Yip, by contrast, suggests something that could be said to embrace both of these positions, and goes beyond them. She sees, for a start, a Taiwan that has been enmeshed in international currents ever since the first Dutch and Spanish adventurers set foot here.
In other words, what she argues is that Taiwan can claim to be unlike anywhere else on Earth. It is, in her view, the first post-national territory, crowded with people of a whole range of ethnic backgrounds, and many of them of mixed ethnicity -- yet at the same time open to international influences to an extent that few other territories can claim. "Wonderful!" she cries. This is the postmodern world before our very eyes!
Taiwan, far from being on some kind of edge, halfway to being forgotten by the great powers and international audiences, is actually almost out of sight because it is so far ahead, bearing the standard of the new, post-national world. All places will soon be like Taiwan, she implies. Far from being some kind of international straggler, it is, in reality, the very vanguard of this trend.
The Taiwanese people, she asserts, have already wholeheartedly embraced the new globalism. Furthermore, it is perfectly possible to be both more local and more international, and in fact that is precisely what Taiwan has achieved over the last decade and a half.
To sum up, in Yip's eyes, Taiwan is now approaching a state of being supra-national, voyaging into the future as the first place on earth to actually inhabit the condition of being somewhere beyond the nation-state. Taiwan, in her eyes, is neither "a part of China," "an independent state" nor any other old-fashioned formulation. Instead, it is, quite simply, the future.
It's a brilliant idea. No one could possibly claim that anyone in Taiwan deliberately set out with such an extraordinary goal in mind.
But the accidental, the chance and the fortuitous have always thrust people and places unwittingly into the spotlight. That's how things happen. That's exactly what history is like.
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