Toward the end of the Qing Dynasty, Governor of Taiwan Liu Mingchuan (劉銘傳) issued stamps bearing the words “Great Qing Taiwan Post Office.”<>
The postal services were of course part of the Qing administration, but the stamps bore the characters for Taiwan on them alongside the word “Formosa.”
When the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) fled to Taiwan after the Chinese Civil War, it implemented policies designed to undermine any Taiwanese identity. The post office was called Chunghwa Post and was no longer allowed to use the name “Taiwan.” Only toward the end of Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) presidency did the government change the name to Taiwan Post.
The administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wants to change the name back to Chunghwa Post and again delete the word “Taiwan” from all stamps.
This “de-Taiwanization” is evident on the Presidential Office’s Web site as well. Under Chen, the Web site said “Office of the President, Republic of China (Taiwan),” but Ma’s government quickly removed the Chinese characters for Taiwan.
Ma spoke a lot of Taiwan and localization during his election campaign, but after taking office he tossed Taiwan out like a pair of old shoes and is working to put the word “China” back into contexts from which it was removed.
Some people are concerned that Ma’s administration is making a mistake, undoing the progress achieved under Chen to rid this country of the label “China.”
Rather than attacking Ma as imprudent, however, it is only necessary to remind the pan-blue camp of the criticism it aimed at Chen and his government. It should be evident that the government seeks to enforce its own ideology, which is exactly what it accused Chen of doing.
What should be clear now is that our government is incapable of not playing this game of ideology. As former presidential adviser Peng Ming-min (彭明敏) asked, how can politics exist without ideology?
Ideology should, however, have limits. The public should take a clear look at the identities — “Taiwanese” and “Chinese” — that our politicians constantly seek to feed us and decide what makes sense.
Ma used the term “Chinese people” in his inaugural speech and KMT Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) did the same on his recent trip to China.
What does “Chinese people” mean? Is it a term that can stand up to academic analysis? Is it based on any logic or purely political and designed to promote a political agenda?
History might shed some light on this matter.
When Zhu Yuanzhang (朱元璋), founder of the Ming Dynasty, sought to overthrow the Yuan Dynasty under the Mongols, he promoted the cause with the slogan “expel the barbarians, revive China.” When Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙) and others sought to overthrow the Qing Dynasty under the Manchurians, they used the same slogan.
The word “barbarian” made it clear that the Mongols and Manchurians were not Chinese.
After the Qing Dynasty had been toppled and replaced with the Republic of China, this rhetoric changed dramatically. Suddenly the country’s leaders sought to build a republic of “the five peoples.” There was no more talk of barbarians, who were not to be expelled but rather included in a new, wider definition of “Chinese.”
That is the history of the term “Chinese” that politicians today use in their rhetoric and it is a term that has no basis in ethnological and anthropological studies, but rather in a political agenda. “Constructed” would be a nice description of this term, but “fabricated” is more accurate.
Genetic research by Marie Lin (林媽利), director of the Transfusion Medicine Laboratory at Mackay Memorial Hospital in Taiwan, has documented the differences between the Han Chinese of north and south China. In addition to the Han Chinese, Beijing recognizes more than 50 minority ethnicities within China’s borders.
Is it logical for the many peoples of China to be grouped into one term — the “Chinese”?
This fabricated term was designed to uphold a hegemony. In China, anyone who mentions the words “autonomy” or “independence” or questions the logic of the word “Chinese” as applied to, say, Tibetans, is labeled a splittist. The peoples of East Turkestan, which is called Xinjiang by the Chinese government, are largely Turkic. They have a distinct ancestry, language, writing system, religion and culture. Yet they are trapped by the meaningless phrase “Chinese.” Anyone who supports the distinct identities of Xinjiang or Tibet and who believes they deserve independence is considered a traitor in China.
About 80 percent of the people in Taiwan have a mixed ancestry. They are the descendents of people from Fujian or Guangdong in China and the Austronesian Aborigines of Taiwan. What does the term “Chinese” mean to the Taiwanese?
Taiwan is luckier than Tibet and Xinjiang in that it is not ruled by the People’s Republic of China. If we don’t do our best to defend Taiwan’s independence and sovereignty, however, and if we don’t protect our democracy and freedom but rather allow an imperialist Chinese ideology to guide our future, we will be making a horrible mistake.
Lee Hsiao-feng is a professor in the Graduate School of Taiwanese Culture at National Taipei University of Education.
Translated by Anna Stiggelbout
Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on April 9 said that the first group of Indian workers could arrive as early as this year as part of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center in India and the India Taipei Association. Signed in February 2024, the MOU stipulates that Taipei would decide the number of migrant workers and which industries would employ them, while New Delhi would manage recruitment and training. Employment would be governed by the laws of both countries. Months after its signing, the two sides agreed that 1,000 migrant workers from India would
In recent weeks, Taiwan has witnessed a surge of public anxiety over the possible introduction of Indian migrant workers. What began as a policy signal from the Ministry of Labor quickly escalated into a broader controversy. Petitions gathered thousands of signatures within days, political figures issued strong warnings, and social media became saturated with concerns about public safety and social stability. At first glance, this appears to be a straightforward policy question: Should Taiwan introduce Indian migrant workers or not? However, this framing is misleading. The current debate is not fundamentally about India. It is about Taiwan’s labor system, its
Japan’s imminent easing of arms export rules has sparked strong interest from Warsaw to Manila, Reuters reporting found, as US President Donald Trump wavers on security commitments to allies, and the wars in Iran and Ukraine strain US weapons supplies. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s ruling party approved the changes this week as she tries to invigorate the pacifist country’s military industrial base. Her government would formally adopt the new rules as soon as this month, three Japanese government officials told Reuters. Despite largely isolating itself from global arms markets since World War II, Japan spends enough on its own
On March 31, the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs released declassified diplomatic records from 1995 that drew wide domestic media attention. One revelation stood out: North Korea had once raised the possibility of diplomatic relations with Taiwan. In a meeting with visiting Chinese officials in May 1995, as then-Chinese president Jiang Zemin (江澤民) prepared for a visit to South Korea, North Korean officials objected to Beijing’s growing ties with Seoul and raised Taiwan directly. According to the newly released records, North Korean officials asked why Pyongyang should refrain from developing relations with Taiwan while China and South Korea were expanding high-level
RSS