Can Macau and Hong Kong citizens legally block the transition to simplified Chinese?

[Lu]

 

If the citizens can't establish a "legal position" and their respective government decides to cooperate, then I don't see how they could stop it.

You are aware of the phenomenon of street protests? People in Hong Kong tend to care about their rights and their language.

 

And whichever characters one prefers, 'progress' and 'simplification' are different things, methinks. Or the second round of simplifications would have been more succesfull than it was.

[Lu]

 

If the citizens can't establish a "legal position" and their respective government decides to cooperate, then I don't see how they could stop it.

You have heard of a little thing called 'street protests'? Hong Kongers tend to care about their rights, and their language. Even in Guangdong people successfully took to the streets to get their Cantonese-language programs back.

 

And whichever characters one prefers, methinks 'simplification' and 'progress' are two different things.

[skylee]

@Takeshi re #38, please take a look at #187 of this thread → http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/30172-newspaper-article-of-the-day/?p=317399

[skylee]

However, mainland China will not wait until 2047 to impose this change and all they need is some cooperation from Government of the Macau (or Hong Kong or Taiwan), which is possible. If the citizens can't establish a "legal position" and their respective government decides to cooperate, then I don't see how they could stop it.

 

People get the government they deserve. And a government is there to serve its people, not to impose things on them.  When a government listens to its people, it is called 從善如流; when it does not, it is called 剛愎自用 or in an extreme case 暴政.   When a government wants to change the people's behaviours, it is better to do it through 教化 education, and only when the situation is bad should it resort to 立法 legislation or 懲罰 punishment/ fines.  This is what I believe.

 

As to the Chinese script to be used in Hong Kong and Macau, the reality is that it is the traditional script and nothing is being done to promote the simplified script.

 

I am glad the OP is spending his time on these forums. If he spends his time working in a government I would be worried.

[Demonic_Duck]

Actually, I don't know why it's taken everyone this long to come up with the correct answer, but it's just struck me: HK will switch to simplified at exactly the same time the mainland switches to pinyin.

[li3wei1]

I think they'll both switch to English first. That's progress. And unification.

[roddy]

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