The different ethnic groups in Taiwan seem to get along pretty well most of the time, but whenever there is an election, the topic of ethnicity always resurfaces. This phenomenon shows that politicians are to be blamed for aggravating the so-called ethnic complex.
Taiwan's problems with ethnicity only existed between two groups in the early days: the Taiwanese and the mainlanders. But about a dozen years ago, the new term "four major ethnic groups" appeared. Taiwanese were further divided into three sub-groups: Minnan, Hakka and Aborigines. Some people suspect that this is purely a political ploy.
The clearest example of this is the "Minnan and Hakka complex." We read in newspapers and magazine articles supporting the Hakka, encouraging them to fight for equal rights with the Minnan ethnic group, so that people have come to believe that the Hakka are a minority group.
It is a shame that Taiwan has this kind of problem between Minnan and Hakka groups. If you take a close look at the historical background and interaction of the groups, it will not be hard to see that the two groups share the same origins. Based on a study of 2,000 genealogies collected by this author, these two groups are about equally divided in Taiwan's population. This fact is obscured by the fact that many Hakka people no longer speak their mother tongue.
A census conducted in 1926 of the two ethnic groups in Taiwan showed that Minnan people accounted for 83.1 percent and Hakka for only 15.6 percent. But this is not representative as many Hakka from the Minnan region were listed as being of Minnan descent.
The fact is that when people relocate, the language they speak is affected, so that when many Hakka moved to Fujian, where the Minnan language is dominant, they naturally adopted the Minnan speech after a few generations.
According to statistics, 36 Hakka surnames and 39 Minnan surnames are listed among the 100 most numerous surnames in Taiwan. This shows that Hakka people or people of Hakka origin probably account for half of the population, and therefore. They are therefore not a minority group, as the media sometimes claims.
Hakka people are concerned that the Hakka language is being overwhelmed by Minnan speech and by the popular equation between Minnan speech and "Taiwanese." They believe that this reflects a kind of Minnan chauvinism, but in fact this is a result of the formation of a "common" language. For example, in the US, English has become the common language of many people for whom English is not their mother tongue. In Singapore, the most commonly spoken form of Chinese is Minnan although this group accounts for only 30 percent of the population. It is clearly not appropriate to equate language with ethnic origin.
The so-called Minnan-Hakka complex is a creation of an overly simplified dichotomy between Minnan speakers and Hakka speakers. If we understand the historical background, we must realize that the ethnic problem that emerges at election time is simply a creation of politicians who wish to manipulate public opinion.
Lin Yao-chi is Chairman of Taiwan Family Tree Association.
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