Taiwan still struggles with identity

The spat over who genuinely loves Taiwan underscores the chronic confusion regarding self-identity. History, unfortunately, does little to clear up the issue.

Named Ihla Formosa, or "beau-tiful island," by Portuguese explorers, Taiwan over the last century emerged from being a Japanese colony, to an anti-Communist bastion, into a thriving democracy. But the transformation has only served to compound the identity conundrum.

In 1895, the Ching Dynasty ceded Taiwan to Japan "in perpetuity" under the treaty of Shimonoseki (馬關條約) that ended the first Sino-Japanese War. Japan at first treated the territory as a sub-tropical colony to serve the interests of the mother country and, when militarists took over in the 1930s, as a base for its "East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere." Literature during the time refers to the island's inhabitants as "local islanders" (本島人) as opposed to the colonizers.

Taiwanese were forced to adopt Japanese names, wear Japanese-style clothing, eat Japanese food and observe Japanese religious rites, said Tsai Ching-tung (蔡錦堂), who teaches Taiwanese history at Tamkang University. People old enough to have lived under colonial rule can still speak Japanese, and many found the nation's transition back to Mandarin Chinese difficult.

The Japanese succeeded in turning Taiwan into a society that was rather modern economically in comparison with its neighbors.

While appreciating the social and economic benefits, many native residents did not like the Japanese, Tsai said, attributing the discomfiture to their status of being second-class citizens.

During World War II the Allies agreed that at the war's end Taiwan should be returned to China in the settlement of war claims against Japan.

When Japan surrendered in 1945, Taiwan was given to China to administer pending a transfer by treaty of the island from Japanese to Chinese sovereignty. Although when they first landed on Taiwan KMT troops were hailed as liberators, the rapacity of the new mainland Chinese overlords drove the Taiwanese to a bloody rebellion in 1947.

In the late 1940s 2 million refugees, predominantly from Chiang Kai-shek's (蔣介石) KMT government, military and business community, fled to Taiwan following a civil war in China where Mao Zedong's (毛澤東) red army had the upper hand. By the fall of 1949, Taiwan was all that was left of the ROC, and in December that year, Chiang declared Taipei the "provisional wartime capital."

Although Japan renounced sovereignty over Taiwan in the treaty of San Francisco in 1952, it was never transferred either to the Nationalist China of Chiang or his PRC rival. The status of the island has remained undetermined ever since.

The lack of a legitimate claim of sovereignty did not however obstruct the KMT's determination to make Taiwan a model province showcasing Sun Yat-sen's (孫中山) teachings, better known as the Three Principles of the People (三民主義).

Partly to consolidate his grip on power, the generalissimo introduced a compulsory education program to keep his anti-communist battle alive and to inculcate the masses with a Chinese identity. Most people brought up under such an education consider themselves Chinese.

"Of course, I am a Chinese," said Lin Kuo-cheng (林國正), 39, a resident of Taipei. "With the exception of Aborigines, most of our ancestors came from China."