During the thirty-eight-year ‘White Terror’ period, Chinese identity was developed into the people of Taiwan through force and consent. While restricting freedom of speech and press through censorship and persecution (Chen, 2006: 190-194) and keeping a tight grip on politics, media, and education across Taiwan, the KMT adopted a lot of sinicization policies, such as making Mandarin Chinese the national language, promoting Chinese cultural tradition (Confucianism in particular) and emphasizing the historical relations between Taiwan and the Chinese mainland (Hsiau, 2010). Under the KMT authoritarian rule, the people of Taiwan were taught or forced to develop Chinese national identity, which, to most of the native inhabitants of Taiwan, was being built amid their resentment against the KMT hegemony and the unequal status and treatment among different ethnic groups in Taiwan, their desire for human rights and freedom, their estrangement from the Chinese mainland, and their disillusion with the KMT’s empty boast about re-seizing the Chinese mainland (Makeham & Hsiau, 2005). As far as the Mainlanders are concerned, not only the social benefits they enjoy but also the Great China complex they hold may be handed down to their next generations in Taiwan (Lin, 2006; Corinus, 2010: 65-66), which may be one of the main reasons that cause conflicts over identity issue and divisions among ethnic groups in Taiwan.
However, the appeal for indigenizing Taiwanese culture and politics began to sprout in the early 1970s, and the democratization of Taiwan as well as the development of
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Taiwanese nationalism was boosted in the 1980s by some public protests in the wake of the Kaohsiung Incident28. Faced with the widespread outcry from the people of Taiwan, the KMT-led R.O.C. government finally lifted the martial law in 1987. It should be noted that the surveys as shown in figure 2 (see p. 83) started in 1992, which was just five years after the lifting of the martial law. Arguably, having been through sinicization process for nearly forty years and suddenly released from the KMT’s authoritarian and tyrannical rule, the people of Taiwan might still have a sense of insecurity and uncertainty towards the change of the KMT and towards their national identity.
With the steady progress in democratization and the growing Taiwanese awareness, the DDP won over the KMT in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. In general, during his two terms, President Chen Shui-bian was preparing Taiwan for formal independence at some time in the future through some de-sinicization policies29 and attempted to help Taiwan return to the United Nations as a member state (Hsieh, 2007).
Yet, his statement in his first inaugural address that he would not declare formal independence of Taiwan if the P.R.C. (China) had “no intention to use military force against Taiwan”30 greatly disappointed the pro-independence people in Taiwan (Yang, 2005, 2 March). Also, the legitimacy of his winning of the 2004 presidential election in the wake of the 319 Shooting Incident31 was severely questioned by the opposition parties, which caused protracted power struggle between the ruling party and the opposition parties and might have blurred the focus of Taiwanization. It may be argued
28 The Kaohsiung Incident was the second largest suppression of the people of Taiwan after the 228 Incident.
29 For instance, the proportion of teaching of classical Chinese and the history of China in high school curriculum was reduced while that of the history and culture of Taiwan was increased. Also, the teaching of the local languages of Taiwan, including the Hoklo, Hakka, and Formosan languages, was provided in compulsory education.
30 Information retrieved 23 August 2012 from
http://english.president.gov.tw/Default.aspx?tabid=491&itemid=18907&rmid=2355&sd=2000/05/20&ed
=2000/05/20.
31 On the eve of the 2004 presidential election, the DDP presidential candidate Chen Shui-bian and his running mate Annette Lu were slightly injured from an assassination attempt while campaigning in southern Taiwan. The assassination was regarded by the opposition parties as well as some people of Taiwan as a trick to win sympathy votes (Chu, 2004).
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that the great political power struggle inside Taiwan tired out its people who hoped for peace and prosperity and in turn discouraged them from asserting themselves politically at the time, which may be why there were slight increases or even decreases in the percentage of ‘Taiwanese’ identity under the eight-year DDP administration as shown in figure 2.
Amid the prevailing public thinking that good relations between Taiwan and China might help boost the economy of Taiwan (Rigger, 2006), the KMT staged a comeback with Ma Ying-jeou, a second-generation Mainlander with Great China complex (Fan, 2011, 2 October), winning the 2008 presidential election. Since then, Ma has adopted some sinicization and de-Taiwanization policies, such as increasing the lessons on classical Chinese, the history of China and Confucian thinking (Lin, 2011, 2 February), and officially renaming ‘Tái Y (literally the Taiwanese language)’ ‘ n Nán Y
32(literally the language of southern Fujian Province of China)’(Chiu, et al., 2011, 24 May). Meanwhile, a series of pro-China policies have been implemented since 2008.
For instance, in late June 2010, the Ma administration signed the ‘Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA)’ with China, aiming to boost Taiwan’s economy through deep cooperation across the Strait (Hogg, 2010, 29 June). The Ma administration also welcomes tourists by group and by individual from the Chinese mainland in the hope of bringing the people of Taiwan as much economic benefit as possible and promoting direct exchange and communication between the peoples across the Strait (Jennings, 2011, 27 June). Given closer ties and warmer relations between Taiwan and China, why is there a surge of the public’s Taiwanese identity under the Ma administration as shown in figure 2? As it turns out, the direct and frequent contact with the people of China has generally contributed to the public realization in Taiwan that
32 ‘Min Nan Yu’ is an alternative invented and imposed by the KMT-led government to ‘Tai Yu’ in order to belittle the language that is used by the majority of the Taiwanese (Wang, 2002: 55) and to emphasize the historic relations between Taiwan and China.
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there is much difference between both peoples, not only politically but also culturally (Fan, S., 2010: 259-263; Jacobs, 2011, 10 August), which may in turn strengthen Taiwanese identity across Taiwan. Also, as China never ceases showing its hegemony towards Taiwan through military threats and diplomatic pressure on the premise of the One China policy, many people of Taiwan may have turned their resistance to internal oppression from the past KMT one-party rule to resistance to external oppression from China (Jager, 2007:18).
To readers of figure 2, the people of Taiwan may appear to be in a dilemma of choosing to be Taiwanese or Chinese. However, in light of the colonial history of Taiwan, the results of the surveys (in figure 2) might have neglected the diversity of ethnicity and identity in Taiwan and might even arouse doubts about implications of sinicization. In fact, the meaning of ‘Taiwanese’ varies with context and so does
‘Chinese’. From the Dutch occupation till 1945, the inhabitants of Taiwan were mainly the Formosans and the Chinese settlers who spoke the Hoklo or Hakka languages. After another large group of Chinese people, most of whom spoke Mandarin Chinese, came to settle down in Taiwan after 1945, the early Chinese settlers were referred to as Taiwanese, and the Chinese newcomers as well as their next generations ‘Mainlanders’.
When it comes to the relations between China and Taiwan, ‘Taiwanese’ becomes a term referring to the Formosans, the Taiwanese, and the Mainlanders altogether. Likewise, the term ‘Chinese’ may refer to the people of the P.R.C. (China) in cross-strait context or refer to the Mainlanders as opposed to the Taiwanese in Taiwan. Also, the Mainlanders with Chinese identity consider Taiwan to be part of the Republic of China, which they think should have sovereignty over the Chinese mainland, while the people with Taiwanese identity see ‘Taiwan’ as a sovereign country (Wu, 1993). Yet, having lived in Taiwan for decades, some of the Mainlanders turn to regard themselves as both Chinese and Taiwanese (Fan, Y., 2010). So, are Taiwanese Chinese? Or in other words,
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is Taiwan part of China? Having been ruled by different external powers and inhabited by people from different ethnic backgrounds, Taiwan now is an independent political and economic entity, and more and more inhabitants of this place are asserting themselves as ‘Taiwanese’.