The Debate Around the Use of Traditional Characters In

FACULTEIT LETTERENEN WIJSBEGEERTE

Academiejaar 2014–2015

THE DEBATE AROUND THE USEOF TRADITIONAL CHARACTERSIN CONTEMPORARY CHINESE SOCIETY

Camiel COLRUYT

Promotor: prof. Christoph Anderl

Scriptie voorgedragen tot het behalen van de graad van MASTERINDE OOSTERSE TALENEN CULTUREN Abstract

The Chinese Character Simplification Scheme of 1956 was the most radical intervention in the development of the character script since the early dynastic period. This and subsequent reforms have left a complex legacy. China’s economic and political opening up in the 1980’s was accompanied by a re-evaluation of suppressed traditional Chinese culture, including the traditional script. A growing number of voices argue that the simplification has created a destructive fault line in Chinese cultural history. At the same time, the rise of digital technology has considerably shifted the playing field of script planning policy towards a standards-based rather than a reform-based approach, leading script planning authorities to abandon simplification-oriented rhetoric. This thesis reviews the evolution of reporting around script planning issues in the People’s Daily, China’s state-sponsored newspaper. Official and popular attitudes towards traditional characters are examined through analysis of People’s Daily articles. Finally, the thesis looks at signs of future policy changes. The Table of General Standard Characters, released in 2013, tentatively shows a willingness on the part of language planners to re-introduce previously banned characters. Still, policy makers have yet to take an overt stance on the role of traditional characters in modern society. Consider- ing the focus on the rediscovery of traditional values in the construction of a new Chinese identity, failure to adopt a clear position on how to deal with this heritage may turn out to be problematic in the long run.

Abstract

De Chinese karaktervereenvoudiging doorgevoerd in 1956 was de meest rad- icale ingreep in de ontwikkeling van het karakterschrift sinds het vroeg dynas- tisch tijdperk. Deze en volgende hervormingen hebben een complexe nalaten- schap achtergelaten. De economische en politieke heropening van China in the jaren 1980 ging gepaard met een herevaluatie van de onderdrukte traditionele Chi- nese cultuur en van het traditioneel schrift. Een groeiend aantal stemmen argu- menteren dat de vereenvoudiging een destructieve breuklijn in de Chinese cul- turele geschiedenis heeft teweergebracht.Tegelijk heeft de opkomst van digitale technologie het speelveld van taalplanning grondig veranderd. Men spreekt nu van een aanpak gericht op standardisatie en niet hervorming, wat taalplanners ertoe geleid hebben de retoriek van schriftvereenvoudiging op te geven. Deze proef on- derzoekt de evolutie van de journalistiek rond het thema schriftplanning in China’s overheid-gesponsord nieuwsblad, de Rénmín Rìbào (People’s Daily). Ofﬁciële en populaire attitudes tegenover traditionele karakters worden onderzocht via analyse van krantenartikels uit de Rénmín Rìbào. Ten laatste kijkt de proef naar tekenen van toekomstige beleidsveranderingen. De Table of General Standard Characters, uitgegeven in 2013, toont dat taalplanners bereid zijn om vroeger verboden karakters terug toe te laten. Evengoed hebben beleidsmakers geen openlijk standpunt ingenomen aangaande de rol van traditionele karakters in de moderne maatschap- pij. Gezien de hedendaagse focus op de herontdekking van traditionele waarden in de opbouw van een nieuwe Chinese identiteit, zou het op de lange termijn prob- lematisch kunnen zijn indien beleidsmakers geen duidelijkheid scheppen rondom hoe men met deze erfenis moet omgaan.

2 0 Contents

1 Introduction4

2 Historical perspectives6 2.1 Standardization in dynastic times...... 7 2.2 Early modern reform (late 20th century - 1949)...... 11 2.3 Reform during the Mao era (1949-1970’s)...... 13 2.4 Modern reform...... 14

3 Script planning in the Rénmín Rìbào 16 3.1 Characteristics of the Rénmín Rìbào ...... 16 3.2 Patterns in keyword use in the Rénmín Rìbào ...... 17

4 Article analysis 24 4.1 Policy communication through editorials...... 24 4.2 Arguments for a re-evaluation of traditional characters...... 31

5 Current efforts and prospects in Chinese script planning 42

6 Conclusion 49

7 Bibliography 51

3 1 Introduction

The People’s Republic of China is one of the world’s great growing powers, and over the last century Chinese society has experienced rapid and spectacular changes as it finds its role on the world stage. At the same time, the Chinese writing system has undergone no less impressive reforms. The successful introduction of the Chinese Character Simpli- fication Scheme1 in 1956 represents the high water mark of the Chinese government’s efforts in script reform, and it is the event that most clearly defines the shape of the modern writing system. But it is not an isolated event, either in the history of character simplification or Chinese script reform as a whole. In the narrow sense, it was a suc- cessor to the abortive simplification scheme launched by the Republican government in 1935, and it was followed by the polarizing, short-lived Second Character Simplifica- tion Scheme of 1977. From a historical perspective, the character simplification scheme merely formalized the use of character variants that had existed for hundreds of years — only about 8 percent of simplified characters were original creations.2 The 1956 simplification scheme created the mostly artificial distinction between the simplified Chinese script used in Mainland China and the traditional (or complex) script used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, Singapore and overseas Chinese communities (as well as Korea and Japan). Throughout Máo Zédong’s¯ 毛泽东 communist regime, the use of simplified characters was deemed ideologically correct, and the use of traditional characters was suppressed. After the Cultural Revolution and Máo’s death, however, traditional Chinese culture and values were once more topics of discussion, and debate over the role and status of traditional characters arose. Traditional characters are the prime exponent of Chinese culture, but modern Chinese script policy yet forbids their use (with a few exceptions). The debate around the use of traditional characters is more present today than ever before. In this thesis, I intend to examine the nature and prospects of this debate, looking especially at the way it is brought forward in the Rénmín Rìbào (People’s Daily), China’s primary state-sponsored newspaper. The Rénmín Rìbào is a key element of the Chinese government’s discursive strategy towards the population, and its contents reach a very wide audience. This thesis is divided into four parts. In the first part, I sketch the development of Chinese script and script policy through history. I divide this development into four stages — dynastic China, early modern reform in the early 20th century, reform in the Máo era, and developments after 1986. Each period is characterized by different external and internal pressures placed upon the character script, and

1 Hànzì jianhuàˇ fang’àn¯ 汉字简化方案. 2 Bökset 2006: 181.

4 each period contributes to the general modern perception or experience of the Chinese character script. In the second part, I search the archives of the Rénmín Rìbào for articles revolving around character use, and plot these by keyword and by year in order to discern meaningful patterns in the evolution of reporting around script issues. In the third part, I look into two kinds of articles published in the Rénmín Rìbào— editorials and opinion pieces. By analyzing an example editorial in detail, I determine the political and ideological background of current-day official attitudes towards script reform. I analyze two opinion pieces and discuss common themes. Finally, I take a look at script planners’ response to the increasing pressure of digital technology on the hànzì system, and at a project that addresses this pressure. That project is the Table of General Standard Characters. It was completed in 2013, and it is significant in two ways: it clearly defines the bounds of the hànzì system, fixing the number of standard characters in use in the People’s Republic; and it reinstates a small number of traditional and banned variant characters into use. This last may indicate a change of official attitudes towards traditional characters, and open the door for more significant reforms in the future. For theoretical background, I have relied primarily on the mammoth work of Richard Baldauf and Zhao Zhouhui, Planning Chinese Character: Reaction, Evolution, Revolu- tion? (2008), an invaluable resource for students of modern Chinese character studies; on Chen Ping’s Modern Chinese: History and Sociolinguistics (2004) for historical background; and on Guo Yi’s perspicacious analysis of the link between Chinese nationalism and script reform laid out in Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary China: The Search for National Identity under Reform (2004).

In writing this thesis, I am grateful to prof. Christoph Anderl, my promotor, whose support and advice proved invaluable; to ms. Lˇı Línghóng 李凌虹, whose help with translations is deeply appreciated; and to my parents, who have always encouraged me.

All translations are my own, except where otherwise noted.

5 2 Historical perspectives

"In broad perspective Chinese writing reform is not merely a minor matter of tinkering with the symbols used in writing. It is a major change amounting to nothing less than the most far-reaching cultural revolution in all Chinese history." - John DeFrancis, The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy3

Modern attitudes towards Chinese script reform are determined by complex historical and cultural processes. Broadly speaking, we can identify four major developments that influenced the direction of current-day language planning. In imperial China, we see the birth of the straight-line model of script development that describes the evolution of the character script as a succession of exclusive standards. Modern scholarship upholds a much more nuanced development model, but the simplicity of the straight- line model and the way it mirrors the supposed consistency of Chinese national culture makes it very popular even today. In my view, this model provides the groundwork for certain modern attitudes toward the question of simplified versus traditional characters: that the Chinese script does not tolerate duplicity, but will inexorably gravitate towards a single correct norm. A second development was China’s race towards modernization in the early 20th century, which prompted China’s intellectual elite to look for ways to remedy the nation’s immense illiteracy problem. This resulted in the birth of the simplification and romanization projects, codified by the May Fourth Movement in 1919. Then, under Mao’s Communist regime, this modernist attitude became radicalized. Script reform became an ideological, revolutionary activity; the 1956 simplification scheme was passed in this atmosphere. In fact, the simplification mostly formalized characters that has been used unofficially for centuries, but the disparity it created between the correct (simplified) style and the incorrect (traditional) style formed a break line in Chinese cultural history. The modern script reform debate revolves around dealing with this revolutionary heritage. After the 80’s, the direction of Chinese script reform changed to setting and main- taining usage standards, rather than reforming the structure of characters. China’s opening up after the Cultural Revolution led to a re-evaluation of traditional Chinese culture and characters. Two major thought currents exist in the contemporary reform debate: a state nationalist stream that argues for furthering the standardization project as it is, and a cultural nationalist stream that would rethink and perhaps partially retract the

3 DeFrancis 1984: 240.

6 Communist-era reforms.

2.1 Standardization in dynastic times

The straight-line model of script evolution

The Chinese script is one of the oldest writing systems in the world. The oldest examples of the character script are carvings found on turtle shells and ox bones dating from the 13th to the 12th century BC, during the Shang dynasty.4 These are short texts of mostly divinatory nature, and the script form is duly called oracle bone writing or shell bone writing (jiagˇ uwénˇ 甲骨文).5 From these earliest manifestations, the script developed through the Shang¯ and Zhou¯ dynasties in a slow, uneven process until the Qin unification.6 Traditionally, the script styles used in this period are termed Bronze script (j¯ınwén 金文) and Large Seal script (dà zhuànshu¯ 大篆书) in the Zhou;¯ however, before the Qin unification, there was no single style in use throughout China, and great character diversity according to place, time and material. Even the structure of any giving character was not set. Writing had a "relatively high level of graphical fluidity, where a given character form was not an absolute entity but one of several possible ways of recording a word."7 The watershed moment for ancient Chinese script reform was Qín Shˇıhuáng’s 秦始皇 unification of China, and the great efforts he put towards formalizing and stan- dardizing the various script forms of his empire into a single, consistent system. Qín Shˇıhuáng had his minister Lˇı S¯ı 李斯 draw up a list of 3500 characters to serve as the government-mandated standard. This ‘bold and resolute’8 reform played an important role in strengthening the fledgling Qín dynasty’s power. Accordingly, the Qín reform

4 Ping 2004: 132. The script is almost certainly older than these carvings, but any potential examples written on brittle materials like cloth or bamboo would not have survived. Newly uncovered Neolithic rock carvings resembling characters sometimes prompt Chinese and Western popular press to push back the origin of the script to several thousand years BC; but there is no indication that these marks were used as a structural writing system, or that they are related to Shang dynasty characters. Qiu 2000: 31. 5 An authoritative introduction to the early character script is William Boltz’ The Origin and Early Development of the Chinese Writing System (1994). It is detailed, but technical. Qiu Xigui’s Chinese Writing (2000) provides a well-illustrated, occasionally unorthodox, but certainly more up-to-date explanation. John DeFrancis analyses the development of the character script within the context of other early pictographic scripts like Egyptian hieroglyphics and Sumerian cuneiform in Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems (1989). The relevant chapter is freely available at http: //www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/visible/index.html. 6 Qiu 2000: 59-150. 7 Galambos 2006: 19-20. 8 Zhao and Baldauf 2008: 25.

7 served as an example for later dynasties. Governments have carried out orthographic standardization programs every few centuries, establishing legal requirements for the transmission of texts, partly as a means of bolstering their legitimacy.910 There is reason to doubt the traditional narrative of Qín Shˇıhuáng as the regulator of script. Imre Galambos, in Orthography of Early Chinese Writing (2006), argues persuasively that this image is an idealized image of the event recorded post-factum by Hàn 汉 scholars. The Hàn, in fact, play a crucial role in the historiography of the Chinese script. The ﬁrst known theoretization of the character script appeared in the Hàn dynasty under what was called the xiaoˇ xué 小学 or minor study.11 The ﬁrst major work on writing was the Shuo¯ wén jiˇezì 说文解字, compiled around 100 A.D. by Xuˇ Shèn 许慎. The Hàn interested in script studies kicked off a rich historiographic tradition seeking to document and analyze Chinese characters.

Generally speaking, the development of the Chinese script throughout history is guided by the twin counteractive processes of differentiation and convergence. The script organically grew more complex over time, as it came to be used in different places and times, for different purposes and different audiences. The number of characters and variants grew naturally under the brush of many individual writers, nearly always to improve the ease and speed of writing.12 Convergence, on the other hand, went hand in hand with the standardization efforts launched by governments attempting to promul- gate norms for effective administration. This convergence occurred in two ways: by diminishing the number of characters in common use (by eliminating variants) and by diminishing the structural complexity of characters (by lowering their stroke count).13 The latter technique was much rarer in dynastic times than in the 20th century. Technically, the straight-line model of development shown in ﬁgure1 only pertains to the aesthetic evolution of characters, and not their structural properties. Historio- graphically speaking, however, there is considerable confusion with regards to these two ﬁelds.15 The model gives rise to the popular assumption that at any given time, there existed one government-imposed orthographic standard, in the sense that for any given set of structural character variations one was considered ‘correct’ and the oth-

9 Zhao and Baldauf 2008: 26, 190 10 The fact that the standard kaishˇ u¯ script used today would be elaborated so early in Chinese history may seem surprising. Less so, when we suppose that all evolutions up to kaishˇ u¯ occurred as scribes bent the Qín characters to be written quickly and elegantly with brush on paper, which was not the primary medium at first. Later reforms were aimed more at limiting the number of variant characters used in official documents. Zhao and Baldauf 2008: 9. 11 That the study of Latin grammar throughout the Middle Ages should be called ars minor is an amusing parallel. 12 Zhao and Baldauf 2008: 9 13 Ping 2004: 148. 14 Image from the lìbiàn 隶辨, a Q¯ıng dynasty etymological work, by way of the Taiwanese Dictionary of Character Variants (http://dict.variants.moe.edu.tw). 15 The fact that the author chooses to include simplified characters in the table is telling.

8 Figure 1: The common model of Chinese script development.

9 Figure 2: A few historical variants of the character lí.14 ers ‘incorrect’.16 Modern researchers17 have refuted this idea, saying it "mirrors the ideologically motivated unilateral genealogy of traditional historiography."18 In fact, through most of Chinese history, writers had access to a stratum of variants, distin- guished by how appropriate they were for use in different contexts.19 The idea that only one set was allowed to see use is a consequence of "the highly selective process of textual transmission [that] continuously weeded out documents written in non-standard forms".20 The idea of the single correct standard is baked into Chinese historiography, regardless of the actual situation. The development model of the script stresses the continuity of Chinese history and the fundamental unity of the nation. In China, ideology and script reform are never far apart.21

16 Usually, the distinction is made between zhèng 正 (’correct’) characters and sú 俗 (’vulgar’) characters. Other denomination include tongzì¯ 通字 (’common characters’), pòtˇı 破体 (’broken style’), biétˇı 别体 (’variant style’), èrtˇı 二体 (’second style’), etc. In modern times variant characters are called yìtˇızì 异体字. Bökset: 11, Ping 2004: 150. 17 In particular Galambos, note some works 18 Galambos 2006: 1. 19 Variant characters were so widespread that 40% of the 47,000 characters listed in the authoritative 18th century Kangx¯ ¯ı Zìdianˇ 康熙字典 were variants. (Ping 2004: 148.) 20 Galambos 2006: 14. 21 Our knowledge of variant forms in dynastic times mostly comes from manuscripts and carvings, and contemporary historical works and dictionaries, such as the famous Shuowén¯ jiˇezì 文解字 and Kangx¯ ¯ı

10 2.2 Early modern reform (late 20th century - 1949)

Modernism in imperial times

The dynastic pattern of script development was disturbed by the introduction of Western ideas into China. In the late 20th century, protestant missionaries active in the Southern coastal provinces spread the faith through pamphlets written in the improvised phonetic renderings of regional dialects. Their audiences were usually illiterate and did not speak Mandarin. This linguistic contact shook traditional assumptions about the dominance of the character script as the sole carriers of information. Later reformers arguing for the romanization of Chinese would draw inspiration from the work of the missionaries. China’s heavy losses after the Opium Wars22 jolted the Chinese state into action. It immediately turned its attention to the question of modernization, without which it felt it could not compete.23 In this context, language and script reform came to the foreground of political and intellectual life. Linguistic unity was a prerequisite for national unity, itself a prerequisite for any strong state; and this new Chinese language would need a new Chinese script. The traditional character script was seen as unﬁt for the purpose. It was archaic and too complicated, and through the late 20th century there emerged "a growing consensus that the writing system constituted an obstacle to the achievement of a higher literacy rate".24 Improving literacy was the main goal of the script reform program. Soon two rival approaches presented themselves. Phoneticization was the most radical solution: to abandon the character script wholesale, and replace it with a phonetic alphabet. The

Zìdianˇ 康熙字典. The uncovering of the Dunhuáng¯ 敦煌 manuscripts - a cache of documents span- ning from the 5th to the 11th centuries - was a massive boon to character research, as the manuscripts contained a great number of previously unrecorded variant forms. See for instance Huáng Zheng¯ 黄征 (2004), Dunhuáng¯ Súzìdianˇ 敦煌俗字典 [Dictionary of Dunhuang variant characters]. Roar Bökset (2006: 10-12) provides an excellent overview of (mostly modern, some ancient) scholarly work listing variant forms. Regarding pre-Qin character variation, Imre Galambos gives an innovative analysis in Orthography of Early Chinese Writing (2006), on the basis of archaeological material uncovered in the past few decennia. 22 The first, 1839–1842; the second, 1856–1860. In their aftermath, China was forced to concede ter- ritorial and economical rights to Western powers, in particular to France, the United Kingdom, and Russia. The Chinese attitude towards Western powers was quite complex. On the one hand, China’s humiliating defeats made many Chinese hostile towards any kind of Western influence; on the other hand, the West’s military power, immense wealth, and scientific advancement made it the object of fascination. (Li Zhang 2011: 63.) This mixture of admiration and hostility will influence public and political attitudes towards romanization and the use of p¯ıny¯ın. 23 Ping 2004: 13. 24 Ping 2004: 150.

11 less drastic option was to simplify the existing script. Initial enthusiasm led to the ﬁrst solution, which presented other advantages as well: it would make communication technically simpler (printing and telegraphy would be drastically easier to manage) and allow foreign or dialectal words and vernacular expressions to be easily transcribed. Another argument was based on Darwinian theory, which had penetrated China not long before. In this theorization, every language followed a path from a pictographic script to a semanto-phonographic script to a full alphabet - as happened in the West. The backwardness of the Chinese script was symptomatic of its backwardness as a nation.25 The imperial administration duly mandated the creation of a phonetic alphabet for the Chinese national language a few years before the 1911 revolution.26

The Republican period and the 1935 simpliﬁcation scheme

After the revolution, the script reform movement jumped into high gear. The overthrow of the empire in favor of a republic made it possible to dream, by analogy, of the overthrow of the character script in favor of an alphabet. The most influential voice in this early movement was Qián Xuántóng 钱玄同, who in 1923 published an paper proposing to scrap the character script entirely. However, the Chinese intelligentsia had by that time come to realize that "replacement of the traditional writing system by a phonetic one was not achievable in the immediate future, if at all."27 Simplification became the renewed focus of the language planning movement. Un- der Qián’s leadership, a group working under the Association for Promoting a Unified National Language produced a list of over 2000 simplified characters, which became the blueprint for the 1935 simplification scheme.2829 Though Qián had proposed newly created simplifications, the Education Ministry (then responsible for script reform) shot down these proposals, citing that it would select according to the ’imitate but not create’ principle (ie. it would only include simplified forms already attested in dynastic times).30 The 1935 scheme was retracted the following year. Relatively little academic attention has been payed to this scheme and its failure. The most often-cited reason for

25 Some modern commentators consciously elaborate on this idea: that China did not naturally develop an alphabet is not proof of the language’s backwardness, but actually shows its superiority, since it was the only form of ideographic writing efficient and versatile enough to survive the ages. See Guo 2004, chapter 5 for an extended discussion of this idea. 26 In the Act of Approaches to the Unification of the National Language. Ping 2004: 15-16. 27 Ping 2004: 151. 28 Zhao and Baldauf: 30. 29 Qián’s proposed table was only one of several running projects to simplify the script. It was characteristic of early script reform that many individuals and groups from China’s intellectual elite were working on simplification proposals at roughly the same time, while the Republican government took a back seat and eventually sponsored this-or-that proposal. Zhao and Baldauf (2008: 39) provide a list of non-government projects active in the 1930’s. 30 Bökset 2006: 180.

12 the retraction is strong public opposition based on linguistic purism; Zhao and Baldauf (2008: 32-36) discuss the subject extensively.

2.3 Reform during the Mao era (1949-1970’s)

The road to the 1956 simpliﬁcation scheme

Under Communist rule, Chinese language planning took on quite a different character. Script reform in Republican times was not, at heart, a political or ideological project. Though the Nationalist Party had a vested interest in character simplification as a means to combat mass illiteracy, it took a hands-off approach, allowing China’s disorganized intellectual elite to come up with solutions.31 Under Mao’s rule, on the other hand, the reform project was organized directly from the top political spheres. The reason for this was that language planning was no longer considered as simply the solution to a problem, but as a vital part of the ideological structure of the Communist regime. Zhao and Baldauf (2008: 52-53) analyze the Communist Party’s script reform program as a consequence of its following the precepts of Marxism, which according to them holds that the modes of production present in a society (its economic substructure) determine the political, social and intellectual life processes within that society (its su- perstructure). In the old semi-feudal, semi-colonial China, literacy was a skill reserved for the upper classes, and script was therefore a tool the bourgeoisie used to keep a firm hold on the illiterate masses. Script reform and mass literacy campaigns was a way for the new socialist society to transform this relationship and make the script serve the needs of the people. In this way, script reform became an ideological project aimed at improving the lives of the masses in the long term. Organizationally, the simplification project was somewhat chaotic. No less than five groups or committees were charged with the task between 1949 and 1956.32 During the fifties, the State Council33 published a number of lists of simplified characters for nationwide adoption. The keystone list was the Scheme for Chinese Character Simplifi- cation (Hànzì Jianhuàˇ Fang’àn¯ 汉子简化方案), published in 1956.34 Unlike the 1935 scheme, this one did contain newly created simplifications; the Communist reformers did not hold to the ’imitate but not create’ principle employed for the 1935 scheme. The

31 Zhao and Baldauf 2008: 38-39, Freiman 2012: 60. 32 Zhao and Baldauf (2008: 44) provides a summary table of these bodies. 33 the highest administrative organ of the PRC. Freiman 2012: 63. 34 It consisted of three tables: one of 230 simplified characters already in common use, one of 285 newly-created simplifications, and one of 54 simplified radicals. Zhao and Baldauf 2008: 45.

13 various tables were compounded into a single document, the General List of Simpliﬁed Characters, published in 1964. It contained 2238 characters. When modern sources talk about the 1956 reform, this is the document they usually refer to.35

The romanization of Chinese

The notion of replacing characters with an alphabet, abandoned by the Republicans, flared up once again under Mao’s early regime. In 1951, the Chairman argued that the script should be replaced with an indigenous alphabet, graphically based on Chinese characters. The relatively non-governmental Association for Language Reform was unable to devise such a system. In 1954, the Association was re-organized and brought under the direct control of the State Council, and its mandate changed to produce an system based on the latin alphabet. This would become p¯ıny¯ın. In 1958, however, when p¯ıny¯ın was in the last stages of testing, Zhou¯ Enlái¯ 周恩来 announced a new direction for Chinese language planning consisting of three points: first, the simplification and standardization of Chinese characters; second, the popularization of putˇ onghuà¯ ; and third, the promotion of p¯ıny¯ın as a system of phonetic annotation.36 This forms the backbone of Chinese language planning even today. Plans to abolish characters and install p¯ıny¯ın as China’s sole writing system were shelved until a hypothetical later date.

2.4 Modern reform

The 80’s and the birth of the modern status quo

The course of contemporary Chinese script planning was set at the National Confer- ence on Language Work, held in 1986. The working agenda of the conference formally abandoned the long-term plan to replace the character script with p¯ıny¯ın.37 The year before, the Chinese government had taken other steps that seem counter to its previous reformist ideals: it had suspended the Pinyin Bao, the only ofﬁcial publication written in p¯ıny¯ın; it had ordered the Chinese post to stop using p¯ıny¯ın in telegrams (this directive was overturned the next year); and it had launched the overseas edition of the Rénmín Rìbào, written in traditional characters.

35 Zhao and Baldauf 2008: 46. 36 Chappell 1980: 105-106. 37 Guo 2004: 91, Zhao and Baldauf 2008: xvi.

14 The conference also ruled out any more radical reform in the shape of Chinese characters, but did not set any concrete directives, merely diluting the issue.38 The focus of character planning shifted from actively pursuing reform to stabilizing the system, creating binding standards, and policing them effectively. In fact, there are enough indications to conclude that at this time and the years to follow, there was no consensus among policy makers on how to tackle the issue of character reform; these were ’future topics and not current concern’.39 The shift in direction that occurred at this time can be analyzed as the result of a desire for non-commitment, and this led directly to the modern status quo.40 This status quo solidified in the text of China’s first language law, promulgated in 2001. It states standard characters should be used in every possible contexts expect in cultural and historic sites; if they are variant forms used in certain surnames; in works of art such as calligraphy; on handwritten inscriptions and signboards; where their use is required in publishing, teaching and research; and special circumstances where their usage is officially approved.

The rise of cultural nationalism

Guo (2004) analyses the status-quo of contemporary script planning as the result of the interplay between two rival thought current within the spheres of power: the re- formists or state nationalists on one side, and the cultural nationalists on the other. State nationalists broadly follow the line of Communist era reform ideas, and support further simpliﬁcation and expansion of the role of p¯ıny¯ın; or at the very least the maintenance of the current status quo. Cultural nationalism is the manifestation of a stream of thought that has existed since the very beginning of modern reform. Cultural nationalists stress the importance of tradition in Chinese culture, and resist radical language reform, which in their eyes threatens to create a cultural fault-line between the Chinese people and their history. This faction re-emerged in a much more aggressive form after the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, when it began promoting a thorough re-evaluation of traditional culture as "part of [its] subversion of the whole May Fourth iconoclastic tradition for the sake fo authentic experience and authentic community".41 The cultural nationalist voice in one of the loudest heard in the modern debate, as we will see. The Party’s step-back from its reformist ideals is mostly owing to the lobbying efforts of this group.

38 Zhao and Baldauf 2008: xvi, Baldauf and Kaplan 2008: 63. 39 Baldauf and Kaplan 2008: 63. 40 Guo 2004: 91. 41 Guo 2004: 90.

15 3 Script planning in the Rénmín Rìbào

Articles around the subject of script planning in the Rénmín Rìbào can inform us as to ofﬁcial and popular attitudes towards the use of traditional characters. First, I make a selection of relevant articles published throughout the Rénmín Rìbào’s lifespan, and plot general trends in their publication patterns. Then, in the next chapter, I discuss themes recurrent in articles published from 2000 to 2012, using as case studies a select few articles, drawing attention to their purpose and discursive content.

3.1 Characteristics of the Rénmín Rìbào

The Rénmín Rìbào is one of China’s state-sponsored newspapers, and functions as the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party. Its avowed mission is to "actively dissem- inate Party theory and Party political line, guidelines and policy; to actively publicize major central policy decisions; and to promptly spread domestic and international news in every domain."42 As such, it remains under the control of the censorship system.43 Researchers have noted that in the last few decennia, Chinese state media have undergone a transition from a rigidly-controlled content policy towards a more versatile, commercialized approach. This approach allows for more independent-minded journal- ism in the pages of the Rénmín Rìbào, while retaining the institutional strings that give the authorities the ability to control the ﬂow of information when necessary.44 The Rén- mín Rìbào thus forms a crucial element of the Chinese government’s discursive strategy towards the general population, and it orients other Chinese media through the content of its editorials.45 The Rénmín Rìbào group operates ten subsidiary newspapers, including the Over- seas Edition (Rénmín Rìbào Haiwàibˇ anˇ 人民日报海外版), published for Chinese liv- ing overseas and printed in traditional characters. It maintains an online portal called Rénmínwangˇ 人民网 and hosts an inﬂuential discussion board called the Strengthen- ing Nation Forum (Qiángguó Shèqu¯ 强国社区). In this thesis, I will restrict myself to discussing the daily paper edition of the Rénmín Rìbào.

42 Rénmín Rìbào j¯ıbˇenqíngkuàng 人民日报基本情况 [Basic state of affairs of the Rénmín Rìbào] (2003). 43 Zhao and Baldauf 2008: 102-103. 44 Stockmann 2013. 45 Li 2011: 64.

16 3.2 Patterns in keyword use in the Rénmín Rìbào

Search methods and result collection

The source of information for this analysis is the archive of the digital edition of the Rénmín Rìbào, the Rénmín Rìbào túwén diànzˇıbanˇ 《人民日报》图文电子版.46 It hosts all articles published in the paper edition of the newspaper from 1946 to 2012 (though the year 2012 is not covered entirely). Using the archive’s search function, I have produced three lists of articles. Each list comprises all articles published through the Rénmín Rìbào’s lifespan in which one of these keywords or keyword combinations appear:

• 繁体字 — ‘traditional character(s)’.47 362 results.

• 简体字 or 简化字 — ‘simpliﬁed character(s)’. 425 results.

• 规范字 or 规范汉字 — ‘standard character(s)’. 128 results.

Due to the nature of the chosen keywords, the lists are very inclusive. A search for 繁体字 will return in-depth articles on the desirability of the rehabilitation of traditional characters, as well as articles in which the elegance of a certain calligrapher’s fántˇızì is noted. Yet looking at the total number of articles including this keyword allows us to discover meaningful long-term patterns. Figure3 shows the amount of search result articles per keyword per year. Values range from zero to twenty-seven (for 繁体字 in 1996). Absolute values, however, do not take into account the fact that the number of articles published in the Rénmín Rìbào varies significantly each year. The total amount of articles published in the paper per year is shown in figure5. We can clearly distinguish three periods in the history of the paper. From 1946 to the mid-1960’s, publication count rose unsteadily, averaging about 17,500 articles per year. It dove to an average of 12,500 during a period roughly overlapping the cultural revolution (formally 1966 to 1976). Beginning in the 80’s, the count rose again to an average of 36,200 (not counting the incomplete year 2012).48 To account for this evolution, absolute keyword article count must be divided by absolute total article count. The results are shown in figure4. The values on the Y-axis

46 The archive’s main url is http://rmrb.egreenapple.com/, but it is best accessed through the url provided by afﬁliated research institutions. 47 繁化字 is never used. 48 Average article count from 1946 to 1965: 17,566.05. From 1966 to 1979: 12,673.64. From 1980 to 2011 (2012 not included): 36,184.63. These numbers are sourced from the Rénmín Rìbào túwén diànzˇıbanˇ .

17 Figure 3: Absolute count of keyword-containing articles.

18 Figure 4: Relative count of keyword-containing articles per total article count.

19 Figure 5: Total number of articles published in the Rénmín Rìbào each year.

Figure 6: Linear trendlines for two keywords in the 1946-2012 period.

show the results of the division, multiplied by 10,000. So, for instance, a value of 2.66 on the 繁体字 line in 1973 means that 2.66 of every 10,000 articles published that year contained the keyword 繁体字.

Interpretation of the results

One question we may ask ourselves based on figures3 and4 is whether peaks in the usage of keywords in certain years reflect important events in Chinese language planning. In other words, are events in script planning strongly reported and discussed in multiple articles in the Rénmín Rìbào, or do they not rise above the average in any significant way? By examining some peak years, we may arrive at a conclusion.

20 Figure 7: Linear trendlines two keywords in the 1986-2012 period.

• Usage of 简体/化字 reaches a maximum in 1955; these are mostly articles published in October, November and December that year, when character simpliﬁca- tion as a topic of discussion reached a peak before the promulgation of the 1956 scheme in January.

• The years 1962, 63 and 64 — during which publications are twice or three times are frequent as during the six previous years — are not characterized by major policy decisions. The major theme in discourse in this period is preventing the chaotic use of hànzì.

• A peak in 1966 is entirely due to the publication of the Selected Works of Máo Zédong¯ (Máo Zédong¯ xuanjíˇ 毛泽东选集), which comes up in almost every article. It is consistently noted to be edited in simpliﬁed characters written in horizontal lines.

• A lull from 1967 to the early 70’s corresponds to the active phase of the Cultural Revolution, when script reform had become a taboo subject.

• In the 70’s, during the lead-up to the publication of the 1977 reform scheme, interest ﬂares up once more. Zhao and Baldauf (2008: 55) note the particular importance of one article in this period: 文字必须改革 [The written language must be reformed] (July 6, 1973). It contains a discussion of the class nature of script reform, and is cited as a factor in re-introducing script reform as the object of political debate.

• Publications around 简体/化字 peak once more with the release of the 1977 simpliﬁcation scheme.

21 • Beginning in 1980, at the tail end of the cultural revolution, the use of the keyword 简体/化字 become more consistent and less prone to the wild peaks and valleys of the previous thirty years. 繁体字 grow into a regular topic as well, with a few standout years.

• A peak for 简体/化字 in 1986 corresponds with the organization of the National Conference of Language Work. 规范(汉)字 comes into use as keyword in script planning discourse at this time.

• Interest in script planning issues peaked once more in 1992, at the release of a set of guidelines for the use of hànzì in print publications.49

• 1996 marked the celebration of the forty year anniversary of the 1956 simpliﬁca- tion scheme, an event accompanied by a number of editorials on the subject.

• 2001 sees the release of China’s ﬁrst language law, provoking a peak in the use of the 规范(汉)字 keyword.

Based on these results, it is reasonable to conclude that significant events in script planning do correspond with peak years in keyword use. However, it is important to keep in mind that the absolute number of articles published each year is never very high; usually one article per month or less. The scarcity of data makes it difficult to draw absolute conclusions from any numerical analysis. A more complete analysis based on article’s contents and relevance, rather than the mere presence of a keyword, would be an good subject for further research. But even with limited data, certain trend can be discerned, which we can illustrate by using linear trendlines. Linear trendlines are a simple way to identify general trends withing a data set. In this case, I have applied trendlines to the 繁体字 and 简体/化字 series, each for the period 1946-2012 and 1986-2012. These results are shown in figures6 and7. It is important to note that while these trendlines are generally used in a predictive fashion, to calculate likely future values in a series, in this case the data set’s values are not consistent enough to allow any estimation of future values; I use the trendlines only as a good way of visualizing a general increase or decrease of a set of values over time. In the 1940-2012 period, we see the number of articles mentioning 简体/化字 has remained stable. On the other hand, the number of articles mentioning 繁体字 has risen significantly. In other words, over the entire course of the newspaper’s run, 繁体字 have entered the Rénmín Rìbào as a subject of discussion in a way that 简体/化字 have not. The direction of contemporary language planning was set in the mid-80’s, and with particular formality in 1986; therefore it is interesting to look at trendlines around the

49 The Chub¯ anwùˇ hànzì shˇıyòng guanl¯ ˇı guìdìng 出版物汉字使用管理规定 (Regulations for the administration of the use of hànzì in print publication), disseminated August 1, 1992.

22 same keywords for the period 1986-2012. The picture here is very different. The per- year average usage of both keywords is remarkably consistent. 繁体字 and 简体/化字 are about evenly matched in how often they are mentioned in articles. Furthermore, their average use is slightly declining, which mirrors the rise of 规范(汉)字 as a keyword in political discourse around language work since 1986 exactly. This suggests that 规范(汉)字 and the standardization of characters have supplanted simplification and the opposition of the traditional and simplified characters as elements of political discourse, both official and unofficial.

23 4 Article analysis

4.1 Policy communication through editorials

As we have seen, the Rénmín Rìbào is one of the instruments with which the Chinese state apparatus communicates policy towards the people. This is done most directly through editorials. In this section, I examine a 2006 editorial that reveals ofﬁcial attitudes towards language reform.

Editorials in the Rénmín Rìbào

As the mouthpiece of the Chinese government, the Rénmín Rìbào regularly pub- lishes editorials (shèlùn 社论) laying out the party line concerning language and script planning. These editorials are written in a heavy rhetorical style and carry an unmistake- ably patriotic character. Wú Guóguang¯ 吴国光, who was Chief Editor of the Commen- tary Department of the Rénmín Rìbào from 1985 to 1989, writes in 1994: "editorials are the most important type of commentary in the People’s Daily. They necessarily present the opinions of the newspaper and the top elite. They are usually produced directly on command from the top leaders, and they are often revised and censored by the leaders themselves."50 While the politics of press have changed much since the mid-90’s, as of 2008, "journalistic practices in China, particularly news collection and distri- bution, remain subject to still tight political and ideological control of the Communist party."51 While internal dispute is not unheard of in the composition of an editorial (see Wu 1994), the small number of editorials pertaining to language planning and their uncontroversial character suggests little internal dissent. At the level of national political discourse demonstrated in these editorials, traditional characters are almost entirely absent. They are rolled together with variant and wrongly-used characters as part of ‘the phenomenon of non-standard character use’ (用字不规范现象), as in the editorial I will discuss here. Character standardization is also rarely a subject by itself, but is expressed as one half of the greater language planning project, the other half being the spreading of putˇ onghuà¯ among China’s entire population.52 50 Wu 1994: 196. 51 Xin Xin 2008, quoted in Li Zhang 2011: 90. 52 The construction used most often is tu¯ıguangˇ putˇ onghuà¯ 推广普通话. Tuigu¯ angˇ is translated both as

24 The latest editorial regarding language planning (in the period 2000-2012) was published on April 1, 2006, on the occasion of the ﬁfty year anniversary of the First Chinese Character Simpliﬁcation Scheme. It appeared on page two out of eight of that day’s edition. It is written by the Rénmín Rìbào’s ‘own commentator’ (bˇenbàopínglùnyuán 本报评论员), as editorials usually are, and it is entitled Shuo¯ putˇ onghuà,¯ yòng gu¯ıfànzì 说普通话用规范字 (Speak putˇ onghuà¯ , use standard characters). This title perfectly encapsulates current language planning aspirations, and as a phrase it is used quite frequently in this context. It consists of four paragraphs, each transmitting part of the intended message. This editorial provides the political-ideological discursive backdrop of modern-day language planning. I will summarize its main points, translate relevant quotations, and point out interesting discursive content.

Shuo¯ putˇ onghuà,¯ yòng gu¯ıfànzì

The article’s ﬁrst paragraph introduces the matter of Chinese language planning to the reader:

汉语言文字博大精深，是世界上历史悠久、使用人数最多的语言文字。在尊重历史文化传承的同时，我们应该看到，对人民群众而言，汉字还有些难认、难记、难写、难用，纷繁复杂的汉语方言也成为建设工业化社会的障碍。因此，早在新中国百废待兴之时，党中央、国务院就把整理和简化汉字、推广普通话列入重要的工作日程，国务院于1956年1月28日发布了《汉字简化方案》和《关于推广普通话的指示》。50年过去了，作为人民生活中最重要的交际工具和信息载体，普通话已经成为全国通用的中华民族共同语，简化汉字在全国得到空前的普及，中国的普通话和规范汉字作为联合国的工作语文之一，已成为中外文化交流的重要桥梁和外国人学习中文的首选语言文字。

The chinese language and script are wide-ranging and profound. They are the world’s oldest and most widely used language and script. Even as its respected history and culture is being passed on through generations, we must recognize, with respect to the masses of the people, that there are some aspects of Chinese characters that make them hard to recognize, to remember, to write and to use. The numerous and complicated dialects of Chinese also form a barrier to the construction of an industrial society. Consequently, during the new China’s ‘a thousand things to be done’ period, the Party Central Committee and the State Council added to its ‘to promote’ and ‘to popularize’.

25 working agenda the systematization and simplification of hànzì and the spreading of putˇ onghuà¯ . On January 28th, 1956, the State Council published the Scheme for Chinese Character Simplification and the Directive Concerning the Spreading of Putˇ onghuà¯ . After 50 years, it has become the most important communication tool and information carrier in the lives of the people. Putˇ onghuà¯ has already become the common language used nationwide by the Chinese nation. Simplified characters have achieved un- precedented popularity throughout the whole nation. Chinese Putˇ onghuà¯ and standard characters have become a working language of the United Na- tions, and have turned into the most important means for cultural exchange between China and foreign countries53 and the first choice for foreigners studying the Chinese language.

As soon as the second sentence, the pronoun womenˇ 我们 is used to invite the reader into the author’s thought process. That the character script presented some difficulties is not an isolated idea, it is our idea; and the actions undertaken by the Party Central Committee and the State Council are solutions to these problems. The use of the term zhonghuá¯ mínzú 中华民族 in this context is notable. Its usage developed in the 20th century as a translation of the idea of the Chinese nation, with an ethnic or popular identity, as opposed to the purely political entity of the state; it is translated as ‘Chinese nation’ or sometimes ‘Chinese race’.54 In modern Chinese political discourse, it refers the concept of China’s 56 different ethnicities being united into one strong and harmonious state. The status of Taiwan within this union is ambiguous. The term does not have a formal definition, but it usually excludes the island. In the text, Taiwan is left unmentioned. The second paragraph clarifies the goals and problems of the language planning program:

简化汉字和推广普通话，既是生产、生活和提高人民群众文化素质的实际需要，也是维护中华民族大团结的政治任务。[. . . ]但就我国经济社会发展对语言文字工作的要求来看，普通话的普及程度还远远不够，语言文字社会应用的规范水平也还不高，方言隔阂和用字不规范现象仍然是现代化建设中的不和谐音符。这些不足应该引起我们高度重视。

The simpliﬁcation of hànzì and the popularization of putˇ onghuà¯ are both a practical necessity for the quality of production, life and the culture of the masses; and they are the political duty that will safeguard the great unity

53 something something cultural exchange. based off Ji’s bio 54 Fitzgerald 1995: 85.

26 of the Chinese nation. [. . . ] However, if we look at the requirements of the development of our national economic society with regards to language and script work, the degree of popularization of putˇ onghuà¯ is still far from sufﬁcient, and neither is the level of standardization in society’s use of language and script very high. The phenomena of the estrangement of dialects and the non-standard use of characters are still unharmonious notes in the process of modernization. These insufﬁciencies must lead us to pay great attention to them.

The first sentence identifies character simplification as a twofold project - it is first necessary to improve the lives of the people and their production, and secondly it a duty or mission (rènwù 任务) of the government. In other words, language planning is not a project initiated by government to transform the nation, but it is a necessary response to the demands of society on its way to modernization. The second sentence uses the term woguóˇ 我国, meaning my/our country. It is a common term with connotations of nationalistic feeling. Victor Mair (2013, 2015) notes some other constructions based on the woˇ + X pattern, such as woxiàoˇ 我校 ‘our school’. Recently, Chinese social media noted the rise of the term nˇıguó 你国, a play on woguóˇ intended as a subversive barb against unpopular government actions: it is your country, not mine. The versatility of the term in discursive contexts implies its use here was not a neutral choice. The current problems in the project are poetically called bù héxié y¯ınfú 不和谐音符, unharmonious notes. The negation echoes the conception of the ideal Chinese society as a harmonious society héxié shèhuì 和谐社会, introduced as a sociopolitical concept by Hu Jintao around 2002.55 Guo (2004: 20) notes that societal harmony is a concept emphasized more often in cultural nationalist theorization, but that it is often accommodated into state nationalist discourse. Zhao and Baldauf (2008: 168) indeed note that the popularization of putˇ onghuà¯ (as a grammatical and pronunciation standard) is "perhaps has been the least successful aspect in the modernization of the Chinese language, and the nation-wide popularity of putonghua by 2050 is only an optimistic goal." A 2014 study conducted by the Ministry of Education concluded that about 70% of the population spoke putˇ onghuà¯ , but only 10% was able to speak it fluently.56 The misuse of traditional characters has also been rising since the 1980’s. Between 1992 and 1995, in Beijˇ ¯ıng alone, shopkeepers and business owners replaced 40,000 traditional characters on shop names and signs with simplified characters, often at great cost, on penalty of paying large fines.57 The introduction of the 2001 language law and its clear directives on where traditional characters are and are not permitted has dampened the phenomenon somewhat, but traditional

55 Chan 2009: 821. 56 Ministry of Education 2014. 57 Guo 2004: 104.

27 characters are seeing greater and greater use in informal situations in China, not least due to increased contact with traditional character-using areas like Taiwan in the last thirty years. Paragraph three lays out the ‘pattern’ of language planning:

营造良好的语言文字环境，是各级政府义不容辞的责任。当前，语言文字工作的格局是以城市为中心，以学校为基础，以党政机关为龙头，以广播电视和新闻出版为榜样，以公共服务行业为窗口，带动全社会普及普通话和实现语言文字规范化。各级政府要明确语言文字工作的法治意识，切实担负起推广普通话、推行规范汉字的社会责任，[. . . ]熟练掌握并自觉使用国家通用语言文字是国家公务员素质现代化的一个标志，国家公务员特别是领导干部要自觉做到说普通话，用规范字，发挥语言文字规范化的龙头作用。

To build a favorable language and script environment is the responsibility of all levels of government. In current times, the pattern of language and script work is as such: the city at the center, the schools at the foundation, the Party and its organizations at the head, broadcast television and news publications as the example, and the public service industry as the inter- mediary; so that the entire society may be driven to popularize putˇ onghuà¯ and to realize the implementation of language and script standardization. All levels of government must make explicit their awareness of the lawful character of language and script work; and earnestly undertake the societal task of popularizing putˇ onghuà¯ and implementing standard characters. [. . . ] Skillfully grasping and consciously using the national common language and script is the mark of the modernization of the essence of the nation’s functionaries. The nation’s functionaries especially [are those who] lead the ofﬁcials towards consciously speaking putˇ onghuà¯ , using standard characters, and displaying the spearhead activities of language and script modernization.

In this paragraph, language planning, the duty of government, is expanded to en- compass all levels of society. All individuals connected with the state apparatus, including the education and media sectors, are called to work towards the completion of the great task ahead. The schools are posited as the foundation of the spreading of standard language and script, and the media industry as the model. This is not surprising: language planning activity is frequently a function of the education and media system. Kaplan and Baldauf (1997: 122-123) tentatively deﬁne a ‘standard’ language as a "set of widely accepted communal solutions to discourse problems" that additionally serves as a potent symbol

28 of national unity. This may be said of putˇ onghuà¯ , which serves as a lingua franca in many regions of China — a language used to communicate across topolect boundaries. According to Kaplan and Baldauf, however, the standard language is also an ideological construct that may suggest a level of political and economic unity that does not correspond to actual fact. We can look at character standardization from the same perspective. In that case, the spreading of ‘correct’ characters and character use through schools and the media corresponds to the spreading of an artificial ideal, much different from the situation in reality. However, while topographical variation in character orthography is a well-described phenomenon,58 it would be disingenuous to claim that standardized characters are an ideological construct. In modern times, computers and cellphones are the primary mediums of character input and display, and these technolo- gies inherently guide script users towards a given standard. Regarding hànzì education, proposals to introduce traditional characters into the school curriculum are increasingly common, with both academic and political voices arguing for the benefits of such a program. Wáng Xuelíngˇ 王雪玲 (2010) is an example of the former; he suggest that colleges and universities should promote the study of traditional characters in non-compulsive programs. For the latter, in March 2008, twenty- one members of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference put forward a proposal to introduce traditional characters into the primary school curriculum, on the grounds that "fántˇızì are the basis of Chinese culture. To know fántˇızì is to know the origins of Chinese characters and to know the origins of Chinese culture. The simplification of hànzì is a manifestation of progress, but at the same time it brought about a kind of division in Chinese culture." (I will discuss this kind of argument specifically later.) To heal this divide, fántˇızì would be taught in a separate compulsory course, or taught in the same classes as jiantˇ ˇızì. The initiative was shot down by the Minister of Education, Zhou¯ Jì 周济, who replied that "our nation has certain fundamental policies, namely that we must simplified characters and spread the use of putˇ onghuà¯ . This is a fundamental requirement. Therefore, I think we must strive towards this direction."59 Zhou’s¯ assertion found confirmation in a set of new directives for education reform published on July 30, 2010. The Outline of the National Long-Term Education Reform and Development Plan identifies key focus areas for reforming the Chinese education system, and makes no mention whatsoever of traditional characters. Chinese characters are referenced to only once, in section 8, To consolidate and raise the level of the nine- year compulsory education program, the thrust of which is that China’s compulsory education should adhere to strict standards. One of the goals is "to vigorously spread the teaching of putˇ onghuà¯ , and to use standard Chinese characters" (大力推广普通话

58 See for instance Bökset (2006) for a discussion of modern-day variation in handwriting. 59 http://education.news.cn/2008-03/15/content_7792926.htm

29 教学，使用规范汉字).60 The editorial’s injunction for state functionaries to lead by example becomes problematic when considering China’s rich tradition of calligraphy, specifically the art of tící 题词. This is a form of calligraphy where the names of schools, universities and government institutions, newspapers and magazines, railway stations and tourist spots are handwritten by political leaders, artists or other well-known figures, and proudly displayed. Under the 2001 language law, calligraphy is exempt from the regulations that forbid the use of variant and traditional characters, but their use in tící by high- ranking party members remains controversial.61 Tící are ubiquitous in the public language space, and therefore a prime medium for officials to propagate concepts of proper character use. The tenacity of traditional characters in this arena reflects their prestige value in Chinese society, which language planners rarely acknowledge, and the complexity of current attitudes towards the traditional legacy. The editorial’s final paragraph unambiguously iterates the Rénmín Rìbào’s support of the language planning program:

50年前，本报曾发表《为促进汉字改革、推广普通话、实现汉语规范化而努力》的社论，为推广普通话和语言文字规范化鼓与呼。今天，本报仍将一如既往，与全国人民一道，为推广普通话和社会用字规范化继续努力。

Fifty years ago, this newspaper published the editorial entitled "To strive for promotion of hànzì reform, for the popularization of putˇ onghuà¯ , and for the realization of the standardization of hànyuˇ", in order to encourage the popularization of putˇ onghuà¯ and the standardization of language and script. Today, this newspaper will still, just as in the past, together with the people of the whole nation, continue to strive for the popularization of putˇ onghuà¯ and the standardization of society’s use of characters.

Repetition is a staple of Chinese state rhetoric, and it is used here to great effect. Throughout the editorial, consistency through time has been emphasized; the Chinese government’s language reform program forms as unbroken line from the 50’s down to the present. This is stressed once more by the mention on an editorial published in 1956. The unity of the Chinese people in this endeavor is underlined with the phrase 与全国人民一道 — the meaning ‘together’ is encoded in 一道, ‘on a single path.’ In reality, the dominant paradigm of script planning policy changed signiﬁcantly in the 1980’s.

A second class of articles with interesting discursive content found in the Rénmín Rìbào is the opinion piece. In the next section, I look at two examples in detail, and discuss themes mentioned in each one. 60 国家中长期教育改革和发展规划纲要（2010—2020年）, 2010.07.30, p. 13, accessed 23 June. 61 Zhao and Baldauf 2008: 227-229.

30 4.2 Arguments for a re-evaluation of traditional characters

Nowhere in the world are history, culture and script so deeply intertwined as in China. Throughout Chinese history, hànzì have been imbued with mystical or sacred properties. The origins of Chinese characters, used to divine prophecies on oracle bones, and the way that scholar-officials shrouded written documents in mysticism, created a certain impression among the general population. Hànzì were "imbued with magical, mystical quality and power, and hence are objects of reverence"; writing became "sacred and inviolable in the popular mind".62 Zhao and Baldauf (2008: 34) note that, "until recently, old people would say ‘pay respect to your characters and paper’ (jing xi zi zhi - 敬惜字纸) when they saw children throwing away paper with hanzi on it." In the secular circles of political and popular discourse, the role of the script as a carrier of culture down the generations is frequently emphasized. The term most commonly used is chuánchéng 传承: to pass on to future generations; a continued tradition; to inherit. It is frequently used in the context of culture and traditions. As I have discussed before, the cultural nationalist stream of thought, resurgent in modern times, stresses exactly the role of the script, not only as a carrier of culture, but as an inalienable element of it. In this section, I will examine two article that particularly illustrate the cultural nationalist mode of thinking about the Chinese script, traditional characters, and character simplification. The first was written by the celebrated linguist Zhou¯ Youguˇ ang¯ 周有光 in 2009; the other is an opinion piece by politician Wáng Wèizhèng 王为政 in 2004, and it contains Wáng’s proposal to re-introduce a number of traditional characters.

"Jianhuà"ˇ yuˇ "j¯ınyì" zh¯ı biàn

This article was written by the celebrated linguist Zhou¯ Youguˇ ang¯ on April 6, 2009, at age 104. It is titled "Jianhuà"ˇ yuˇ "j¯ınyì" zh¯ı biàn “简化”与“今译”之辩 (The difference between "simplified character versions" and "modern translations"). It was published on page 8, the last page of that day’s edition. It consists of three parts: the first is an account of an article written by Jì Xiànlín 季羡林, an influential linguist particularly active in the area of Chinese cultural studies. The account was given to Zhou¯ by his friend, Su¯ Péichéng 苏培成, who was the head of the Association of Chinese Language Modernization at the time.63 In his piece, Jì lays out four arguments

62 Zhao and Baldauf 2008: 33-44. 63 Zhongguó¯ yuwénˇ xiàndàihuà xuéhuì 中国语文现代化学会, a body charged by the Ministry of Edu- cation and the National Committee for Language and Script Work to further language reform, with a

31 in defense of traditional Chinese culture and his disapproval of character simplification. In the second part, Zhou¯ gives Su¯ Péichéng’s rebuttal to Jì. The third part is an interview between Zhou¯ and a reporter from an unnamed magazine around the same issues. Zhou¯ defends the simplification, the move from zhùy¯ın fúhào 注音符号 to p¯ıny¯ın, and the translation of classical texts into báihuà. Jì Xiànlín was born in 1911 in Shandong province. He is celebrated as a pale- ographer, linguist and translator, whose greatest achievement was a translation of the Ramayana in Chinese. He has been a professor and deputy president of Beijing Uni- versity, and the recipient of a lifetime achievement award by the government of China in 2006.64In his old age, he has been called a national treasure (guóbaoˇ 国宝) and a guóxué master (guóxué dàsh¯ı 国学大师);65 by then he had acquired a reputation as a symbol of intellectual integrity. His portrait on china.org.cn emphasizes his scholarly humility and unabashed patriotism: "Ji Xianlin is a firm and faithful patriot who show enormous love for the magnificent mountains and rivers, the long history, and rich culture of his motherland. He once said, "Even when I am burned down to ashes, my love for China will not change.".66 Jì died on July 11, 2009, at age 97. Jì has written for the Rénmín Rìbào thirty-seven times from 1956 to 2005. His con- tributions mostly consist of opinion pieces about topics in Chinese culture and personal columns. Only one of his articles mentions the Chinese script; it is a digression on the state of Chinese calligraphy.67 It does not mention the simplification. Zhou¯ Youguˇ ang¯ brings up Jì’s opinions on the subject of script reform in a copy of an interview between Jì and an reporter for an unnamed magazine:

“昨天下午，去301医院看望季羡林先生，老人精神健旺，妙语连珠，在谈及国学普及时，他说了一番意见：（一）中华文明之所以能延续至今，汉字起了巨大的作用，读古文必须读繁体字，中国文化的信息都在那里面。（二）汉字简化及拼音化是歧途，祖先用了几千年都没有感到不方便，为何到我们手里就抛弃了？追求效率不是简化字的理由。季先生着重谈到当年简化汉字时，把‘皇后’ 的‘后’与以后的‘后’（繁体字“後”）弄成一个字所带来的遗憾。（三）古文今译是毁灭中华文化的方式，必须读原文，加注释即可。（四）振兴国学，必须从娃娃抓起。老人特别指出，给成人讲的国学与给娃娃讲的应该不同，得用心思编教材。” particular emphasis on developing standards for the use of . Zhao & Baldauf 2008: 329. 64 Cui 2009. 65 Martinsen 2009. Guóxué denotes knowledge or study of the national culture; in imperial times, it referred to the study of the Classics in particular. 66 Ji Xianlin: A Gentle Academic Giant. china.org.cn is the authorized portal site to China, published under the auspices of the State Council Information Ofﬁce. The article in question can be found at http://www.china.org.cn/english/NM-e/139052.htm 67 Shuf¯ aˇ wénhuà yuˇ xuézhˇeyanjièˇ 书法文化与学者眼界 [Calligraphy culture and the scope of the scholar’s knowledge]. April 14, 2002.

32 Yesterday afternoon, I went to Hospital 301 to visit mr. Ji Xianli; the old man’s health mind was strong, and clever speech linked like pearls from his mouth. When I mentioned the spread of Chinese national culture, he pronounced a few opinions: (1) Chinese civilization has lasted this long thanks to the use of Chinese characters. To read the Classics, one must be able to read traditional characters; all of Chinese culture is contained in those works. (2) The simplification of characters and phoneticization through pinyin are a wrong turn in the road. Our ancestors used them for thousands of years and never experienced any inconvenience. Now that this [heritage] has come into our hands, why would we drop it? Stubbornly pursuing efficiency is not a good justification for character simplification. Mr. Ji stressed the feeling of regret that a character change could bring about - such as when, after the simplification, the 后 as in ‘queen’ and the 後 as in ‘after’ were both written as 后. (3) Modern translations of the Classics will destroy Chinese culture. One must read the original texts, with the help of annotations. (4) To revitalize the national culture, we must start with the children. As the old man pointed out, we explain national culture differently to adults and to children, by necessity. We must shape the material based on the mind that hears it.

Simplification as a danger to Chinese culture. Jì’s first point brings up a crucial argument in the traditional vs. simplified debate: that ancient texts68 encode the essence of Chinese culture; that it is a defining characteristic of these texts that they are written in traditional characters; therefore, if one cannot read traditional, one cannot read these texts; and since nowadays, knowledge of traditional characters is rare, the damage Chi- nese culture is bound to be irrevocable. This issue is tied up with Jì’s third argument, that modern translations into putˇ onghuà¯ of ancient texts are a danger to Chinese culture. In this discourse, the content and the medium (language and script) of the Classics are two halves of an inviolable whole. A more elaborate version of this argument is brought forward in the article by Wáng Wèizhèng; I will discuss it in more detail then.

The pursuit of efficiency. The second argument brings up two interesting items. First is an admonition that the reckless pursuit of efficiency is not a good justification for the simplification effort. The ‘pursuit of efficiency’ refers to script reformer’s over- emphasis on stroke reduction as a method of simplification. Of all criticisms leveled at the simplification effort, this is the one given the most credit by both Chinese and Western parties.69 Zhao and Baldauf (2008: 75-90) analyze this ‘oversimplification’

68 Chief among them the Confucian canon encoded in the Classics. 69 Among these Gao¯ 2002 and Zhou¯ 1992.

33 as one in a suit of related criticisms, which ultimately point to a lack of foresight and systems view on the part of script reformers. First is that the replacement of hànzì components by simpler ones was often inconsistent. For instance, the right component of 練 was replaced by a simplified version in some characters (练) but not in others (瀾 became 澜). Many such cases would require reconsideration. Secondly, there is what is usually called the cháng-effect: when the structural simplification of a character is at odds with writing habits inherited from calligraphic principles, errors arise. The character 长 lends its name to the phenomenon. It is a four-stroke character, but many adult Chinese find it more comfortable to write as a five-stroke character - the addition is a small stroke in the bottom half, as in the traditional 長. Arguably, this kind of difficulty will fade as a greater part of the population is educated in the principles of simplified characters. Still it is a valid criticism to say that in some cases script reformers have been overzealous in the ‘pursuit of efficiency’: the simplification of 长 would be no less effective with a stroke added for ease of writing.

Ambiguous character mergers. Secondly, Jì talks about the merger of 后 and 後. During the simplification, a great number of traditional characters were merged into a single simplified form. This happened when both characters shared their pronunciation, but were different enough in meaning that there could be no ambiguity. Mergers make converting a text from simplified to traditional characters problematic - for humans, but especially for software. Wáng makes a more interesting case, and I will return to this subject. The ‘feeling of regret’ that Jì stresses (according to the interviewer) is interesting, in that it shows the emotional connection he, and many who think along the same line, experiences towards character reform.

The emotional content ascribed to hànzì is the core of another criticism of the sim- pliﬁcation program: that it eliminated some semantic or symbolic content in the graphic shape of the characters. The most common example is that of ài 爱|愛 (’love’). After the simpliﬁcation, 愛 lost its element 心 (heart) - prompting the question, how can there be love without the heart?70 The question sounds quite innocent, but it was very polit- ically charged during the turbulent years of communist rule. That the heart component was replaced by 友 (comradeship) was seen as a sign that the communist party did not value love, only comradeship.71 Bökset (2006: 41) notes that the contracted form, in which 心 is realized as 一, has been in use for at least 1,400 years. Another example, brought up in a March 2011 article in the J¯ınghuá Shíbào 京华时报,72 is that of q¯ın 亲|親 (’closeness, affection, family’) which lost its element jiàn 見 (’to see’). Accord-

70 This while the head, not the heart, is traditionally the seat of passion. 71 In modern times, some cynics say this simpliﬁcation is quite ﬁtting, since there is no more honest love to be found in society. Zhao and Baldauf 2008: 85. 72 Guo¯ Feng¯ 郭锋 2011.

34 ing to the article, a web user remarked "不能相见，怎能相亲" — if you cannot see each other, how can you grow attached to each other?73 Semantically sensitive alterations like this can also be constructive, as shown by the complex history of the character guó 国|國, which has 41 variant forms. 國 is said to be composed of 口, four borders + 戈, weapon + a smaller 口, population. A simpliﬁed version consisting of 口 with 王 (king) inside was included in the 1935 scheme, but a dot was added in the 1956 scheme to form 玉 (jade), as it was felt it wasn’t appropriate for a socialist nation to contain a king - and besides, jade was traditionally associated with ﬁne virtues and beautiful nature.74 Some meaning is lost in the transition, but new meaning is created at the same time.

Jì’s arguments perfectly echo the basic creed of modern cultural nationalism as de- ﬁned by Guo (2004: 93): the objective is "not only to put an end to latinization, but also to ensure that ordinary Chinese will be able to read classical texts and access the char- ter of China’s cultural history embedded in the treasury of its traditional language."75 These arguments are by no means new. This paragraph from Zhao and Baldauf (2008: 36) describes the position of those protesting the Republican government’s introduction of the 1935 simpliﬁcation scheme:

[The conservatives,] while accusing [the] reform proponents of being igno- rant of their own history and of forgetting their origins, praised themselves as defenders of orthodoxy, and in accord with national sentiment having an enthusiastic affectation toward the traditional heritage. Their typical accusation was that the simpliﬁers deliberately cut off the multi-millenial lifeline of nationhood, which is bound to lead to the undermining of the vi- tality of the cultural heritage, and as such, will bring calamity to the country and the people.

In the article, Zhou¯ Youguˇ ang¯ then summarizes a piece written by Su¯ Péichéng that is essentially a rebuttal of Jì’s arguments.

苏培成先生信中说他写了一篇《汉字简化是误入歧途吗？》，文稿要点如下：一、甲骨文中就有繁简之别。东汉《章帝千字文断简》中有“汉”字；居延汉简和敦煌汉简中有“书”字。简化字极大多数开始使用于古代，书法家如王羲之经常写简化字。延续文化的功劳，简化字和繁体字大家有份。二、《大学》开头说：知止而后有定，定而后能静，静而后能安，安而后能虑，虑而后能得。一连用了五个简化的“后”字，《大学》没有“遗憾”。三、简化字容易

73 Embedding selected web users’ comments in news articles is quite common in Chinese media. 74 Zhao and Baldauf 2008: 83. On the same page, they discuss a few other historical forms of 国. 75 Guo 2004: 92.

35 学，容易用，这是事实。季先生的一句话不能改变事实。四、季先生反对“今译”，认为读古文必须读“原文”。《论语》的“原文 ”是用战国“古文”写成的，谁能阅读？为了方便阅读，后代改写成小篆、隶书、楷书。

Su¯ Péichéng’s letter mentioned that he had written an piece called "Is character simplification a step astray?" The main points of the article are as such: (1) The difference between traditional and simplified characters is already evident in oracle bone inscriptions. The Eastern Hàn text 《章帝千字文断简》 already contains the character 汉; the Juyán¯ and Dunhuáng¯ bamboo texts contain the character 书. The great majority of simplified characters were used in ancient times. Calligraphers like Wáng X¯ızh¯ı used them all the time. Simplified and traditional characters both played a part in the transmission of culture. (2) The Dà Xué begins: 知止而后有定，定而后能静，静而后能安，安而后能虑，虑而后能得。 No less than five simplified characters 后 in a row, yet there is nothing to ‘regret’ about this text. (3) Simplified characters are easy to learn and easy to use, and that is a fact. What Mr. Jì says cannot change that fact. (4) Mr. Jì protests against modern translations, and believes that the classics must be read in the original version. But the original text of the Analects was written in Warring States-era language, and who could possibly read that? Later generations edited the text in small seal script, clerical script, and then regular script - all to make it more convenient to read.

Jì Xianlín’s¯ argument, which is typical of a certain segment of cultural nationalist thinkers, posits that there exists a cultural fault line in Chinese society that endangers or inhibits the passing on of Chinese traditions, values and identity. This fault line is dated to the period of social upheaval in the early 20th century, and particularly to the introduction of simplified characters as a written standard. This line of thought is stretched further when simplified characters are typified as belonging exclusively to the modern era, and traditional characters to the ancient. This categorization forms an important part of cultural nationalist discourse, but it is entirely artificial. It is clear to anyone who studies ancient texts that no such delineation exists. As we have seen before, the Committee for Research on Script Reform, which took up the task of simplification in 1952, demonstrated a more creative attitude regarding original simplified forms than the Republicans in 1935. Nevertheless, the great majority of characters in the 1956 scheme were already in use for a long time. Based on a study of the historical variant forms of 123 of the 515 simplified characters adopted in 1956, Bökset (2006: 181) concludes that about 8% of simplified characters introduced

36 at that time were original creations of the committee.76 Su¯ demonstrates this quite conclusively with his examples in points one and two.

Hànzì jianhuà,ˇ kefˇ ouˇ "hòutuì" bàn bù?

The other article I will discuss is an opinion piece (zhèngyán 诤言) written by Wáng Wèizhèng 王为政, entitled Hànzì jianhuà,ˇ kˇefouˇ "hòutuì" bàn bù? 汉字简化，可否 “后退”半步？ (In character simplification, should we take a step back?). It was published on July 30th, 2004, on page 13 (out of 16) of the newspaper. Wáng, a politician, served as committee member in the 8th, 9th and 10th Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conferences (CPPCC), and as a representative at the 11th National Peo- ple’s Congress (NPC). He is also a painter and a calligrapher, a professor at the Beijing Fine Art Academy,77 and a member of several fine arts clubs and committees.78 He was born in 1944 in Jiangs¯ u¯ 江苏 province, and was 60 years old at the time the article was published. We may note that Jì Xianlín’s¯ was 45 years old at the time of the 1956 simplification, and his attachment to traditional characters can be partially under- stood as a consequence of the fact that he had been taught entirely in fántˇızì. Wáng was 12 in 1956, and would have been in constant contact with simplified characters for a significant part of his school-going life. In the article, Wáng discusses some problems with the simplification effort: the danger it represents to Chinese culture, the problem of character mergers, and the fact that traditional characters are still widespread in Chinese society. This leads up to a proposal to selectively re-introduce a number of traditional characters. In the first part of the article, Wáng points out some problems with character simplification, which overlap with Jì’s arguments seen previously. His first argument is a stronger take on the relationship between Chinese culture and traditional characters: 五六十年代我们提出的口号是“识繁写简”，但随着岁月的推移，很多40岁以下的人都不熟悉繁体字了。再过几十年，承载着丰富、悠久民族文化的珍贵古籍很可能成为难以解读的古董。这一损失将是不可估量的。到那时，若再培养传统文化的专门研究人才，就要先教授繁体字，其难度不亚于学习外文。

In the ﬁfties and sixties we put forward the slogan ‘know traditional characters, write simpliﬁed characters’. But time has passed, and now a lot of peo-

76 Estimates by the committee members themselves varied from 0.2% to 17%. Bökset (2006: 175-178) provides a chart of all characters examined, with the years of their earliest manifestations, split along methods of simplification. He finds that in some cases, it is possible to guess the age of a simplification by looking at its form. 77 The Bˇeij¯ıng Huàyuán 北京画院. 78 According to http://baike.baidu.com/view/202966.htm and Wáng’s official website, http: //artist.96hq.com/wangweizheng_2385/, retreived July 20th.

37 ple under 40 aren’t familiar with traditional characters. In a few decades, those precious volumes that carry our rich and storied national culture may very well be nothing but incomprehensible antiques. The severity of this loss cannot be underestimated. At that point, researchers who would once more foster traditional culture would have to learn traditional characters ﬁrst - and this task would be no less difﬁcult than learning a foreign language.

Both Wáng and Jì underestimate the difficulties a reader only familiar with simplified characters would have to learn traditional. Of the roughly 2200 simplified characters included in the latest standards list, the majority are derived predictably, as their components include characters simplified previously. Only about 500 characters are derived unpredictably, and many simplifications in this category are rational and quite easy to remember. Certainly, there is some work involved, but the task is nowhere near as momentous as learning a foreign language, as Wang says. In fact, knowledge of traditional characters in China is not restricted to the older generation. Young Chinese are introduced to traditional characters through signs and inscriptions, reprinted books of all kinds, and illegally downloaded films with Taiwan- made subtitles. Many Chinese are generally familiar with the traditional script through this kind of long-term exposure, even tough they might not be able to write the characters.79 Wáng acknowledges this: 另外，在简体字处于合法地位的今天，繁体字也并未完全退出历史舞台。在影视、出版、书法艺术中，在港澳台和海外华侨华人的书报及日常生活中，繁体字仍在使用。

Furthermore, even with the current legal status of simpliﬁed characters, traditional characters have not entirely left the stage of history. Traditional characters still see use in television, print, and calligraphy; and in the daily lives and the print of people from Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and of the overseas Chinese population.

Many students and academics in particular are able to use both systems with little difficulty, given the large amount of scholarly literature produced in traditional characters, e.g. in Taiwan. In addition, technological aids like smartphone dictionaries have made the process of finding any character’s simplified or traditional equivalent relatively painless. In Taiwan, in fact, bi-literacy — the ability to read both scripts — is increasingly common in the student population. Being able to read simplified characters is considered a boon for one’s academic and professional life; the Mainland’s rising economic position in Asia makes learning to use jiantˇ ˇızì an attractive proposition.80

79 Churchman 2011. 80 Wú Yàmíng 2005.

38 Transcribing text from one system to the other is difficult to automate. In many cases, multiple traditional characters were merged into one during the simplification, and in a handful of cases one traditional character was disambiguated into two simplified characters.81 Wáng illustrates this:

有人说，古籍也可以排印简体字版本。其实不然！古籍中有不少字因为使用频率低而退出了常用字库；另有不少字在简化过程中被转借、合并，现行简体字很难做到与繁体字一一对应，给古籍的翻译造成了难以逾越的障碍。[. . . ]例如，繁体字的“髮”与“發”在简化字中合并为一个“发”字。于是，在一些繁体字出版物和所谓的 “书法”作品中，出现了将“怒发冲冠”的“髮”写成“發”，将画家程十发写成“程十發”的荒唐事。其实，“程十发”写成繁体字应为“程十髮”[. . . ]这样的情况都是在汉字简化时“一对二”或者“一对几”造成的。当需要变简为繁时，就不知道选择哪个了。即使设计出一个包括所有繁体字的转换程序，电脑也很难识别该和哪个繁体字对应[. . . ]

Some say the classical texts can be published in simplified characters. This isn’t true! These texts contain a lot of characters that were excluded from the charts of common characters because they were used so rarely, and others that were borrowed or merged together during the simplification process, so that it is hard to establish a one-to-one correspondence between simplified and traditional characters. This forms an obstacle that is very difficult for the translator to overcome. [. . . ] For example, the classical characters 髮 [hair] and 發 [to send, to develop] were merged into the character 发 during the simplification. As a result, in a few publications in traditional characters and works of so-called "calligraphy", such preposter- ous things happen like the 髮 in 怒发冲冠 [hair standing up and tipping over one’s hat in anger] being written as 發, or the name of the painter Chéng Shífa¯ 程十发 being written as 程十發. In fact, 程十发 written in traditional characters must be 程十髮. [. . . ] These kind of situations are all brought about during the character simplification process by the phenomena of "one-for-two" or "on-for-many". When you must convert simplified to traditional, you do not know which one to choose. Even though the plan was for there to be one conversion procedure that included all traditional characters, even computers have a hard time finding the corresponding traditional characters. 81 For instance, the character mó 麼 was split into 麽, which retained its original pronunciation and meaning of tiny, insignificant, and me 么, used in compounds. There are fourteen such cases, and 192 cases of character mergers.

39 Something interesting that occurs in the alarmism of Wáng and Jì is that they tend to confound the use of traditional characters with the use of wényán, the old, highly styl- ized language of the Classics, which is difﬁcult for anyone without previous knowledge to read with any ﬂuency. Indeed, if we substitute ‘traditional characters’ with ‘wényán’ in Wáng and Jì’s texts, their argument becomes more sensible, but also quite trivial: if people are not able to read wényán, then they will not be able to read texts in wényán. Wáng ends his article with a proposal to re-examine these type of mergers:

我认为，解决这个问题只有一法，就是“后退”半步，即：把一对二、一对几的简化字全面排查一下，适当恢复一些繁体字，使简繁转化时能够做到对号入座，避免混乱。这种“后退”并非“全面 ”倒退，因为真正需要恢复的繁体字，在汉字的总量中所占比例很小，不会影响到群众的接受。

I think there is only one way to resolve this problem, and that is to ‘take a step back’, namely: to comprehensively inspect these one-for-two and one-for-many simplified characters, and to reinstate a few traditional characters where appropriate, so that during the conversion from simplified to traditional characters, it becomes possible to put them all in their proper place and to avoid chaos. This kind of ‘step back’ is really not a ‘total’ turn-around, because those traditional characters that genuinely need to be reinstated form a small part of the total amount of hànzì. It will not influence the acceptance [of the reforms] among the masses.

Such proposals are not at all unique. Wáng’s proposal is mild, and only proposes the re-introduction of characters when it is pragmatically justiﬁed to do so. Other proposals are more radical. A report published in the Rénmín Rìbào by Hé Mínjié 何民捷 on April 9, 2009, mentions such a case: a proposal by Pan¯ Qìnglín, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. The proposal was delivered at the occasion of the 5th Forum for National Culture, held by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences82 The main subject of the conference was simpliﬁed and traditional Chinese characters (jianhuàzìˇ yuˇ fántˇızì 简化字与繁体字); its intention was to invite expert speakers to address questions and doubts about the status of hànzì in society.83 The relevant passage:

“简化汉字太粗糙，违背了汉字的艺术和科学性。比如爱字，繁体字里有个‘心’，简化后，造成‘无心之爱’。”不久前召开的两 82 Zhongguó¯ zhèhuìkexué¯ xuéyuàn 中国社会科学院. 83 The report is titled Youˇ rén jiànyì hu¯ıfú fántˇı, youˇ rén rènwéi yìng jìn y¯ı bù jianhuà.ˇ Hànzì gai¯ fanˇ háishì jian?ˇ 有人建议恢复繁体，有人认为应进一步简化汉字该繁还是简？ (Some suggest we reinstate the traditional forms, other think we should go forward with simpliﬁcation. Must Chinese characters be made more complex or simpler?). It appeared on page 11 of 16, in the Culture News section (文化新闻), under the header of Perspective on Culture (文化观察).

40 会上，全国政协委员潘庆林在接受记者采访时说，他建议用10年左右的时间恢复使用繁体字。

"Simplified characters are too crude. They violate the artistic and scientific character of hànzì. Take the character 爱 [ài, love], for example; in the traditional form there is a 心 [x¯ın, heart]. After the simplification, there arose this ‘love without heart’." At the opening of the lianghuìˇ 84 not long ago, national CPPCC committee member Pan¯ Qìnglín said during an interview that he proposed to reinstate the use of traditional characters within a period of about ten years.

Pan¯ Qìnglín’s proposal became a short-lived cause célèbre after it was widely publicized in the media. Reactions from online commentators were extreme; his ideas were branded as frivolous or even reactionary, as webizens argued that if China should abolish simplified characters, then why not abolish modern clothing and go back to wearing imperial-style gowns? We may note that Jì Xianlín¯ is cited as a supporter of Pan’s¯ plan, along with other personalities from artistic and literary circles.85 Pan’s¯ argument was threefold: first, simplified characters lack the beauty and scientific character of their traditional counterparts; second, writing traditional characters is technically effort- less, given modern computer input methods; third, re-introducing traditional characters would do much toward the eventual re-unification of Mainland China and Taiwan.86 Pan’s¯ most interesting argument is that modern technology has made the difference between the simplified and traditional scripts essentially irrelevant. There is certainly truth in that; hànzì is no longer a primarily handwritten medium. The overwhelming majority of Chinese type using P¯ıny¯ın-based input methods, meaning that writing has become a matter of typing the pronunciation of a word and passively recognizing the appropriate characters out of a list. Mechanically, there is no difference between typing in the simplified or the traditional script. The argument does not stand by itself, but it attempts to show that switching back to traditional characters today would not change user’s experience of the script in any major way - if one chooses only to focus on typing skills, and not reading or hand-writing skills. The issue of typing out characters on an alphabetic keyboard is not only the source of much technical discussion, but also of wider societal changes.87 Character amnesia, known in Chinese as tíbˇı wàngzì 提笔忘字 (’pick up the pen, forget the character’) is a phenomenon whereby experienced writers of Chinese forget how to write characters,

84 The lianghuìˇ is the common appellation for the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, which occur simultaneously. 85 Zhang 2009 86 Zhang 2009 87 Rebecca Shuang Fu (2012) discusses the pros and cons of different character input schemes, in particular the complex wubˇ ˇı 五笔 system, in which characters are types stroke per stroke.

41 Figure 8: Part of the Chinese-language periodic table.89

even basic ones, after years of almost exclusively using p¯ıny¯ın input methods. Character amnesia is not a recent phenomenon, but it has become increasingly noticeable in the past decade, and it regularly turns up as an issue in Chinese media.88

5 Current efforts and prospects in Chinese script planning

Technological pressures on the hànzì system

One major characteristic of the hànzì system is its lack of stability. As we have seen before, the leading forces in the development of the character script through history are the twin processes of convergence and differentiation. Differentiation is mostly an organic process, as the number of character forms and meanings grows under the hands of individual writers. Convergence refers to the pruning of variant forms and the ﬁxing of stroke orders and meanings in order to facilitate administration and increase the ruling dynasty’s prestige. The process is typically organized by some controlling authority, and any resulting stability tends to be temporary. The process of differentiation did not stop during China’s modernization in the 20th century. The number of hànzì in existence is famously open-ended. Variant characters

88 DeFrancis (2006) discusses a number of instances in contemporary China where the latin alphabet and Chinese characters clashed, including the intensely controversial case of a father who wanted to name his son 胡D. The request was denied, and the man’s struggle entered Chinese social media as an example of a lone individual protesting the authority of the monolithic state.

42 emerged in all periods of Chinese history, including today. An example of unofficial character construction is a compounded form of shèhuìzhuyìˇ 社会主义, written with the radical of the first characters, 礻, and 义. More significantly, Chinese characters for the chemical elements were invented (if none existed previously) during the 20th century by combining one of four radicals with a semantic or phonetic element.90 In addition, digital technology has allowed for new forms of character variation to emerge in the form of Internet slangs or in order to evade forms of censorship through automatic character recognition systems. This is done by substituting characters by their p¯ıny¯ın notation or the first letter of it, or by other similar-sounding characters.91 The notion of standardized hànzì as a delineated set of graphically fixed characters had existed for a long time. Mechanical communication technology — the telegram and the typewriter — already called for a more consistent solution to the instability of the handwritten character script. The modernist élan of the May Fourth Movement was in large part an effort to address this, and in that way to "set the material and technological preconditions for importing and transforming foreign knowledge".92 The need for standard hànzì became especially pressing in the 1980’s, as computer technology entered China in earnest. The push for standardization instead of reform, formalized at the 1986 National Conference on Language Work, was very much driven by the necessities of the IT sector. The character system being famously ill-adapted for use in computer systems, and computer communications being vital to any nation’s presence in the world system, China would have to work fast at the national level to create industry standards for hànzì. To address this need, language planners at the 1986 National Conference for Lan- guage Work worked out an agenda summarized by the so-called Four Fixations (Sì Dìng 四定), aimed at fixing the four most problematic aspects of the character system: to set the number of characters in use, their physical shape, stroke order, and pronunciation.93 So far, the most important project undertaken in this direction is the Table of General Standard Characters (Tongy¯ ong¯ gu¯ıfàn hànzìbiaoˇ 通用规范汉字表).

90 The radicals indicate the element’s state at room temperature: j¯ın 钅 (gold, metal) for solid metals, shí 石 (stone) for solid non-metals, shuˇı 氵 (water) for liquids, and qì 气 (air) for gases. 91 chinaSMACK (http://www.chinasmack.com/glossary maintains a glossary of common Internet slang. Many items are constructed in this way. 91 Detail of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Periodic_table_zh-hans.svg 92 Tsu Jing 2014: 115. Tsu provides an intricate analysis of Chinese script reform as the interplay of technological pragmatism and cultural/modernist sensibilities in Chinese scripts, Codes, and Typewriting machines (2014). 93 Zhao and Baldauf 2008: 138.

43 The Table of General Standard Characters

Since 1956, the Chinese government had adapted the official list of simplified or standard characters several times, in addition to publishing specialized lists for industry use. As a consequence, until recently, the set of official characters approved for use was defined as the union of five different lists.94 To remedy this situation, the State Council launched the development of the Table of General Standard Characters in 2003. It was designed to be the "ultimate summary of the all [sic] standards and tables promulgated by the national language authorities about hanzi" and therefore represents "the most significant LP program ever developed for Chinese characters".95 A draft was released in August 2009, with a call for public input; the final version of the Table was released on June 5, 2013. The final list contains 8105 characters organized in three hierarchic tiers divided by usage frequency (from the formal announcement published on Rénmínwangˇ on August 19, 2013):96

《通用规范汉字表》共收字8105个，分为三级：一级字表为常用字集，收字3500个，主要满足基础教育和文化普及的基本用字需要。二级字表收字3000个，使用度仅次于一级字。一、二级字表合计6500字，主要满足出版印刷、辞书编纂和信息处理等方面的一般用字需要。三级字表收字1605个，是姓氏人名、地名、科学技术术语和中小学语文教材文言文用字中未进入一、二级字表的较通用的字，主要满足信息化时代与大众生活密切相关的专门领域的用字需要。

The Table of General Standard Characters includes 8015 characters in total, divided in three levels. The first-level character list comprises frequently used characters, and includes 3500 characters; it meets the requirements for basic character use in elementary education and the popularization of culture. The second-level list includes 3000 characters, whose degree of usage is lower than first-level characters. The first and second lists together comprise 6500 characters, and they principally meet the requirements for ordinary character use in publications and printing, dictionary compilation, information processing and other fields. The third-level list includes 1605

94 The 1986 General List of Simplified Characters; the 1955 First Table of Verified Variant Forms; the 1988 Table of Common Chinese Characters; the nine tables, released between 1955 and 1964, of Verified Rare Characters for Geographical Names above County Level; and the 1977 Announcement of Unified Characters for Some Names of Measurement Units. Zhao and Baldauf 2008: 258-259. 95 Zhao and Baldauf 2008: 175. 96 Guówùyuàn gongbù¯ "Tongy¯ ong¯ gu¯ıfàn hànzì biao"ˇ - gòng shou¯ zì 8105 ge 国务院公布《通用规范汉字表》共收字8105个 (2013).

44 characters; these are relatively common characters used in family and personal names, place names, scientific and technological terms and teaching material for classical Chinese in primary and middle schools, that were not included in the first and second-level lists. It meets the requirements for character use in the age of informatization and in specialized fields closely related to the lives of the masses.

At the time of its inception, public enthusiasm for the project were quite high. The list was expected to contain from 10,000 to 12,000 characters. The project’s emphasis on computer-friendliness suggested that a number of popular variant and traditional character would be reinstated, which would be a "groundbreaking challenge to the ideological taboos".97 Some voices even suggested structural changes to previously stable hànzì, to remove superﬂuous or meaningless strokes that did not contribute to the character’s distinctiveness - for example, the horizontal stroke above the 心 element of 德.98 In effect, this would be a continuation of the simpliﬁcation program. These proposals arose partly out of a concern for easy legibility on computer screens. As Hé indicates:

比如说，目前汉字在电脑上输入输出时的显示，都是运用点阵技术，即利用栅格的“点”，聚点成线。电脑栅格的数量有限，其最大限度只能容纳横画不超过8、竖画不超过7的字。像“量”、“鼻 ”、“膏”、“豪”等字，如果字体在5号以下，电脑显示时只好去除某些笔画，成为形似的“电脑字”，给生活带来不便。

For example, when demonstrating the input and display of hànzì on a computer, at the present time, it is all done by using dot matrix technology, i.e. by making use of ‘dots’ on a grid, and linking dots forms a line. The amount of space on a computer’s matrix grid [for a single character] is limited; at its utmost limit it can contain characters of no more than eight horizontal lines and seven vertical lines. For characters like 量, 鼻, 膏, 豪, and others, if font size is set below ﬁve points, there is no other option than to remove some strokes when the character is displayed on a computer screen; they all become similar-looking ‘computer characters’, and this makes life quite inconvenient.

In 2009, the State Council released a draft version of the Table, and a few of these expectations were fulﬁlled - though they still came as a surprise to many specialist analysts.99 Six traditional characters and ﬁfty-one discarded variants were re-instated

97 Zhao and Baldauf 2008: 176. 98 Bökset (2006: 115-116) notes that the version without the horizontal stroke was the one chosen by Lˇı S¯ı under the command of Qin Shi Huang as the standard. The version with the stroke became standard under the Song dynasty, but both versions continued to exist in handwriting until modern times. 99 Fishman & Garcia 2011: 176.

45 into the set of standard Chinese characters. After ‘rigorous screening’, 265 traditional characters were simpliﬁed by analogy100 but only if they were simpliﬁed ‘in accordance with the principles of characters already included, and if they saw extensive use in language practice in society.’101 Regarding the re-introduction of the six traditional characters — 剋, 锺, 蘋, 噁, 濛, and 硃 — Wáng Níng 王宁, deputy-director of the expert committee in charge of designing the Table, is quoted as saying it is in line with the principle of ‘necessary re-introduction’ (bìxu¯ hu¯ıfù 必须恢复): traditional characters are only re-introduced if there is a good demonstrated reason for it. He is further quoted:

“我们坚持国家语言文字政策中的简化政策，基本上不恢复繁体字。但有些字不恢复，会造成使用上的混乱。”王宁教授举例说，比如“硃”是科技用字，恰恰是繁体字，在化学成分上无法被替代；“锺”与“钟”是两个姓氏，属于两个不同家族；再如“蘋” 与“苹”长期混用不分，现在必须把“蘋”拿出来，因为这与环保有关，且在植物领域并不等同于“苹”。

"We persist in the simpliﬁcation policy of the national language and script planning program, and we basically do not reinstate traditional characters. But if certain characters are not reinstated, it will cause chaos in their usage." Professor Wáng gave the example of : it is a character used in the sciences, and [in that context] it is precisely the traditional character; in chemistry, it cannot be substituted. 锺 and 钟 are two family names and belong to two different families. 蘋 and 苹 have for a long time been used chaotically, without distinction; now 蘋 must be taken apart, because it is connected to environmental protection, and in the domain of botany it is not at all equal to 苹.102

Wáng mentions the re-disambiguation of 锺 and 钟. Among China’s limited reper- toire of characters used in family names, a number were graphical variations that were struck out of the hànzì system or merged into new simplified characters during the simplification efforts of the 50’s. Family names being a mark of personal identification par excellence, these changes became extremely controversial. An excellent example is that of Yè Gongch¯ ao¯ 葉公超, a member of the Coalition of Chinese Script Reform (responsible for designing the 1956 simplification scheme), whose surname was simplified to 叶. Yè grew quite upset, and refused to adopt the new surname; the case grew to great

100In characters simplified by analogy, a component is replaced by its simplified version when such that component was already simplified in another character. This partially resolves the problem of inconsistent simplification that has been previously discussed. 101国务院关于公布《通用规范汉字表》的通知. http://www.gov.cn/zwgk/2013-08/19/ content_2469793.htm. The full table is included in the page. 102Wáng Lè 2009.

46 controversy, and the decision to go ahead with this simpliﬁcation was eventually taken by Premier Zhou¯ Enlái¯ 周恩来.103 Many of the ﬁfty-one variant characters reinstated in the 2009 draft were surnames restored to use. Dong,ˇ in his article on the 2009 draft of the Table, stresses this aspect:

“氾”、“仝”、“谿”、“”、“甯”，这些字曾被视为“泛 ”、“同”、“溪”、“线”、“宁”的异体字或繁体字，但是很少有人知道，它们其实原本也是姓氏。出于对家族传统的尊重，在此次制定的《通用规范汉字表》中，这些汉字首次以姓氏用字的身份，被保留在三级字表中。

The characters 氾, 仝, 谿, , and 甯 were previously considered to be variants or traditional forms of the characters 泛, 同, 溪, 线, and 宁, but very few people know they were also originally family names. Out of respect for the traditions of these families, in this formulation of the Table of Gen- eral Standard Characters, these characters are retained in the third-level character list in their capacity as family names.

In addition, 44 characters were to receive minute structural modifications — they were designated weitiáo¯ zì 微调字: ‘fine-tuned’ or ‘trimmed’ characters. For instance, the upper left element 王 of the characters 琵, 琴, 琶, and 瑟 was changed so that its final stroke slanted upwards, as in the character 球. These are strokes that are rendered differently in different typefaces — in the one I use in this document, a form of kaitˇ ˇı 楷体, these strokes slant up, whereas in the sòng 宋 font family, they are regular horizontal strokes: 瑟, 琴, 琶, 瑟.104 With the publication of the 2009 draft came a call for discussion and critique from the public. A poll was taken on three major Internet portals in August 2009. 90.6 percent, 87.6 percent, and 98.6 percent of five million respondents voted against the modification of these weitiáo¯ zì. This overwhelming negative response put pressure on project leaders to temper further changes.105 In fact, the changes included in the final version of the Table, completed on June 5, 2013, take a step down from those included in the 2009 draft. The main differences are as follows:

• The number of new characters simpliﬁed by analogy was revised from 265 to 226.

• The number of variant characters reinstated was cut down from 51 to 45.

• The number of traditional characters reinstated was cut down from 6 to 4. 103Zhao and Baldauf 2008: 366. 104Dongˇ Hóngzhen¯ 2009. 105Fishman & Garcia 2011: 176.

47 • The 44 characters meant to be ﬁne-tuned for standard orthography across typefaces were not modiﬁed; printing practices remain the same as before.

The re-introduction of selected traditional characters, and particularly the fact that they are listed in parallel with their simplified equivalents for comparison, suggests that official attitudes towards traditional characters has softened somewhat since the estab- lishment of the 1986 status-quo. The language planning authorities have shown a willingness to re-evaluate traditional characters on pragmatic grounds. In terms of real changes, the Table is still "a relatively conservative document that is less ambitious than might have been expected in both its scale and magnitude"106 — particularly after downsizing the proposed 2009 changes. In addition, those changes that would have gained the most public support in their notoriety as examples of misguided simplification — such as 爱 for 愛, the merger of 髮 and 發 into 发, and the merger of 後 and 后 — were left untouched. Yet we may take these changes as evidence that underneath dogmatic official attitudes toward script planning, expressed in editorials and legisla- tion as a fixation on standard characters as an element of discourse, there is space for discussion on the nature and usage of traditional characters based on input from script users. The re-introduction of certain surnames shows the language planning sphere is not insensitive to public feelings.

106Fishman & García 2011: 176.

48 6 Conclusion

Recent events in Chinese script planning suggest script policy is going through a trans- formative period. The Table of General Standard Characters, released in 2013, tentatively shows a willingness on the part of language planners to re-introduce previously banned characters (variant and traditional) on the basis of pragmatic considerations. Outwardly, this change in attitude may seem at odds with the political rhetoric employed by policy makers (expressed in the Shuo¯ putˇ onghuà,¯ yòng gu¯ıfànzì editorial), which heavily emphasizes the ideological continuity between the language reform efforts of the 1950’s and those of contemporary times. However, we must bear in mind that this rhetoric is in fact based on the direction of language planning set in the 1986 National Conference on Language Work, brought about by the pressures of digital technology on the hànzì system. Standardization, not reform or simplification, is the keyword of modern script planning. In my opinion, it is precisely this paradigm shift that allowed new attitudes towards traditional characters to take shape after the 1980’s. Before the 1980’s, language and script reform was in no small part a political and ideological project, in which practical aspects were often left unconsidered. Modern criticisms against the simplification emphasize this. The urgent need to modernize the script in the context of computer technology changed this outlook, and the Four Fixations program was developed as a response to practical and immediate problems. Political rhetoric, however, has not entirely shed its ideological foundations, leading to a state of tension within Chinese script planning. Criticism of the simplification and proposals to re-evaluate abandoned characters are increasingly common, and cultural nationalist ideas regarding the role of traditional characters in Chinese culture have entered the mainstream. Many of these ideas and criticisms are felt to be quite valid within the script planning sphere, which at the same time must act within the boundaries laid down in official discourse. The focus on standardization instead of reform, however, has opened the possibility of looking at traditional characters from a user-based perspective. This allowed for the re-introduction of four traditional and forty-five banned variant characters in 2013, following the principle of ‘necessary re-introduction’ (bìxu¯ hu¯ıfù). Hopefully, these changes open the door for a more complete evaluation of people’s use of traditional characters in the future. A more user-centric and less politicized attitude towards script reform will benefit both users and language planners. However, top-level political rhetoric has not yet ac- knowledged the possibility of a broad re-evaluation of the traditional script and its place in society. Considering the focus on the re-discovery of Chinese identity in modern-day rhetoric, the pressures of a society where individuals’ opinions on these issues are heard

49 ever louder, and the Mainland’s increasingly warm relationship with Taiwan, it is my view that policy makers must adopt a clearer position on how to deal with the heritage of traditional characters. It is also necessary to address popular calls for the introduction of traditional characters in the school curriculum from an apolitical standpoint. Policy makers emphasize the need for standard characters to ‘avoid chaos’ and ‘maintain stability’, yet making no effort to integrate traditional characters in the construction of a Chinese identity may well turn out to be problematic.

50 7 Bibliography

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