The Hsu family is used to arguing at the dinner table, and nothing stokes controversy more than the issue at hand: Taiwanese identity.
“This again?” Charles Hsu (許彥博) asks, as his mother, Hsu Lee-chia (許麗佳), raises objections to his use of the term “Taiwanese.”
“We are not Taiwanese. We are from China,” Hsu Lee-chia says. Jennifer Hsu (許彥琳), her daughter, is quiet. The last time she fought with her mother, Jennifer nearly ended up in tears. She felt like her mother refused to acknowledge who she was, she says. Though her mother insisted they were all Chinese, Jennifer hoped she would see that “I felt differently about Taiwan, about being Taiwanese.”
Photo: EPA
Hsu Lee-chia says youth today feel like they are Taiwanese. “They feel disconnected from China, and see it as a threat to Taiwan’s democracy, to our society here,” she says. “Maybe they are right. But we are Chinese from blood. We celebrate Chinese culture.”
The Hsu family’s disagreement points toward the complexities of how people in Taiwan view themselves, and how they talk about their identity. These discussions cut across ethnic, cultural, social and political boundaries, demonstrating the manifold and evolving nature of Taiwanese identity.
FROM ETHNICITY TO VALUES
Photo: AFP
The debate over Taiwanese identity traces back to Taiwan’s democratization in the late 1980s. As former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) instituted democratic reforms, people began to broach subjects once forbidden under the one-party state, foremost among them what it meant to be Taiwanese.
Lee Jung-ting (李嫆婷), who identifies as Taiwanese, recalls the era’s burgeoning sense of freedom.
“We were no longer afraid to talk about these things. We wanted to talk about everything,” she says. “We wanted to know who we were.”
The debate was initially framed in terms of ethnicity. People differentiated between benshengren (本省人), those whose ancestors had migrated to Taiwan before the Japanese colonial era, when immigration became highly restricted, and waishengren (外省人), those who followed the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to Taiwan between 1945 and 1949.
Hsu Lee-chia’s family fled to Taiwan in 1949 after the KMT lost the Chinese Civil War, making her a waishengren. She mentions this history in explaining why she identifies as Chinese. She says that unlike benshengren, who have a deeper connection to Taiwan, her “family’s roots lay in China.”
Yet Nicholas Chan (詹建勳), Lee Jung-ting’s son, and his peers place less importance on this divide. For a younger generation of Taiwanese, identity is centered not on ethnicity, but on values.
“Being Taiwanese means being a part of a free and open democracy,” Chan says. He says that he can post criticisms of the government on his Facebook page and follow international news media, all of which would be impossible in China. “Our way of life is completely different from those in China.”
Jeffrey Lai (賴柏宇), a student at National Taipei University of Technology, mentions similar features when describing Taiwanese identity. Though Jeffrey’s family considers themselves waishengren, he thinks the distinction is no longer relevant.
“I was born in Taiwan. I have lived here my whole life. We have free speech, a free press. I have no idea what it’s like to live in China,” Lai says.
The evolving nature of Taiwanese identity helps explain why the debate over whether people are “Chinese” or “Taiwanese” has become increasingly moot. Committed to democracy and civil society, youth see no conflict between their Han Chinese ethnicity and Taiwanese identity. They readily acknowledge their Chinese cultural heritage while maintaining a robust sense of “Taiwaneseness.”
Charles Hsu, Hsu Lee-chia’s son, says that his mother is right to say their family celebrates Chinese culture.
“We eat zongzi for the Dragon Boat Festival, light firecrackers for Chinese New Year. But this does not mean I am not Taiwanese.”
A BATTLE FOR HEARTS AND MINDS
Academics and analysts alike have looked to how people in Taiwan identify for insight into cross-strait relations. As more people identify as Taiwanese, the conventional wisdom goes, the stronger their support for Taiwanese independence; since the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is firmly opposed to such an outcome, they view increasing Taiwanese identification as dangerous.
On this view, the PRC has much to worry about. According to a survey last year by the Election Studies Center of National Chengchi University (NCCU), nearly 60 percent of respondents identified exclusively as Taiwanese. More than one-third of respondents said they were both Taiwanese and Chinese, while less than 4 percent identified exclusively as Chinese.
The results demonstrate the decades-long trend of increasing Taiwanese identity, and suggest the PRC is losing the battle for the “hearts and minds” of people in Taiwan.
A new study released by the Washington Post, however, claims that these results may be inaccurate. Previously, surveys of Taiwanese identity, such as the one conducted by NCCU, asked respondents to choose from three fixed choices: “Taiwanese only,” “Chinese only” or “Both.” According to authors Alastair Johnston and George Yin, this fixed choice methodology is limiting, as it “captures neither the diversity of identity nor how that diversity may be relevant to different policy preferences.”
Instead, Johnston and Yin employed an allocation method, asking respondents to assign 10 points across different identity categories. Those who allocated all 10 points to “Taiwanese” identity were labeled “Taiwanese only,” while those who allocated all 10 points to “Chinese” identity were labeled “Chinese only.” If a respondent allocated some points to both identities, they were labeled “Both.”
Unlike previous fixed choice surveys, their allocation method found that respondents who identify as “Taiwanese only” are a minority (46 percent), while a majority see themselves as “both” Taiwanese and Chinese (52 percent). Crucially, the authors say, if the allocation method accurately represents how people understand their own identities, “Beijing can afford to be more relaxed about identity in Taiwan.”
CONFLATING THE CULTURAL AND POLITICAL
Michael Turton, who writes about Taiwanese politics on his blog The View From Taiwan, is dubious about such claims. In an e-mail, he says that the authors have conflated cultural Chinese identity with political support for the PRC. The authors’ main error was in using “Chineseness” as a proxy for a political link to China, he says, whereas for many people in Taiwan today, “Chineseness” is understood culturally.
Drawing an analogy to his own ancestry, Turton says, “I eat pasta and talk with my hands like my Italian ancestors, but that does not mean I want to be ruled from Rome.”
Turton says that Johnston and Yin overlooked “the variegated identities of Taiwanese” and failed to look at Taiwanese identity on its own terms. Faced with data that illustrate the nuances of how people in Taiwan view themselves, the authors “should have asked ‘What does this mean?’ Instead, they asked, ‘What does this mean for Beijing?’”
“The problem is not entirely their fault,” Turton adds. “The media only cares about Taiwan if they can sell papers and generate clicks by talking about the China-Taiwan conflict.”
A LOST CAUSE?
Kristin Chang (張瑞娟), a graduate student studying political science at National Taiwan University, is less than sanguine about Taiwan’s prospects. She says she is worried about the number of young people who are leaving for China, and about the loss of Taiwanese identity.
“China can just use its economic might to assimilate Taiwan,” Chang says.
Asked about what this means for Taiwan’s future, she says, “It almost seems like a lost cause.”
Despite, or perhaps because of, her concerns, Chang remains committed to Taiwan.
“Taiwan is my home. I will never give up on this country. I would die protecting it.”
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