A group of young Maori from New Zealand has visited Taiwan to seek their roots, while a Japanese anthropologist has speculated that a branch of Japanese ancestry might have traveled to Kyushu Island from Taiwan.
As people from other places seek their roots in Taiwan, it is ironic that the high-school curriculum guidelines claim that the nation is a “Han Chinese immigrant society” and that Taiwanese’s ancestors came from China.
Recorded history in Taiwan started during the Dutch colonial rule. Documents show that, there were more than 200 plains Aboriginal communities at that time, the largest being the community in what is today Tainan’s Madou District (麻豆) with a population of more than 3,000.
It was surrounded by smaller communities, whose populations were not recorded.
Among highland Aborigines, the Dutch had most contact with the Paiwan people.
The plains Aborigines and the Paiwan people were the main forebears of Taiwanese. This can be seen from more than 30 lines of evidence, including Aboriginal household and tax records, and farming data.
Why then the distortion that Taiwan is a “Han Chinese immigrant society”? The causes are Sinicization, bestowing surnames and using genealogies to connect Taiwan to China.
In a report on Taiwan affairs to Emperor Yongzheng of the Qing Dynasty, then-prefectural magistrate Shen Qiyuan (沈起元) recorded the policy of “turning naturalized Aborigines into Han Chinese and unnaturalized Aborigines into naturalized ones.”
The book A Brief History of Taiwan writes that in Aboriginal communities near today’s Tainan and Kaohsiung, people mostly spoke Mandarin or the dialects of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou from China’s Fujian Province — just as Han Chinese did.
During the reign of Emperor Qianlong (乾隆), the Taiwan Prefecture Gazetteer recorded that people in naturalized Aboriginal communities mostly dressed like Han Chinese and could speak a little Chinese.
The book Annals of Taiwan Province, published by the Taiwan Province Archives — what is today Taiwan Historica — said that Qianlong in 1785 implemented a compulsory measure to bestow surnames, the most concrete proof of Sinicization.
How did Qianlong bestow surnames? The residents of an Aboriginal community were simply forced to adopt the surname of the Chinese official who was sent to them. No wonder it was common to find villages where people had the same surname, despite not being related.
In 1885, Chinese official Liu Mingchuan (劉銘傳) wrote in a report to the emperor that it was inappropriate for the Qing Empire to turn Taiwan into a Chinese province.
Aborigines and Taiwanese in the eight coastal counties of the time accounted for 60 and 40 percent of the population respectively, Liu wrote.
Taiwan was still an Aboriginal society in 1885. It in 1895 entered half a century of Japanese colonial rule, but the attempt at Japanization eventually failed. In 1951, Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) began to bestow surnames and genealogies, and, absurdly, some siblings were given different surnames.
Chiang even “amended” 791 Taiwanese genealogies, or about 65 percent of them.
Even after all these distortions, census data in 1956 showed that the 940,000 Chinese in Taiwan at the time only accounted for 10 percent of the population, showing that Taiwan is not a “Han Chinese immigrant society.”
How will Taiwanese face history if the curriculum guidelines remain unchanged?
Sim Kiantek is a former associate professor of business administration at National Chung Hsing University.
Translated by Eddy Chang
The gutting of Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) by US President Donald Trump’s administration poses a serious threat to the global voice of freedom, particularly for those living under authoritarian regimes such as China. The US — hailed as the model of liberal democracy — has the moral responsibility to uphold the values it champions. In undermining these institutions, the US risks diminishing its “soft power,” a pivotal pillar of its global influence. VOA Tibetan and RFA Tibetan played an enormous role in promoting the strong image of the US in and outside Tibet. On VOA Tibetan,
Sung Chien-liang (宋建樑), the leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) efforts to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Kun-cheng (李坤城), caused a national outrage and drew diplomatic condemnation on Tuesday after he arrived at the New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office dressed in a Nazi uniform. Sung performed a Nazi salute and carried a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf as he arrived to be questioned over allegations of signature forgery in the recall petition. The KMT’s response to the incident has shown a striking lack of contrition and decency. Rather than apologizing and distancing itself from Sung’s actions,
US President Trump weighed into the state of America’s semiconductor manufacturing when he declared, “They [Taiwan] stole it from us. They took it from us, and I don’t blame them. I give them credit.” At a prior White House event President Trump hosted TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家), head of the world’s largest and most advanced chip manufacturer, to announce a commitment to invest US$100 billion in America. The president then shifted his previously critical rhetoric on Taiwan and put off tariffs on its chips. Now we learn that the Trump Administration is conducting a “trade investigation” on semiconductors which
By now, most of Taiwan has heard Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an’s (蔣萬安) threats to initiate a vote of no confidence against the Cabinet. His rationale is that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)-led government’s investigation into alleged signature forgery in the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) recall campaign constitutes “political persecution.” I sincerely hope he goes through with it. The opposition currently holds a majority in the Legislative Yuan, so the initiation of a no-confidence motion and its passage should be entirely within reach. If Chiang truly believes that the government is overreaching, abusing its power and targeting political opponents — then
RSS