Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

A group of civic organizations yesterday announced that today it would form an alliance to protest the Ministry of Education’s handling of the high-school social sciences curriculum and the 12-year national education plan which they alleged was designed in a “black-box,” or non-transparent, manner.

As the Taipei High Administrative Court in February ruled against the ministry’s decision to implement a controversial curriculum adjustment — which the ministry implemented anyway — the groups said the ministry should attempt to make information more transparent and easily accessible to the public.

China rolled out a fine example of its command of Orwellian language and logic on Wednesday, with the State Council Information Office’s release of a nearly 18,000-word white paper on the Dalai Lama and Tibet. Taiwan, and the rest of the world, should take note.

In the paper, Beijing declared that the exiled Tibetan leader must focus on seeking China’s forgiveness for his separatist activities. It also claimed that the Buddhist monk supports and incites the waves of self-immolations by Tibetans, and his calls for Beijing to stop its drive for more Han Chinese migration into Tibet are “tantamount to an ethnic cleansing of the [Tibetan] plateau,” adding: “The Dalai group’s logic is absurd and chilling, proposing to force tens of millions of people of other ethnic groups out of this region, where they have lived for generations.”