Taiwan's democratic journey and stabilising national identity
Taiwan’s
democratic journey and stabilising national identity
WRITTEN BY SENSE HOFSTEDE
9 December 2020
Coverage of Taiwan often stresses the question of whether or not it is a country. Yet, despite questions about the precise name of this political unit, the reality on the ground is clear. The processes of democratisation and localisation have enabled the people of this island nation to develop their political consciousness as the people of a sovereign state. Increasing pressure from China accelerates this consolidation even more. Formal independence has become much less urgent now that the once-reviled Republic of China (ROC) has become more Taiwanese and more democratic.
Although disagreement about what attitude to take towards China still shapes the political landscape, a distinctly Taiwanese identity is now increasingly dominant. It is impossible to pinpoint one single national identity in any country because the process of identity formation is long, complicated, and always on-going. Taiwan’s case is unusually complex, but we should also not exaggerate its difference in this regard when discussing the island in general terms. What is unique is that until democratisation put the island on a different track, the Taiwanese people were told they were part of a much larger country: China.
Some critical observers warn that Taipei will inevitably have to deal with the unyielding demands of Chinese nationalism. But that is not the only reality that has to be faced. Beijing must also face the reality of the Taiwanese nation.
That legacy continues to shape political dynamics today. However, in the current era, there is enough agreement about what it means to be Taiwanese that we need not problematise the status of this country every single time it is mentioned. Even most of those who embrace a Chinese identity now see the ROC/Taiwan as a separate state. The risk of conflict with their neighbour across the Strait continues to increase nevertheless because shrill Chinese nationalism is growing impatient and cannot accept Taiwan’s reality.
Fledgeling national identity
Although political divisions about its place in the world still run deep in Taiwan, it is a society with a much longer history than nationalist Chinese narratives admit. Originally the domain of various Austronesian tribes, Taiwan was separated from the multinational Qing Empire in 1895 after 234 years of Chinese rule. The Japanese Empire then sought to turn it into a model colony and as a result, Taiwan avoided China’s tumultuous 20th century. It was only governed by modern China from 1945 to 1949 before the Cold War cut off the island from China once again.
In fact, Taiwan has never been part of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that took over the Mainland in 1949. Instead, since 1949, the 6 million pre-1945 Taiwanese Han settlers and aborigines (本省人 běnshěngrén), and the post-1945 1-1.5 million refugee Mainlanders (外省人 wàishěngrén) have together created the contemporary state. The incoming minority brought over institutions and habits from China but also had to accommodate the pre-existing majority and relied on Japanese holdovers and American advisors to build a functioning, modern developmental state out of the former Japanese colonial government-general and the formal ROC structures. While this state formally claims the name ‘Republic of China’ (ROC), the contemporary Taiwanese polity is something different entirely from the old Mainland ROC dominated by warlords.
The islanders’ cultural and political movements during the Japanese era planted the seeds of Taiwan’s contemporary political identity. Organising themselves to safeguard their cultural heritage and demanding more political rights in the face of the colonial regime gave the islanders their first taste of civil society. The new Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime sought to suppress this after 1945 but failed. The relevance of pre-existing Taiwanese identity is made clear by its absence on the Taipei-controlled islands of Kinmen and Matsu that belonged to Fujian before 1949.
The incoming Mainlanders took over Japanese possessions and monopolised high society, attempting to force orthodox ROC nationalism on the locals, allowing only one way of being Chinese, even as they unconsciously took in local elements themselves. Mandarin became required for government jobs or education, though most Taiwanese only spoke southern Chinese languages (and Japanese). The government preferred politically reliable Mainlanders over the ‘Japanified’ locals in all kinds of matters.
Discrimination against the Taiwanese and brutal suppression of opposition — symbolised most powerfully by the massacres following the 28 February Incident in 1947 — launched the Taiwanese independence (台獨 táidú) movement (TIM). For decades, its proponents wanted to overthrow the authoritarian ‘Republic of China’ state that had imposed itself on Taiwan. But as time went on, things changed. The democratisation movement often referred to as the dǎngwài (黨外) combined the legacy of Japanese-era civil society, the TIM, and a liberal tradition within the KMT brought over from the Mainland. Their pressure played a great role in bringing about the end of martial law in 1987, the year after the founding of the Democratic Progress Party (DPP) to institutionalise the dǎngwài movement.
After decades of democratisation and localisation (本土化 běntǔhuà, also: ‘Taiwanisation’), the ROC state is no longer as oppressively authoritarian or intolerably ‘Chinese’ as it was when the democracy movement began. Language, symbols, and policy have given greater space to develop the ROC as Taiwan since the beginning of a slow process of democratisation in the late 1980s. As the boundaries between ‘Mainlanders’ and ‘locals’ have blurred over time, it has become harder to cast the former as outsiders imposing themselves.
The government has stopped forcing Chinese nationalism onto its people. DPP administrations now seek to instead celebrate Taiwan. Consequently, the original Taiwanese independence movement is paradoxically losing steam just as its ideas are becoming more mainstream because overthrowing the ROC — the stated goal of the Taiwanese Independence Movement — appears less urgent.
Some observers now say it is wrong to describe President Tsai as ‘pro-independence’ given her defence of the status quo. Her DPP presents itself as the defender of ROC(Taiwan)’s existing sovereignty, spurred on by more pro-Taiwan sounds from the smaller parties. The KMT is on the defensive against this new norm, especially since 2019. Already in his successful 2008 presidential campaign, the conservative Mainlander Ma Ying-jeou had to stress he was a ‘New Taiwanese’ — a concept that includes those who had arrived after 1945. Political scientist Nathan Batto observes that structural shifts in Taiwan’s identity cleavage have eroded the KMT’s political foundations. This change is not just a result of more Taiwanese in power, but also a matter of the passing of time. A community that lives together within one polity for long enough will start to develop ‘national’ feelings. The end of totalitarianism has allowed long-suppressed feelings to unfold and new ones to develop.
China accelerates identity consolidation
Recent polling shows that most Taiwanese now regard ‘Taiwan’ as synonymous with ‘Republic of China’; when randomly asked if they consider one of those sovereign, both halves of the respondents answer almost 90 per cent affirmatively. This echoes President Tsai Ing-wen’s post-election statement that Taiwan is a sovereign state as ‘Republic of China Taiwan’. ‘Republic of China’ is merely the formal name for the Taiwanese state. No matter which label they pick, most people already consider their country a sovereign state.
President Tsai Ing-wen. Image credit: Flickr/Office of the President
Regardless of whether they identify as Taiwanese only, or as both Taiwanese and Chinese, almost all people want to maintain this state or move even further away from ‘China’. Surveys — the most well-known of which is conducted by the Election Study Centre (ESC) of National Chengchi University (NCCU) — consistently show an absolute and growing majority, now well above 80 per cent, for either formal independence (táidú) or the status quo. That status quo is for most the sovereign state of Taiwan formally known as the ‘Republic of China’ with its awkward vestigial claims to China reduced by the implicit recognition that its jurisdiction is limited to the ‘Free Area of the ROC’. There is no substantial interest in changing that by joining the PRC: less than 10 per cent want immediate or eventual unification.
Other surveys back this. Responding to another NCCU survey in early 2020, only 29 per cent wanted unification with China even if economic, social, and political conditions were to remain the same on both sides. In contrast, 68 per cent want formal independence if peace with China can be maintained. A survey by the Commonwealth Magazine found a clear majority in favour of formal independence among younger people, and another survey found that almost half of under-40 Taiwanese are even willing to brave war. The so-called ‘China cleavage’ — whether to seek closer ties with or greater distance from China — does continue to shape Taiwan’s political landscape. But besides labels, the disagreement today is about the desired cultural, economic and emotional closeness to China: whether to accept or reject ‘Chineseness’ as part of Taiwanese identity, not whether to join the PRC.
Although Chinese aggression is only part of the reason for Taiwan’s hardening identity, Beijing’s assertiveness under Xi Jinping has quickened the natural development of Taiwan’s consolidating national identity, especially after DPP-linked activists mobilised in response to the rise of KMT’s Han Kuo-yu in 2018 and China showed its uncompromising face in Hong Kong. The growing rejection of Chinese identity in Hong Kong shows how fast an identity label can be dropped in the face of enmity from a place that claims the right to define its content, even in a place as historically intertwined with China as Hong Kong. Since 2019, the NCCU ESC survey finds rapidly growing support for the Taiwanese-only identity, which is now supported by two-thirds of all respondents. The Chinese-only identity is no longer a serious contender. Indeed, the more the Communist Party of China (CPC) articulates an exclusionary Chinese identity, the more eager the Taiwanese are to distance themselves from the label and Taiwanese politicians invoking it.
Its own nation-state
Whereas previously the DPP may have campaigned on economic policies to downplay its image as the anti-China party, today the growing Chinese threat has become an effective campaign issue. But so has a positive message of support for a Taiwanese national identity. Campaign material from the DPP and smaller parties celebrates Taiwan, barely ever mentioning the ROC. The KMT may have become more outspokenly pro-ROC in recent times. President Tsai Ing-wen’s campaign slogan for the 2020 elections was ‘Taiwan must win!’, her contender Han Kuo-yu invoked the era of rapid economic growth under former president Chiang Ching-kuo to crowds decked out in ROC flags.
The latter strategy appeals to a group of staunchly loyal supporters, but their size is limited and shrinking. The rapidly ageing KMT’s links with Beijing and its leaderships’ business interests in the PRC have become a liability in a society where the trend is moving ever more to a Taiwanese-only identity. Antipathy against the party is growing and its popularity among the young has declined sharply. It pays electorally to stress Taiwan’s unique identity, which will in turn strengthen it, in a self-reinforcing process.
Some critical observers warn that Taipei will inevitably have to deal with the unyielding demands of Chinese nationalism. But that is not the only reality that has to be faced. Beijing must also face the reality of the Taiwanese nation. The difficulties the PRC faces in Hong Kong show the challenge of forcing a national identity on unwilling people. In that case, we are dealing with a city where a substantial part of the people support Beijing. Taiwan has been separate from China since 1895 and its own state since 1949.
Taiwanese national identity is on the rise, but beyond that, there is already a consensus that it is a separate polity. The island will not voluntarily join China, and as long as China maintains its claims to Taiwan, tension will only grow. Names such as ‘Republic of China’ may continue to confuse many casual observers, but a Taiwanese consciousness is strengthening day-by-day.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Sense Hofstede is a PhD Candidate at the National University of Singapore, comparing the relations of Singapore and Taiwan with China. Image credit: Flickr/Taiwan Presidential Office.