In 2018 the government of the Republic of China (roc) on Taiwan elevated certain Chinese languages, Taiwanese Indigenous languages, and Taiwan Sign Language to the status of national languages, seemingly marking the latest stage in an evolution of language education policy away from the long-standing focus on Mandarin. This paper analyses this evolution by comparing approaches to language education policy in contemporary Taiwan with those in the People’s Republic of China (prc). It focuses on how notions of multiculturalism, deployed to legitimate policy, have taken on different meanings in these divergent political contexts. I argue that in both the prc and Taiwan, multiculturalism primarily signifies symbolic recognition of minority and non-dominant languages, involving limited redistribution of power. The continued centrality of Mandarin reflects the powerful legacy in both the roc and the prc of discourses of national identity centred around Han Chineseness, despite significant differences in the deployment of multicultural rhetoric.
Although many nations emerged during the collapse of the empire, the case of China is curious in its failure to divide into separate nation‐states. Resisting disunion, the Republic of China (ROC) adopted a rhetoric of national pluralism and laid claim to the fallen Qing Empire's vast territory. This divergence from other post‐imperial nationalisms engenders questions about the legacy of imperialism in the ROC's approaches to nation‐building. Such questions remain salient after the ROC retreat to Taiwan (1949), as since the end of martial law (1987), the ROC has championed itself as a model of multiculturalism. This paper examines the extent to which today's ‘Multicultural Taiwan’ paradigm differs from 20th‐century official conceptualisations of pluralism, through discourse analysis of publications from the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission (MTAC). Investigation finds that despite centring Taiwan in national ideology, certain Chinese imperialist attitudes towards cultural hierarchy remained influential in MTAC representations of pluralism within Asia.
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