The power of government sanction

The power of government sanction: Tâi-lô, the system advocated by the Taiwanese Ministry of Education, is quickly replacing the century-old Pe̍h-ōe-jī, surprisingly even in Malaysia and the Philippines. POJ is a well-established system with lots of publications. This shows what really counts is official recognition and promotion by a government, despite the fact that this alienates proponents of other systems. It is so ironic: The whole point about Taiwan switching from POJ to Tailo was to detach itself from the rest of the Sinosphere. What it actually did was to unwittingly "unite" the rest of the Hokken-speaking world. It's probably why Taiwan is now promoting Chinese-characters-based writing system, which is not readily available to non-Chinese-educated Southeast Asians.