China planted an oil rig in disputed waters in the South China Sea that Vietnam also claims. Vietnamese, infuriated by perceived Chinese arrogance, trashed dozens of Taiwanese investment operations in Ho Chi Min City and other Vietnamese business centers. The Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs rushed to produce stickers saying: “I am from Taiwan,” in Vietnamese and English, giving them to Taiwanese businesses operating in the country.
There is a lot of room left to the imagination with that apparently simple sentence: “I am from Taiwan.” An affirmative interpretation might be: “I am from Taiwan. I am Chinese.” A negative understanding could be: “I am from Taiwan. I am confused.”
From a semantic point of view, “I am from Taiwan” only states the where, the geographical root, not the who, the identity. A negative, or renunciative, form of proclamation may be: “I am from Taiwan. I am not Chinese,” or: “I am from Taiwan. I am not a cook.”
“I am from Taiwan” does not provide clarity in identifying an entity. As such, it cannot shield any resident of the nation from being misidentified. “I am from Taiwan” also hints of a suppressed longing for citizenry by the proclamation of genuine identity in a negative form — “I am not Chinese.”
On the other side of the coin, the somewhat timid declaration subtly hides the resistance of a fading number of the nation’s residents to cleave their emotional attachment to the China of a bygone era. The pull of such ties is understandable. However, the ambiguity embedded in these anachronistic links to a bygone era invite ethnic strife, as can be seen by events in Ukraine, Syria and many other places.
Identity plays an essential part in a person’s self-worth. That is why many adults who were adopted as infants eventually seek their biological parents, since living without knowing the whereabouts of their birth-parents was suffocating them.
Perhaps the ministry might consider recalling the sticker and issue one that says: “I am not Chinese.”
Yes, it would touch some nerves and Taipei most likely would not do it. However, not doing so simply means the financial losses Taiwanese businesspeople sustained were self-inflicted.
Kengchi Goah is a senior research fellow at the Taiwan Public Policy Council in the US.
From the Iran war and nuclear weapons to tariffs and artificial intelligence, the agenda for this week’s Beijing summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is packed. Xi would almost certainly bring up Taiwan, if only to demonstrate his inflexibility on the matter. However, no one needs to meet with Xi face-to-face to understand his stance. A visit to the National Museum of China in Beijing — in particular, the “Road to Rejuvenation” exhibition, which chronicles the rise and rule of the Chinese Communist Party — might be even more revealing. Xi took the members
After Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing, most headlines referred to her as the leader of the opposition in Taiwan. Is she really, though? Being the chairwoman of the KMT does not automatically translate into being the leader of the opposition in the sense that most foreign readers would understand it. “Leader of the opposition” is a very British term. It applies to the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, and to some extent, to other democracies. If you look at the UK right now, Conservative Party head Kemi Badenoch is
A Pale View of Hills, a movie released last year, follows the story of a Japanese woman from Nagasaki who moved to Britain in the 1950s with her British husband and daughter from a previous marriage. The daughter was born at a time when memories of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War II and anxiety over the effects of nuclear radiation still haunted the community. It is a reflection on the legacy of the local and national trauma of the bombing that ended the period of Japanese militarism. A central theme of the movie is the need, at
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on Friday used their legislative majority to push their version of a special defense budget bill to fund the purchase of US military equipment, with the combined spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.78 billion). The bill, which fell short of the Executive Yuan’s NT$1.25 trillion request, was passed by a 59-0 margin with 48 abstentions in the 113-seat legislature. KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), who reportedly met with TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) for a private meeting before holding a joint post-vote news conference, was said to have mobilized her
RSS