He said he is the president of the Republic of China. He also heads the National Cultural Association of the Republic of China and “constantly” uses the Chinese language.

Ma also declared he has long been in love with the traditional system of writing Chinese that has been in use for more than 2,000 years.

All this has made him duty-bound to promote traditional script in China and across the world, President Ma told participants in a three-day international conference on Internet Chinese education in Taipei.

The reasons he gave are indefensibly lame at best.

Language is living. Moreover, it's spoken. Writing is just one form of language. And it changes, maybe not very much in the past but certainly a lot in the postwar world.

Fortunately, China had an emperor who unified the script, the Small Seal, before the dawn of the Christian era. In other nations, my goodness, hundreds of years were necessary to come to a near-consensus on how their languages should be written.

Moreover, the script is one bond that has helped maintain the world's oldest, continuous civilization.

Of course, Ma isn't the second coming of the first emperor of the Jin Dynasty, who his Democratic Progressive Party opponents constantly charge him with trying to be. They said Ma is forcing schoolchildren in Taiwan to learn the simplified script invented by Mao Zedong's linguists a half century ago.

It was Mao's idea to use the simplified writing system to boost China's literacy. It's easier to learn. China's literacy has been greatly raised, and China is considering revising its simplified script somewhat and reintroducing some “right-script” characters.

As a matter of fact, the reintroduction doesn't seem to be badly needed. Our computers can work wonders. You feed them with one script and, hey presto, out comes the other before you can say Jack Robinson. You just take the copy in the script you want.

Don't forget, at the same time, language is spoken. Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait can orally communicate with each other without little difficulty.

In other words, what President Ma wants to do unto the Chinese on the other side of the strait is truly a job of a busybody.

But Ma's speech was intended as a response to his opponents. There's no need for any response. Everybody knows

that every DPP leader is just talking through his or her hat.

On the other hand, Ma is attempting to turn Taiwan into the world's center of Sinology and Chinese studies. It's a Quixotic adventure.

He wants Taiwan to promote throughout the world “the Chinese culture with Taiwan characteristics,” according to a vice chairman of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission, organizers of the international conference where Ma spoke.

Very few people will understand what “the Chinese culture with Taiwan characteristics” really is. Ma probably borrowed the idea from Deng --iaoping, who tried to promote “Socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

Deng's insistence makes sense. For the Communism in practice in China is different from the one Lenin and Stalin enforced in the Soviet Union.

Is Chinese culture in Taiwan any different from the one in China?