After years of avoiding it (for no reason), I've finally been reading Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities. This classic work on nationalism argues that print capitalism and the transmission of printed materials in the vernacular helped forge a collective understanding of identity and created the communities that became nations.
It was always hard to square the media's representation of nationalism as purely a right-wing scourge with the historical experience of postcolonial independent movements that conceptually depended on it. If nationalism is a terror, then what is the recommended alternative? Imperialism? The fight for sovereignty and the right of self-determination are admirable and important across the world. Negative characterizations of nationalism ring false when brought up against historical and present day democratic revolutions. I always believed that decentralization provides better outcomes for the environment, the plurality of societies, and most importantly, the everyday life of normal people, that is to say, most of us.
The written word still overdetermines national identity, which is why so many resources are trained on diluting this pool with disinformation campaigns, soft power charm offensives, etc. Different medias around the world are crucial to political fights for a country's right to self-determination and governance. Professional and official writing keeps distant, a higher, slightly irrelevant sphere that is impervious to outside influence. Even if I doubted their veracity, I never believed I could have any ability to contradict them - after all, I had no platform and they had the whole world. However, they are actually more porous than I had initially realized.
A few days ago, we went to send something to Taiwan at the post office in the US. It's something that we've done plenty of times before, but something was off this time. The clerk kept referring to it as China, and I thought, "Fine, ok, it's known as Republic of China, so that's not unusual. I've given way here plenty of times before." But then when I saw the receipt, and I noticed something wrong.
Taiwan (Province of China)?! Taiwan Province of China is the preferred referent of the People's Republic of China, along with "Taiwan Province" and "Chinese Taipei" - it is not used internally in Taiwan, and it has never been the US Government's policy to adopt PRC's preferred address for Taiwan. This is a designation that I had seen a lot used by private shipping companies, airlines, and other multinational corporations because private industry always easily caves to the PRC's demands. I was under the impression that all of the USA's agencies maintained the same position of using Taiwan's own referent.
I wondered what was going on, if there had been some recent big geopolitical change I hadn't heard about.
"Today's the day I learned that I lost my country."
I decided that I should try to contact USPS to let them know. [Ironically, the best way to do this is by email, not letter]. After finding a list of all DC-based USPS officials, I wrote a brief email to all of them to explain the situation, the geopolitical implications of "Taiwan (Province of China)" and a request that they change this term.
I received a response almost immediately from a representative stating that he was also surprised by what happened. After just one (!) day, I received another follow up from the same person.
Good afternoon. I am pleased to report that the issue you reported has been resolved. Please see the example shown below of the before and after designation for Taiwan.
Again, thank you for bringing this to our attention. Input from customers like you is extremely valuable in allowing us to identify problems and then take the necessary actions to address them
The most surprising part was not the speed, but the fact that they removed the Republic of China reference as well.
We did it!
It's easy to complain about something verbally to others (I do it constantly), and that's because I always believed that I was frivolous, irrelevant, and no one would ever take me seriously, but in fact, some people will take you seriously. This was a big lesson. Taiwan is a small country, people say, probably because it's got a small landmass with only 24 million or so people. But its global influence is outsized. It seems like the US and its agencies are both prey to Chinese political demands and sensitive and cognizant of other democratic nations' sovereignties. In the process of rectifying this issue, I guess I have internalized more of my own imagined community as well.
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