Ken Choy over at Taiwan Focus pointed me to this article from today's ETaiwan News on the rise of the Taiwanese identity among locals....the key passage:
Comparing the results of a series of polls on the national identification, Academia Sinica researcher Michael Hsiao (蕭新煌) said that more people on the island identified as Taiwanese rather than as Chinese and that this is a trend that has become more obvious in recent years.
In 2004, 55 percent of the people of Taiwan saw themselves as Taiwanese, compared to 5.5 percent who identified as Chinese and 35 percent who identified as both Taiwanese and Chinese.
In 2003, the percentage of those who identified as Taiwanese reached a record high of 59 percent, much higher than the 23.7 percent in 1992 and 40.6 percent in 1998 when Taiwan was under the rule of the Kuomintang party that came over from China in 1949.
Hsiao said that to his surprise the polls found that Taiwanese people identify more as Asians than as Chinese. Of those polled in 2004, 96.7 percent and 41.5 percent respectively said they had good feelings for Taiwan and Asia, but only 26.5 percent felt the same about China.
On the other hand, only 40 to 50 percent of Taiwanese were satisfied with Taiwan's military strength and its influence in the international community.
Hsiao said he noticed that many members of the local media and politicians have been trying to play up China's rise as an economic and military power for different reasons, but added that their preferences and efforts did not seem to have affected the confidence and the national identification of the people of Taiwan.
Ma Ying-jeou, Chairman of the KMT and mayor of Taipei, has resurrected James Soong's old proposal from the 2000 election that Taiwan sign some kind of 30-50 treaty with China. It is easy to see why China cannot agree to that -- because, over time, despite relentless propaganda from the anti-democracy, pro-China side, people in Taiwan are becoming conscious of themselves as Taiwanese. I also find it heartening that locals identify more with Asia than with China, and even more that someone thought to ask that question, thus taking us out of the usual Chinese vs. Taiwanese ethnic box.
[Taiwan] [Taiwan Independence]
while i do not doubt your post title, the taiwan news piece's data (and presentation) is quite ambigueous and confusing.
ReplyDelete1) % identify as taiwanese was 59% in 2003, but decreased to 55% in 2004?
2) what about the % who identifiy as both taiwanese and chinese? there is really no contradiction.
(vs those who think the 2 concepts are exclusive)
3) 'have good feeling' and 'identifying' are very different concepts, the article carelessly mixed the two
4) the concept of chinese as an ethnic group vs China as a nation vs PRC as a goverment need to be clarified if one really wants to understand what these people are thinking. i think some would equate the 3, some only 2 of these 3, and some treat them as 3 distinct concepts.
while i do not doubt the taiwan identity has risen rapidly in the past 15 years, this article provided little insights for us to understand the full picture. there must be some decent studies out there?
Why is this Hsiao fellow talking about a poll from 2004 now, two years later? According to the article, the number of people identifying themselves as Taiwanese actually went down in 2004 from 2003. Don't they have any more recent data?
ReplyDeleteC'mon. A fluctuation of 59-55% is within the margin of error for most polls. The long-term trend is pretty clear.
ReplyDeleteThere's no point in distinguishing between Chinese and China, Sun Bin, because China does not. This Han ethnicity-as-imperial-tool forces people to make an either/or choice. And you know, when people are forced to choose, they often pick against, out of sheer orneriness. I suspect that if China did not insist, more people would be comfortable identifying as Chinese.
Michael
I read somewhere earlier this year, most people in Taiwan have no problem identifying themselves as Huaren.
ReplyDeleteIf fact, I have an in-law in Canada who refuses to call herself "Chinese" in Mandarin (like from mainland), but has no problem identifying herself as "Huaren."
It really depends on how one asks the question.
Good points Michael and Sun Bin. As an overseas ethnic Chinese in Oz-land I've been hearing stories about the de-sinosization (if these is such a word) in the last 15 years. (Including the recent renaming one of Taiwan's airport or removing signs in primary schools promoting in rough translation,'work hard and being a good chinese'). Could this also cause a rise in the feeling of non-chineseness particularly in the younger generations?
ReplyDeleteanecdotally, pretty much all taiwanese who i have heard have gone to china to work for short-medium term come back saying they hate the environment, it's annoying what their local coworkers say about taiwan but they still keep their mouths shut, and they feel very, very taiwanese.
ReplyDeletebut if you want to ask people something more specific like, "is taiwanese a chinese culture?" or "is taiwanese culture derivative of chinese culture?", they'd almost definitely say yes. if i were to translate this into english, most taiwanese people basically would have no problem saying they are sino (historical/racial/loosely cultural or linguistic identity) and taiwanese (history, nationality, strictly culturally). but probably something like 80-90% have long rejected a chinese identity that includes china the nation.
the people that believe they are part of an eternal china chinese is limited to mostly han-chauvinists mainly of waisheng background. though i want to point out that this is misleading and you can't make assumptions about people because there are waisheng that speak taiwanese fluently and support taiwanese independence and there are bensheng that support unification, are anti-american, and believe in china greatness.
Anon, sorry, but I had to delete the comment with the extremely long link. You can use HTML to display it.
ReplyDeleteMichael
The most baffling thing to me is that many people in Taiwan tend to think that being 'Chinese' means they have an obligation to belong to 'China' the country (i.e. the PRC). In reality, there's no reason someone could not live in Taiwan and feel they are 'Chinese' yet believe strongly that Taiwan is and always has been an independent country. Too often this issue confuses people....
ReplyDelete