Taiwan, China. Taiwan, Province of China.

This is Air Canada.

This is the website of the IELTS exam.

This is an official form on the website of my home state in the USA.

Imagine how you would feel if, every time you had to fill out an online form, you had to cross your fingers because you knew your country’s name might be twisted in a insulting way.

There are some people who will say “It’s technically correct”. Well, I am something of a persnickety pedant myself. And I wrote this post to express exactly what I think of claims that it’s “technically correct”.

It's fine to not be an expert in East Asian geopolitics. No one is an expert in everything. So here is a brief explanation of why we are so angry about this.

Q: Isn’t “Taiwan, China” technically correct?

A: You’re thinking of the “Republic of China”, the official name of Taiwan’s government. (Why is it the Republic of China? Long interesting story, well worth reading up on, but I won’t insert a history lecture here.) If Taiwan were designated “Taiwan (Republic of China)” or “Taiwan (ROC)”, there would be no anger and outrage. At worst, there would be some eye-rolling, as the Republic of China is a contentious issue here in Taiwan and I can assure you many Taiwanese people have strong opinions on this matter.

But none of the screenshots above say "Taiwan (Republic of China)".

Q: So why is “Taiwan, China” so offensive?

A: First, ask yourself this. When someone hears the word “China”, do they think of the Republic of China, de facto capital Taipei, population 23 million? Or do they think of the People’s Republic of China, capital Beijing, population 1.4 billion? Most people outside of East Asia aren’t even aware that there’s an entity called the “Republic of China” that’s separate from China. The Chinese government is well aware of this and uses it to its advantage.

I’m not going to mince words here. The government of the PRC would like nothing more than to take over Taiwan and incorporate it into their territory (and it’s easy to see why -- geopolitically it would be a wonderful strategic prize). This is not the ranting of a conspiracy monger -- China isn’t even trying to hide its intentions. Publicly at least, they won’t rule out the use of military force to conquer Taiwan. But as that would be extremely risky, they would much rather wear Taiwan down, demoralizing it so that its people see annexation as the inevitable choice.

Whether China takes Taiwan by force or by “peaceful” coercion, it doesn’t want the rest of the world to see it as a larger country taking over a smaller, less powerful country. That would look very bad. Instead, China wants the rest of the world to see Taiwan as a recalcitrant part of China that needs to be brought to heel. That’s why (among many things) it’s got people pushing to change “Taiwan” on those drop-down menus to things like “Taiwan, China” or “Taiwan, Province of China”. It’s all about changing the world’s perception of Taiwan so that if Invasion Day comes, the rest of the world doesn’t see a large aggressive country invading a smaller country.

And every airline that lists Taiwan as China and every educational institution that forces students to declare their country as “Taiwan, China” is complicit in this. With Beijing -- not politically neutral.

As I said above, imagine if you knew that every time you filled out an online form, there would be a moment of uncertainty before you learned if you would be forced to render the name of your country in a deliberately insulting way, And the hopelessness you would feel if you knew that it wasn’t an aberration, but rather fast becoming the norm.

Incidentally, in two of the three examples above that I provided screenshots for (all but Air Canada), Hong Kong, which is actually ruled by China, is just “Hong Kong”, not “Hong Kong, China”. I suppose there’s no need to insist on adding the word “China” if it’s actually part of China.

Q: What about “Taiwan, Province of China”?

Well, everything I wrote above applies to the weird variant “Taiwan, Province of China”. But for everyone who says “It’s technically correct if you assume ‘China’ means ‘the Republic of China’, I have something to show you.

The Republic of China does indeed include an administrative area called “Taiwan Province”. And here are its borders, courtesy of Google Maps:

“Taiwan Province” covers part of the main island of Taiwan, but not the parts under the administration of the largest cities: Taipei, New Taipei, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung. So someone living in Taipei or Taichung does not live in any “province,” no matter how generous and flexible the interpretation of “Taiwan, Province of China”.

Of course this is all somewhat beside the point; I’d be mad as hell if I lived in Hualien or Hsinchu and an online form forced me to say I lived in “Taiwan, Province of China”.

“Taiwan, Province of China” was never an attempt to be “technically correct”; rather, like “Taiwan, China” it’s just trying to denigrate Taiwan in the eyes of the world and make people think it’s already in some way under the thumb of Beijing.

Q: Hey, wait. You’re making out Taiwan to be a separate country, but didn’t I hear somewhere that the Taiwanese government sees itself as the rightful government of all of China?

A: You’re just not letting me get away without giving a history lecture, are you? Look, back in the 1950s and 1960s, the rulers of Taiwan were the same guys who ruled China before Mao took over in 1949, and they absolutely saw themselves as the rightful rulers of China and produced loads of official propaganda to that effect. They also headed a terribly unpleasant military dictatorship and Taiwan is much better off not being ruled by them any more. There are still a few “retake the Mainland!” guys around, but today few people under the age of 80 seriously think the Republic of China ought to retake its old territory.

The Taiwanese government’s claims on China are a relic of an earlier age. They still maintain them because the Chinese government has threatened war if Taiwan makes a break with its past -- that would, in China’s eyes, mean Taiwan was officially taking steps away from eventual unification. It’s possible that China is bluffing. But it’s awfully easy to say Taiwan should call China’s bluff when you’re not the one with missiles pointed at you.

Yes, a minority of Taiwanese genuinely want Taiwan to be a part of China. This is because human beings are capable of holding a variety of political positions, and Taiwan is a free country where people can be open about their political beliefs. It’s not the opinion of most Taiwanese.

Q: But aren’t Taiwanese people (culturally/ethnically/linguistically) Chinese anyway?

A: OK, there is a lot that can be said here, from the fact that this is an extremely reductionist and ridiculous way to decide if a country should legitimately exist or not, to the fact that not all Taiwanese have Chinese ancestors. But I’m just going to make an observation.

According to Wikipedia, nearly three quarters of the population of Singapore is of Chinese heritage. But no Singaporean is afraid that they’ll have to start telling foreigners that they’re from “Singapore, China”.

Singaporeans, and the millions of people in Thailand, Malaysia, etc. who also self-identify as Chinese, have a luxury that Taiwanese people lack. They can call themselves Chinese all they want and no one will think that de-legitimizes their actual native country. Beijing’s not putting out disinformation that Singapore is a wayward Chinese province. As far as I know, Beijing doesn’t have missiles pointed at Singapore to keep them from acting too independent.

Q: Who are you? You’re not even Taiwanese, are you?

A: I’ve lived in Taiwan since 2007. I try to play a role in the civic life of the country where I’ve had legal residency for the past eleven years, though I admit I’m not always as active as I know I should be.

Currently, in my day job, I work with Taiwanese students who want to study abroad in English-speaking countries. Therefore, I am angry that both IELTS and TOEFL, the two biggest international English proficiency exams, both have switched online designations to “Taiwan, China”.

Q: So why don’t we hear from Taiwanese people, rather than a Westerner like you?

A: Taiwanese people ARE speaking up. But let me point something out, just as an example.

In August, as I said before, the TOEFL exam changed Taiwan’s designation to “Taiwan, China”. The protest from Taiwan was impressive, with “an open letter that claimed to have the backing of more than 5,000 students”.

As of today, TOEFL hasn’t changed anything. Honestly, can you blame Taiwanese people if they are becoming fatigued at fighting the same battle, again and again, and nothing happens?

Incidentally, I sincerely hope no one reads this post as "Westerner explains to Taiwanese how they should feel about their own country". It is absolutely not my intention to tell Taiwanese how they should feel, and in fact I hope Westerners seek out Taiwanese voices on this issue. Rather, my intention is to counter to any Westerner who thinks "Taiwan, (Province of) China" is in any way "technically correct", and is anything other than an insult.

Note: This post began life as a rant directed specifically at IELTS when they changed Taiwan to “Taiwan, China”. People seemed to like it, so I reposted it after making it more general in focus, and adding a bit more on “Taiwan, Province of China”.

Voting

As Election day nears in the US (and another Election Day is coming up in three weeks here in Taiwan), I have some thoughts on voting.

Some people say you should go out on the street and protest rather than vote. Some people say you should organize rather than vote. Some people say you should riot rather than vote. But these are all false dichotomies -- they should read “and”, not “rather than”. Except perhaps for the rioting one. I’m not sure rioting is a productive idea, but who knows what the future will bring. I may change my mind on that.

So yes, I am saying “voting is good”. I am saying “as many people voting as possible is good”. I bet many of you have cynical things to say in response to that. Be aware I’ve probably heard it all before.

I think I've been swayed by the literature I’ve read this year. Yes, I did read Achen & Bartels’ Democracy for Realists earlier this year (scroll down if you follow the link), which argues that aggregate voters are really really bad at making coherent choices. But I also read The Dictator’s Handbook by Bueno de Mesquita & Smith, which argues that it’s good for the country if the electorate is as large as possible, so the government is accountable to as many people as possible. The arguments the two books make do not actually contradict each other -- you can agree with both at once.

Just because you vote does not mean you shouldn’t participate meaningfully in your democracy in other ways as well -- I’m talking about getting out there and protesting, or donating money to organizations, or just becoming more aware of what’s going on (TV news is bad for this, by the way). I won’t shame people who don’t do any of this (we all have our own busy lives to lead) but I’m absolutely flabbergasted at those who love to denigrate people who show their dissatisfaction after an election -- they say things like “Your side lost, get over it”. As if they were talking about a sports game rather than something with real-world consequences. As if politics only happens when there's an election. There’s nothing wrong with cheering for your “team” when watching election returns (even if I did disapprove, it’s still probably human nature, ingrained into most of us), but it’s important to remember that democracy doesn’t end when the election is finished.

Civic engagement is what a democracy runs on, whereas voting is what we should all be doing anyway. The more I think about this, the more infuriated I get at voter suppression. The government should not throw up unnecessary barriers to make it more difficult for some people to vote. This simply should not be happening.

My parents both voted several days ago at their local town hall at a time of their convenience. I voted absentee, and when I had doubts whether my ballot had been accepted, I emailed my state government and I quickly heard back from a real person who wanted to help me make sure my vote would count. This should be the norm everywhere, but unfortunately it’s not.

To summarize, we should all be voting, AND we should also remember that there’s much more to civic engagement than voting. I don’t live in the USA, but the country where I do live seems to be on the front lines of democracy versus authoritarian tyranny. I can’t vote here, but I ought to make up for it with more civic engagement. My wife is good at that; I am less so. I should do better.

x

Look to Windward

Look to Windward

by Iain M. Banks, 2000

My standard description of Iain M. Banks’s Culture books goes like this: The Culture is an advanced and enlightened interstellar society where everyone lives a life of ease and gets to develop their potential. That makes for boring fiction, which is why the Culture stories are actually about the Culture’s incredibly problematic foreign policy.

The Culture is very good at covertly interfering in other nations. In fact, they’ve elevated the practice to an art form. Just a few years ago, for instance, they interfered in the politics of a powerful spacefaring people known as the Chelgrians, rigging elections, manipulating the media, and basically doing everything that we Earthers in 2018 are all too familiar with, only far more subtly and with a much defter hand.

And yet.

The Minds -- the powerful superbeings who rule the Culture -- were astonished and dismayed when their actions unexpectedly triggered a massive Chelgrian civil war that killed billions of people. (Yes, billions. One thing you can say about Iain M. Banks: he didn't think small.) The chastened Culture publicly admitted their role in starting the war and brokered a peace deal, essentially saying “Our bad. Usually when we interfere we make things better. We have no idea what happened this time. Oh well, apologies and all that.”

Apparently some Chelgrians are still mad at the Culture, even though the war’s been over for more than a year and the Culture already said they were sorry. (I know, right? Totally inexplicable! Why don’t they just get over it?) This is how things stand when we join the action of Look to Windward.

Look to Windward has a fairly large number of viewpoint characters, but unlike Excession, the action here is firmly centered on a few core characters and one primary setting: the gigantic Culture orbital Masaq’. The Culture is far too vast a civilization to limit itself to puny little planets, and Masaq’ is an artificial habitat that is home to over fifty billion Culture citizens, along with a fair number of foreigners, one of whom is a Chlegrian composer named Ziller. A musical celebrity whose fame spans the galaxy, Ziller became disgusted with his own people years ago and has been living in self-imposed exile ever since. He watched his native culture’s self-destructive frenzy from the safety of his home on Masaq’, and he has no desire to return any time soon, if ever.

Meanwhile, Major Quilan of the Chelgrian military is on a collision course with Ziller. Quilan has been utterly traumatized by the loss of his wife in the war, he has nothing more to live for, and he would very much like to die -- a mental state that his his government’s special forces division found that they could make use of. Now Quilan is on his way to Masaq’ to persuade Ziller to return to Chelgrian space. That is absolutely the real reason Quilan is traveling to Masaq’, and it is a very believable story that everyone should believe. Why shouldn’t they believe it? After all, no one else can see the high-ranking military officer residing non-corporeally in Quilan’s head, whose mission is to make sure Quilan does what he’s supposed to do, which has nothing to do with persuading Ziller to return home with him. Ziller tells people that Quilan's been ordered to kill him, but maybe he's got an inflated sense of his own importance. Maybe Quilan's orders are to kill far more people than just one galaxy-renowned musician.

As for the fifty billion Culture natives living on Masaq’, we never really get inside their heads, or get to know any of them terribly well. The only viewpoint character who’s a native of the Culture is a solitary researcher named Uagen studying bizarre giant creatures in a surreal environment far away from Masaq’, who stumbles across evidence of the Chelgrian plot and tasks himself with getting a warning to the Culture in time. Uagen is the only one who can save the people of Masaq’! It’ll certainly be unfortunate for Uagen if the author has a taste for dramatic irony...

Masaq’ society is seen through the eyes of the two Chelgrian characters (and an amiable alien named Kabe who befriends both of them). The people of Masaq’ perform death-defying feats of aerial acrobatics flying through vast cloud environments, and they ride ceramic boats down rivers of lava. They passionately take sides over whether to string up an utterly useless cable car through an artificial desert, and the debate goes on for years.

In short, the people of the Culture have a LOT of free time on their hands, and another author would get all preachy about their luxurious, frivolous lifestyle, but fortunately Iain Banks is not that author. Really, who among us wouldn’t want to live a sweet, cushy life in the technological wonderland that is the Culture? The Chelgrians are bemused that these urbane fun-loving aesthetes are the same society that put their own society through such horrific trauma. The political allegory at the heart of the Culture novels is clear without being simplistic.

There's a sense among Banks aficionados that Look to Windward closes out the main cycle of Culture novels. (After an eight-year break, Banks would go on to write three more novels set in this universe, which I’ll get around to reading sooner or later.) Eight hundred years have passed since the sequence began with Consider Phlebas. The epic war between the Culture and the Idirans that was the setting of Consider Phlebas bookends the saga -- the war is now long consigned to history, and yet the lingering effects of the war are remembered throughout Look to Windward. The Mind that runs Masaq’ is a traumatized veteran, still dealing with guilt over atrocities it committed centuries ago, and it ends up playing a key role in the story’s climax.

Now that I’ve reached the end of the initial run of Culture novels, I appreciate what Banks has accomplished. The Culture is a wonderful place to live, but a supremely uninteresting place to set stories (‘May you live in interesting times’ applies here), which is why the focus is always on the Culture’s relations with societies that aren’t quite so damn perfect. The Culture is a high-tech socialist-libertarian paradise, where everyone is free to live the life they want, and the whole thing is ruled by near-omnipotent Minds who can and will commit horrific acts to ensure the society keeps running smoothly. Nothing’s simple in this universe.

I can see where the Culture novels might not be everyone's cup of tea. He doesn't even try to make his universe scientifically plausible (which is better than trying and failing), though I see that as painting boldly, without restraint, across a magnificently broad canvas. Also, Banks was clearly more confident writing male characters than female ones -- this includes the no-middle-initial Iain Banks novels I've read, not just Iain M. Banks. And I could imagine people turned off by his liking for grotesque violence (somewhat toned down in Look to Windward, apart from a nightmarish Culture assassin we meet near the end) and shocking plot twists late in the game (present in Look to Windward, though not remotely on the same level as, say, Use of Weapons).

But the man could write, and write engagingly, and write scenes that stay in my mind long after the book is finished. Even Consider Phlebas and Excession, which I found slightly more of a chore to get through than the others, are full of incredibly engaging stretches and highly memorable bits. It's easy to see how this particular Scotsman found so many readers, among SF fans and non-fans alike.

The Affinities

The Affinities

Robert Charles Wilson, 2015

Our hero, Adam, is a graphic design student in Toronto. He has an unsettled home life and uncertain finances, but things begin to look up for him when he takes the Affinities test and learns that he’s a Tau.

You see, there’s a company called InterAlia that claims that by giving you an intensive personality test, they may be able to sort you into one of twenty-two Affinities. These will be people whose minds work like yours. They will think like you and you will think like them, and the social cohesion will allow you to make the closest friends you've ever had, and easily work together on collaborative projects.

When Adam meets up with other Taus in the area, they do indeed change his life, as he finds a warm, welcoming community that he’d never realized existed. Tau Affinity provides him with a network of contacts that he can use to find work and achieve financial stability, and his new friends help him free himself of his dysfunctional family.

Judging from online discussion that I’ve seen, it was at this point that many readers began to feel dissatisfied with the novel. InterAlia's test has a Sorting Hat feel to it, but this book won’t inspire any Facebook quizzes promising to reveal your true Affinity, because the Affinities aren’t really about classifying human beings into easily caricatured groups.

The Taus have an in-universe reputation as laid-back potheads who are good with money, and another major Affinity is said to be rigidly hierarchical, but Wilson’s intention for this book has little to do with the distinctions between different Affinities and therefore he barely mentions any details about most of the others.

Instead, what interests Wilson is how society reacts to these Affinities, which can appear to outsiders to be cult-like or elitist, as Taus have access to a range of services not available to those who don’t qualify based on the personality test, and this exclusiveness is only magnified by the fact that a large segment of the population don’t qualify for membership in any Affinity at all. Wilson also looks at how these Affinities react to stress: the Affinities eventually outgrow the for-profit corporation InterAlia, and when this happens their agendas come into conflict.

In other words, this is sociological speculative fiction: what interests Wilson is how our sense of community may evolve in the future. We’ve all heard the Bowling Alone-esque worries that life is becoming more fragmented and humans are becoming more isolated, and in Affinities, Wilson gives us a glimpse of a society that is inventing novel frameworks for humans to work together.

When people of the same Affinity work together, they are capable of doing great things, but as long as they continue to work the way they do, they will always be exclusive clubs. As long as the Taus exist, outsiders will always look at the advantages their members enjoy, advantages which are closed to outsiders, and feel envy, even contempt.

While one could imagine further books being written in this universe, I felt that Wilson intends for The Affinities to remain a singleton -- the end of the book gives the strong impression that human society is continuing to evolve and the Affinities will ultimately turn out to have been merely a stage in society’s development.

But really, this is the story of our protagonist Adam. Remember him? I last mentioned him five or six paragraphs ago. The Affinities follows Adam through his twenties and thirties, as he falls in and out of love, gains and loses employment, and gets involved in more than one dangerous scheme -- and during this time his life is completely bound up with Tau Affinity. Wilson’s a good enough prose writer that the book’s engaging even when dealing with the most ordinary details of Adam’s life.

If you pick up The Affinities imagining you’ll be able to say “I think I’d fit into ________ Affinity!”, you’ll be disappointed. If you’d like to explore an alternative way human beings can find community, you’ll have much more realistic expectations.

IELTS and "Taiwan, China"

www.ielts.org -- screenshot taken on October 14, 2018

Last weekend, the UK-based English examinations service IELTS changed its designation for Taiwan to “Taiwan, China”. This has caused a huge amount of outrage in the IELTS community over the past week.

IELTS is an English proficiency exam, taken predominantly by people who wish to study in English in foreign countries. As of one week ago, a young Taiwanese person using the IELTS.org website to register for IELTS needs to declare they are from “Taiwan, China”. That is, frankly speaking, insulting.

It's fine to not be an expert in East Asian geopolitics. No one is an expert in everything. So here is a brief explanation of why we are so angry about this.

Q: Isn’t “Taiwan, China” technically correct?

A: You’re thinking of the “Republic of China”, the official name of Taiwan’s government. (Why is it the Republic of China? Long interesting story, well worth reading up on, but I won’t insert a history lecture here.) If Taiwan were designated “Taiwan (Republic of China)” or “Taiwan (ROC)”, there would be no anger and outrage. At worst, there would be a lot of eye-rolling, as the Republic of China is a contentious issue here in Taiwan and I can assure you many Taiwanese people have strong opinions on this matter. But that’s not what happened here.

Q: So why is “Taiwan, China” so offensive?

A: First, ask yourself this. When someone hears the word “China”, do they think of the Republic of China, de facto capital Taipei, population 23 million? Or do they think of the People’s Republic of China, capital Beijing, population 1.4 billion? Most people outside of East Asia aren’t even aware that there’s an entity called the “Republic of China” that’s separate from China. The Chinese government is well aware of this and uses it to its advantage.

I’m not going to mince words here. The government of the PRC would like nothing more than to take over Taiwan and incorporate it into their territory (and it’s easy to see why -- geopolitically it would be a wonderful strategic prize). This is not the ranting of a conspiracy monger -- China isn’t even trying to hide its intentions. Publicly at least, they won’t rule out the use of military force to conquer Taiwan. But as that would be extremely risky, they would much rather wear Taiwan down, demoralizing it so that its people see annexation as the inevitable choice.

Whether China takes Taiwan by force or by “peaceful” coercion, it doesn’t want the rest of the world to see it as a larger country taking over a smaller, less powerful country. That would look very bad. Instead, China wants the rest of the world to see Taiwan as a recalcitrant part of China that needs to be brought to heel. That’s why (among many things) it’s got people pushing to change “Taiwan” on those drop-down menus to things like “Taiwan, China” or “Taiwan, Province of China”. It’s all about changing the world’s perception of Taiwan so that if Invasion Day comes, the rest of the world doesn’t see Xi Jinping as another Hitler invading Poland.

And every airline that lists Taiwan as China and every educational institution that forces students to declare their country as “Taiwan, China” is complicit in this. With Beijing -- not politically neutral.

Imagine how you would feel if, every time you had to fill out an online form, you had to cross your fingers because you knew your country’s name might be twisted in a deliberately insulting way. And the hopelessness you would feel if you knew that it wasn’t an aberration, but rather fast becoming the norm.

(It's worth noting that, as of October 14, IELTS still lists Hong Kong as Hong Kong and Macau as Macau. No need to change them to "Hong Kong, China" and "Macau, China" -- because they're actually ruled by China.)

Q: Hey, wait. Didn’t I hear somewhere that the Taiwanese government sees itself as the rightful government of all of China?

A: You’re just not letting me get away without giving a history lecture, are you? Look, back in the 1950s and 1960s, the rulers of Taiwan were the same guys who ruled China before Mao took over in 1949, and they absolutely saw themselves as the rightful rulers of China and produced loads of official propaganda to that effect. They also headed a terribly unpleasant military dictatorship and Taiwan is much better off not being ruled by them any more. There are still a few “retake the Mainland!” guys around, but today few people under the age of 80 seriously think the Republic of China ought to retake its old territory.

The Taiwanese government’s claims on China are a relic of an earlier age. They still maintain them because the Chinese government has threatened war if Taiwan makes a break with its past -- that would, in China’s eyes, mean Taiwan was officially taking steps away from eventual unification. It’s possible that China is bluffing. But it’s awfully easy to say Taiwan should call China’s bluff when you’re not the one with missiles pointed at you.

Yes, there are some Taiwanese (a very small minority) who genuinely want Taiwan to be a part of China. That is because human beings are capable of holding a variety of political positions, and Taiwan is a free country where people can be open about their political beliefs. It’s not the opinion of most Taiwanese.

Q: But aren’t Taiwanese people (culturally/ethnically/linguistically) Chinese anway?

A: OK, there is a lot that can be said here, from the fact that this is an extremely reductionist and ridiculous way to decide if a country should legitimately exist or not, to the fact that not all Taiwanese have Chinese ancestors. But I’m just going to make an observation.

According to Wikipedia, nearly three quarters of the population of Singapore is of Chinese heritage. But no Singaporean is afraid that they’ll have to start telling foreigners that they’re from “Singapore, China”.

Singaporeans, and the millions of people in Thailand, Malaysia, etc. who also self-identify as Chinese, have a luxury that Taiwanese people lack. They can call themselves Chinese all they want and no one will think that de-legitimizes their actual native country. Beijing’s not putting out disinformation that Singapore is a wayward Chinese province. As far as I know, Beijing doesn’t have missiles pointed at Singapore to keep them from acting too independent.

Q: Who are you? You’re not even Taiwanese, are you?

A: I’ve lived in Taiwan since 2007. Currently, in my day job, I work with Taiwanese students who want to study abroad in English-speaking countries. A significant part of this job involves teaching IELTS preparation classes, which gives me a look at how Taiwanese young people view this and other exams.

Q: So why don’t we hear from Taiwanese people, rather than a Westerner like you?

A: Taiwanese people have definitely noticed and I can anecdotally say that people are very concerned and angry. But look, let me point something out.

In August, the TOEFL exam did the same thing -- they changed Taiwan’s designation to “Taiwan, China”. The protest from Taiwan was impressive, with “an open letter that claimed to have the backing of more than 5,000 students”.

As of today, TOEFL hasn’t changed anything. Honestly, can you blame Taiwanese people if they are becoming fatigued at fighting the same battle, again and again, and nothing happens?

This is a battle that I have watched over the past few years, and I felt I just had to say something.

It boils down to this: challenges to Taiwan's international nomenclature happen as a result of China's push to make people think Taiwan (or the Republic of China, if you prefer that name) is not a legitimate country. That way, if it gets forcibly taken over, there won’t be so much outrage. When I put it that way, it sounds like the mad ravings of an unhinged person. But not a single part of it is disputable.

ADDENDUM 10/17:

This went viral more than I thought it would! Thanks to everyone who helped spread it around.

I hope this post actually does some good.

Thank you to all who commented. I published all comments that made sense. I did not publish the “comment” from the person who copied-and-pasted a paragraph about the U.S.’s One China policy. I know what the One China policy is, I do not think it’s relevant to IELTS, and if you think it’s relevant, you need to make that case, but you’re not doing so if you just copy-and-paste a paragraph and you submit it with no added commentary of your own.

Finally, for people who wish to send an email of complaint, the address is globalielts AT ielts DOT org.