Island’s move to erase history will alienate it from people

The secessionist-minded Tsai Ing-wen administration is reportedly planning to downgrade the “National Palace Museum” in Taipei from a unit directly under its “executive body” to an affiliate of its “ministry of culture”, and rename it “Huaxia Museum” (Huaxia being a historical concept representing the Chinese nation and civilization) or “Asian Museum”.

The museum is named “palace museum” like the one in Beijing because the Kuomintang transported a bulk of the about half a million exhibits from the Palace Museum in Beijing in 1948, before its defeat in the civil war.

The two “palace museums” constitute a unique cultural bond across the Taiwan Straits, being also regarded as sister museums.

Now the Tsai administration is trying to sever the island’s historical and cultural ties with the Chinese mainland.

The world’s fifth-largest historical museum will not gain anything from this “reform”. Only the secessionists will benefit from it, as the museum’s historical ties with the one in Beijing will gradually fade away from public memory, and the island’s cultural independence will have become a fait accompli.

The earlier Chen Shui-bian administration, during its time in office from 2000 to 2008, tried to rename the museum “Exhibition Hall of Formosa” or “Universal Museum” and divide it into “Taiwan Hall” and “China Hall”, but the move was shelved following widespread opposition.

These aforementioned names lay bare the secessionist schemes of the Democratic Progressive Party, to which both Chen and Tsai belong.

By making public the “reform” plan, the DPP is trying to test the waters, not knowing how the island’s residents will react.

Since the “re-election” of the Tsai administration, the DPP has further intensified its de-sinicization efforts, targeting Confucius, Sun Yat-sen and the Yellow Emperor, an ancestor of the Chinese people — in other words anything Chinese.

The DPP has been wasting public resources to meet its narrow ends. However, it will only serve to escalate tensions across the Straits while it ends up isolating itself from the Taiwan people.