The end is nigh for the Mainlander ethnic tag

`In other places, this group's internal differences would have prevented them from being categorized as a single ethnic group.'

BACK IN SEPTEMBER 2005, the National Association for the Promotion of Community Universities published the book Don't Call Me a Foreign Bride. In the book, foreign spouses in Taiwan argue that they should not be pigeon-holed as newlyweds for the rest of their lives.

Similarly, there is a group of people who have lived in Taiwan for 60 years but are still called "Mainlanders" (waishengren, 外省人, literally: people from other provinces of China).

Yet none of them has complained by saying "Don't call me a Mainlander." Could it be that they have greater difficulty than foreign spouses in adapting to life in Taiwan, and that this is why they insist on maintaining their status as outsiders?

From a sociological perspective, the term "Mainlander" is a socially valid category. The reason that it hasn't faded with the passing of time is the result of political need.

And leaving politics aside, Mainlanders do not enjoy special socioeconomic status.

In addition, the frequency of intermarriage between Mainlanders and ethnic Taiwanese is very high, which leads to the question of which category their children belong to.

The question of why politics is haunted by ethnicity -- particularly ahead of elections when it is actively manipulated -- comes down to two factors.

The first reason is the longstanding inconsistency between government and social structures. After the end of Japanese rule, the new authoritarian government did not take this issue seriously. Instead, it buried the government's lack of legitimacy under martial law and the myth of reconquering the Chinese "mainland."

The second is the existence of villages for military veterans and their dependants -- a reflection of the former government's divide-and-rule policy. This segregation, with clear geographical boundaries, makes some Mainlanders believe they belong to one ethnic group and creates a clear division between them and Hoklo, Hakka and Aborigines.

But Mainlanders never had a shared first language, culture or ancestry. In other places, this group's internal differences would have prevented them from being categorized as a single ethnic group. It is the convergence of conditions in Taiwan that created this group, whose ongoing political impact boils down to support for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).

Taiwan's democratization should have resulted in the weakening of the idea that ethnicity dictates the choices people make, which in turn would have resulted in matters of public interest being decided on merit and the capacity for individual thought. For example, it is not necessary to link recent government actions that remove vestiges of the authoritarian system to ethnic bias.

One way or another, a few years from now demographic changes will outweigh political ideology, and the "Mainlander" tag will eventually disappear.

Ku Chung-hwa is a professor in the Department of Sociology at National Chengchi University.

Translated by Eddy Chang