Around 30 per cent identify as Taiwanese-Chinese. People with this dual identity see themselves as Taiwanese who are successors of Chinese culture, rather than a Chinese nation, according to Dr Chen Fang-yu, assistant professor of political science at Soochow University in Taiwan.
That refers to the traditional folk beliefs and customs and use of traditional Chinese script that continue in Taiwan, he said.
“I do believe that in Taiwan, yes, we are a successor of Chinese culture. But with a mixture, or we create a unique Taiwanese culture.”
Dr Chen, whose research focuses on identity, said there is now largely consensus around Taiwanese identification, and that it strengthens in younger cohorts.
A survey he conducted this semester among university students showed more than 80 per cent identified as Taiwanese – 20 percentage points above the national average.
Such numbers indicate that for the majority of Taiwan’s people, at a personal level, Taiwanese identification is no longer a struggle. In fact, it has been on the rise since 1994 when Taiwanese identification overtook Chinese identification in NCCU’s survey for the first time.
Dr Chen linked this to the Qiandao Lake incident that year, in which 24 Taiwanese tourists were killed by robbers in Zhejiang province.
There was a public outcry in Taiwan over the murders and the way mainland authorities handled the investigation.
Another sharp decline in Chinese identification happened after Taiwan’s first direct presidential election in 1996 – a four-way contest in which the Kuomintang’s (KMT) Lee Teng-hui emerged victorious and went on to accelerate Taiwan’s democratic transition.
Mr Lee was Taiwan’s first islander (benshengren) president. While Taiwan’s mainlanders (waishengren) descend from migrants who fled mainland China after the KMT was defeated at the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, islanders trace their roots further back in history.
The islander-mainlander divide has been a faultline in Taiwanese identity and history, most notably in the Feb 28 incident in 1947, when the KMT government led by mainlanders violently suppressed an uprising by islanders.
Ms Chen, the cooking instructor, said she is “not a political person”. She has not always exercised her vote. But for her, the 1996 election was a “crucial time” for Taiwan in which she felt strongly about making her vote count.
She recalled the impression the eventual president Mr Lee made – she was struck by his familiar Taiwanese accent as much as by his intelligence and leadership.
“Before that, our imagined community, imagined boundary, is the whole mainland,” said Dr Chen, referring to founding president Chiang Kai-shek’s desire to reconquer the territory his forces lost in the Chinese Civil War.
“But from this time, we know that we can elect our own leader in Taiwan, and only in Taiwan, not for the mainland,” the professor said of the 1996 vote.
In the years since, Taiwanese identification has twice peaked around disparate events set in motion by former Taiwanese president Ma and Chinese President Xi Jinping, leading observers to joke that both men are “godfathers” of Taiwanese identity, said Dr Chen.
In 2014, Mr Ma’s KMT-led administration tried to push the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement through parliament without a clause-by-clause review. Sunflower Movement protestors occupied the Legislative Yuan to oppose the move, and Taiwanese identification crossed the 60 per cent mark for the first time that year.
Five years later, Taiwanese identification hit an all-time high of more than 64 per cent during the 2019 anti-extradition law protests in Hong Kong, which prompted a police crackdown and Mr Xi’s imposition of a national security law.
Source link : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/taiwan-election-taiwanese-chinese-identity-cross-strait-voter-4029966
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Publish date : 2024-01-08 03:00:00
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