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LETTERS: A case for Formosan DNA

The recent uproar from Aboriginal groups directed at Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) over his remarks about Aborigines has raised a very important issue. The issue is directly related to the statement that the "Taiwanese are not Chinese."

Scientists have reached the conclusion that 85 percent of the critical part of the genome that Hoklo and Hakka-speaking Taiwanese possess comes from Formosan Aborigines.

These new findings also eliminate the Han myth of replacing the native population by "immigration and settlement en masse."

Writers from both the pan-blue and pan-green camps have suggested that the close relationship between Taiwan and China started some 400 years ago. Nothing could be further from the truth. Formosans have been under stages of foreign rule, first by China, then Japan and finally China again.

The dominant language changed from Taiwanese (Hoklo and Hakka) to Japanese in 1895 and then to Mandarin in 1945.

It is clear that the once-dominant Taiwanese and Japanese languages were usurped by Mandarin after the invasion of minority Mandarin speakers from 1945.

This is an example of the phenomenon of "elite dominance"; in this case the minority language became the official language solely because of strict enforcement by the terrorist Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).

The pattern of language use on Taiwan has changed, but the Formosan race never did, as genome data clearly indicate.

The "immigration and settlement en masse" onto the island and the replacement of Formosans by Han Chinese is a hoax and a myth. It is a story invented to lure naive Taiwanese into believing the fiction of Han Chinese ancestry.

We, Formosans, are all Aborigines.

Prof. Francis Lai

Lowell, Massachusetts
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