"Taiwan's" National Day

As with previous posts on this topic, I always have to have a * to remind people that this day, while popularly recognized as the national day of Taiwan and is legitimately the national day of "Taiwan," is also legitmately the national day of the Republic of China.

As most of you know, the R.O.C. is a Chinese government formed in China back in 1911. It should strike you as awkward that people on Taiwan are celebrating the national day of their government, which never existed on Taiwan until 1945. Anyways, just as the R.O.C. term and all the things that come along with it (government, constitution, etc) are basically established by both pan-green and pan-blue sides as legitimate on Taiwan, it's hard to address this issue.

What I want to bring attention to today though is this article in the Taipei Times today.

A majority of Taiwanese said they did not feel more proud to be a citizen of the Republic of China (ROC) after President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) took office in May 2008, a poll released by the Taiwan Thinktank ahead of Double Ten National Day showed yesterday.
The poll showed that 65 percent of respondents said they had not felt their sense of pride as an ROC citizen grow after Ma assumed office, while 31.3 percent said they had.

It's nice to see that the blatant disregard for freedom of speech that has been violated in Taiwan since Ma has come to power has impacted Taiwanese citizens' views of Ma and their proud-ness to be "R.O.C." I do wonder though if the numbers might have been more in favor of "yes, I'm more proud to be a citizen of the R.O.C." if the term "Taiwan" was substituted in place of "R.O.C." I know many Taiwanese who would be proud to say, "Yes I'm proud to be Taiwanese," but instead say something closer to, "No, I'm not proud about the R.O.C." when asked about each respectively.

This lack of support for Ma's presidency is cross-party lines, and it has definitely showed up when Ma's government has attempted to regress on the right of freedom of speech. I encourage the young generation in Taiwan to remember those times (Chen Yulin visit to Taiwan (errr ROC), Wild Strawberry Movement, disregard for public opinion on ECFA, and the recent collegiate basketball incident) and take their disappointment with Ma and the KMT to the ballots in November.