zedong originally wanted to take it to an extreme—
completely getting rid of Chinese characters and replacing them
with an alphabet of Roman letters,
like the ones we use for English.
Here’s an example of one possible romanization system
that the Communists looked into using as a replacement.
But it didn’t get that far.
And we have one person to thank for that:
Stalin.
That’s not a joke.
Josef Stalin of the Soviet Union suggested to Mao
that the Chinese people should have
their own national written language.
And Mao changed his mind.
Although during the Cultural Revolution in the 60s,
Mao did try to further simplify Chinese characters again,
but it didn’t work.
So nowadays mainland China uses simplified Chinese,
but it’s not so simplified that it makes it completely impossible
to read traditional characters.
Just much harder.
On the surface,
simplifying Chinese characters was to encourage literacy.
But getting rid of traditional characters
also disconnected people
from their history and culture.
If the majority of citizens can only read simplified characters,
then they can only read books
the Communist Party allows to be published.
But in Taiwan,
they’ve used traditional Chinese characters all along.
Which means, in Taiwan,
people can more easily read ancient Chinese texts.
Not that they do, since,
why bother when Taiwan has Netflix now.
But like I said, the Communist Party claimed
they enforced simplified Chinese to improve literacy rates.
I mean, those traditional characters are so complicated!
Well, as of 2015,
in Mainland China only 3.6% of adults can’t read and write.
In Taiwan, though—that number is only 1.6%.
Less than half.
Now there’s probably a lot of reasons for that,
but it also shows you don’t have to sacrifice
your country’s cultural heritage for people
to be able to read and write.
Number 4
Bike Sharing
Who doesn’t love a good bike share program?
That’s at least one thing both sides of the Taiwan Strait
can agree on!
But, there are some major differences.
Look at all the neat,
orderly bikes safely placed in their docks in Taiwan.
But isn’t it a pain to have to take your bike back to a dock?
That’s why in Mainland China,
they have bike share 2.0!
Every bike has a GPS chip so you can unlock it
with your mobile phone and just leave it anywhere.
The problem is….
people really do leave them everywhere.
Bikes pile up for the more than 500 bike share companies
competing in the country.
And it’s gotten to be a bit of a mess.
But hey, at least taking a bike keeps air pollution low.
Wait, no.
You know, I think I’ll take Taiwan’s bike share 1.0.
Number 3
Temples
The thing that struck me about Taiwan
is just how many temples there are.
You see them everywhere,
and you can just walk right in without paying some entrance fee.
And people inside are still engaged in the kind of ritual worship
they’ve been doing for hundreds of years.
Now this is not so much the case in Mainland China.
Sure, China used to have tons of temples everywhere.
But then Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution,
specifically to destroy what he called the Four Olds:
Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas.
That included old Temples.
It’s hard to know exactly how much was destroyed
during those 10 years.
But it was a lot.
Of course, recently a number of Chinese temples
have been restored.
But they’re meant to be tourists sites,
where, in the great tradition of the Buddha,
they’re being used to make money for communist officials.
Like the Jokhang Temple in Tibet.
The entrance fee is about 12 bucks.
Pay another 12 bucks and they’ll let you take photos.
And let’s just say,
a lot of ancient artifacts you see in museums in China today,
might not be too authentic.
The fact that a lot of those artifacts had Simplified Chinese writing
should have been a clue.
Number 2
Democracy
This should be a no brainer.
In Taiwan in October and November,
everywhere you looked,
there were signs of a vibrant democracy.
Campaign banners,
even weird loudspeaker vans that drove through the streets.
Taiwan’s been a full democracy since 1992.
People in Taiwan care about their government.
And they want their say in how things are run.
But in mainland China,
the government doesn’t need to worry about
such nonsense as “democracy.”
It’s already the People’s Republic of China.
It has the interests of the people at heart.
That must be why it doesn’t allow people to vote.
It would be such a waste of time!
And besides, there’s the National People’s Congress
that does the voting on behalf of the people.
And it’s so efficient!
It has never once voted down a bill
proposed by the Chinese Communist Party.
And finally Number 1
Genocide
The government of Taiwan may have been
a bit authoritarian in the past.
But now it has a strict no genocide policy.
So when it comes to genocide,
the Chinese Communist Party really is so much better at it.
The Communist Party has killed off tons of groups
during its 70 years in power.
Intellectuals, democracy advocates, Tibetans...
But let’s look at one of the biggest groups
being genocided right now: Falun Gong.
A spiritual practice, widely popular in China.
In the 90s, the Chinese government celebrated Falun Gong
in state-run newspapers...
And even invited its founder
to give a lecture at the Public Security Bureau.
But eventually,
the communist leader decided:
You know what?
There are too many people practicing.
Let’s round them up.
And kill them.
No, no, not just kill.
Kill them and take their organs,
so we can make a profit!
I mean, what’s the point of genocide
unless you can profit from it, right?
But in Taiwan—
which shares the same language and cultural heritage,
but with democracy instead of one-party authoritarianism—
Falun Gong is practiced everywhere.
And what’s the point of freedom if you can’t
also protest genocide somewhere else?
Those are five differences between China and Taiwan.
But there’s actually many more.
So let me know in the comment section below
if you’d like me to do another episode with more differences.
And remember,
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Thanks for watching this episode of China Uncensored.
Once again I’m Chris Chappell.
See you next time.