Belgium's Federal System: Taiwan's MOFA Fatal Attraction?

Sat Nov 3 15:54:05 UTC 2007

A reader of this blog, Mark S., pointed out a conference to me held on
14 October in Taipei. The Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD), a
Ministry of Foreign Affairs think tank, organized a conference on
Belgium's current federal system. It was apparently suggested that:

"Some of the complex federal institutions, used to solve the
'linguistic divide' between the Flemish and Francophone communities,
could be applied to solve the same 'linguistic issues' existing
between the various communities of Han and Aboriginal peoples of
Taiwan."
(http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/2007/10/15/126715/TFD-studies.htm.)

Belgium's federal institutions do not have as purpose 'to solve the
linguistic divide'; they are a direct result of this 150-year old
divide. If anything, federal education in Flanders, to name one such
institution, has moved away from French as Belgium's 2nd official
language and now allows English, not French, to slowly become
Flanders' second language. Similarly, Walloon federal education allows
students to choose English, not Dutch, as their second language.

How exactly, then, does TFD want to address Taiwan's linguistic issues
by looking at Belgium's federal system? Political solutions, in
absence of meaningful educational reform for Taiwan, will create - not
solve - "linguistic divides".

The China Post article also states:

"The whole of Taiwan's society wants a bilingual policy regulating the
use of Chinese and Taiwanese languages," said Chang Hsue-chien,
professor at the Department of Taiwanese Studies at National Taitung
University while he addressed the public in Taiwanese. He added that
each local language could be used according to the area occupied by
each ethnic group, like in Belgium.

I am well aware that a number of Taiwanese academics want to apply
certain aspects of Belgium's linguistic and political territorial
principle to Taiwan. These good people have, unfortunately, a
misconception about the impact such "federal" system would have on
Taiwan. Or, are the same people using language (and Belgium's federal
model) to achieve political rather than linguistic goals? Or, do they
lack sufficient understanding of the cause/effect-forces of Belgium's
federal system?

BELGIUM'S "LINGUISTIC DIVIDE"

In a country with a centralized government, the territorial principle
favors the strongest linguistic group (e.g. situation in France). In a
federal country, it protects linguistic minorities, though it can
create separatism on the part of the dominant language group – as is
the case in Belgium.

Belgium's "linguistic divide" and its 37-year old federal governmental
system came about because of decades of linguistic strife between two
major socio-linguistic groups: the Flemings (Dutch-speaking) in the
north and west of Belgium, and the Walloons (French-speaking) in the
south.

In 1970, the country was divided into four linguistic areas: French,
Dutch, German, and one bilingual area (Brussels). In 1972 Val Lorwin,
a history professor at the university of Oregon, coined the term
"territorial unilingualism" for Belgium's language situation. Local
Belgian linguists and politicians later simply referred to this as the
"territory principle", which included political as well as linguistic
aspirations by Belgium's three major language groups.

As you are reading this, disagreements between Flemings and Walloons,
stemming directly from the territorial principle, are spurring strong
separatist sentiments among the former. The status of Dutch and French
in and around Brussels is the latest in a long list of conflicts
between the two communities. It is clear, from general election
results in June 2007, that most Flemings want even greater linguistic,
economic and political autonomy than they already have. Most Walloons
do not, mainly because it would stop the money flowing from richer
Flanders to poorer Wallonia; Flanders' GDP per capita stands at US$
41.000, Wallonia's at US$ 30.500.

NO MODEL FOR TAIWAN

Whatever the intention of Taiwan's MOFA and TFD is by holding up
Belgium's territorial principle as a possible model for Taiwan, it is
important to keep in mind that this system has not been able to
achieve three basic things:

(1) Make Belgians more bilingual. Even with 8 years of second-language
learning (French for the Flemish-speaking children and Flemish/Dutch
for the French-speaking children), only 15% of Belgians are
French/Dutch bilingual. Flemings learn French much more easily than
Walloons learn Dutch, which unlike French, does hold world language
prestige.

(2) Overcome linguistic conflicts. The territory principle could and
cannot address those areas in which there is a more or less even
distribution of French and Flemish speakers, notably the large suburbs
around Brussels. It is this problem that currently prevents a newly
elected government from forming a workable coalition.

(3) Consolidate the linguistic, economic and political status of
Belgium's poorer language community: the Walloons (40% of population).
As Belgium has gone through several constitutional reforms resulting
in ever-larger divisions between Flemings and Walloons, it is the
Flemings that have benefited most.

Therefore, if Taiwan is considering implementing some aspects of
Belgium's federal system, three questions arise:

(1) How will it help Taiwan's linguistically? Will Hakka or Aboriginal
people become more bilingual by implementing a territorial language
policy? Or will they consider their native languages as "too local"
and send children to Mandarin/English schools outside their territory?

(2) New linguistic problems may be created. What about Hakka children
living in a Taiwanese-dominated territory? Or Mandarin-only children
growing up in rural Kaohsiung? Parents might feel to have no choice
but to send their young children to schools outside the linguistic
territory they live in. This has been happening to Flemish and French
children in and around Brussels for the past three decades.

(3) How will a federal system consolidate Taiwan's poorer communities
if it is failing to do so in Belgium? The reason Walloons are against
a possible (and eventually, I believe, likely) split of Belgium is
that they understand very well that Belgium's federal model favors the
economically stronger community. A federal education system 'copied'
from Belgium would equally fail to consolidate Taiwan's minorities
economically and linguistically.

MODELS FOR TAIWAN

As I have argued in some of my previous posts, Spain, Wales, and the
Netherlands, not Belgium, are educational models worth looking at for
Taiwan's linguistic context. In those countries, linguistic minorities
are not involved in major linguistic conflicts with the respective
majority languages – Spanish, English and Dutch.

The mutual prejudices held by Belgium's two linguistic communities are
at times difficult to grasp for outsiders. In Brussels, you may ask a
Fleming a question in French, but he might answer you in English – and
not because he does not speak French! A 2004 sociolinguistic survey
(Gijsen et al.) in six of Taiwan's universities pointed out that Hakka
students, on the contrary, prefer to use the majority language,
Mandarin, even at local community level.

Federal education encouraging a Fleming not to choose French or a
Walloon not to choose Dutch as second language keeps all Belgians
relatively at peace with one another. Federal education for Taiwan
encouraging Hakka parents to choose for a bilingual Hakka/Mandarin
education instead of a bilingual Mandarin/English one will likely
cause resentment and requires (much) more planning by language
educators.

I agree that Taiwan, if it wishes to openly support and preserve its
linguistic minorities, can recognize minority languages in the
national constitution and give them official status in the regions
where they are used. But then the government might have to urgently
address two additional issues in order to be successful:

1. Do more research into negative attitudes held against these
minority languages. I am convinced that, because of past events,
negative perceptions toward Taiwan's indigenous languages have been
amplified to such an extent that many members of Taiwan's minority
groups have downgraded themselves even more than the dominant group
once downgraded them. The consequence, paradoxical as it may seem, is
that Mandarin speakers are sometimes more positive about minority
languages than are members of that very group. Yet, in both cases, any
such positivism merely runs skin-deep – it will not be sufficient to
forge, for example, an educational reform favoring full bilingual
primary education. This is why the second measure to consider would be
to:

2. Completely reform the primary school system to allow children of
the minority group to be bilingually (or trilingually) educated.

Regions like Catalonia and Euskara (Spanish Basque country) have
proven that negative attitudes toward one's own minority language can
evolve: a once-stigmatized language can become accepted and respected.
But for this to happen, a "copy-and-paste" tactic of a few federal
institutions in Belgium, a country with a radically different
socio-linguistic background from Taiwan, will not achieve anything
substantial.

http://johangijsen.blogspot.com/2007/11/reader-of-this-blog-mark-s.html

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