Until recently, the question of ROC national identity served as a simple litmus test to measure the patriotism of the citizenry. Nowadays, the same question engages a number of related issues that are not so easy to address.
In recent years, disagreement about whether Taiwan is a sovereign state or a breakaway province of the mainland has threatened the stability of East Asia and challenged the international diplomatic community. Yet, as author Christopher Hughes points out in his 1997 book, Taiwan and Chinese Nationalism, both Taipei and Beijing agree that the island and its residents are part of the Chinese nation and share a Chinese identity. This observation raises the issue of how national identity is constituted, which is the question that forms the basis of Hughes's study. The work was most timely when it was first published, and while Taiwan's political climate has continued to change even in the short span of two years, Taiwan and Chinese Nationalism is still relevant. At the same time, it can serve as a guide to appraising the current situation.
Hughes's work shares a similarity in perspective with books on Taiwan by numerous other authors--for instance, Tho mas Gold (The Taiwan Miracle) and John Copper ( Taiwan: Nation-State or Province?)--when he observes that there was little in Taiwan's past to suggest it would become the focus of debates on ethnicity, nationality or identity, either as part of mainland China or as a nation in itself. Early emigrants from the Chinese mainland came not to plant the flag of the ancestral land, but to get away from its wars and taxes. Nor did imperial China claim sovereignty. The concept itself was alien: the celestial empire was a cultural entity based on Confucian civilization and other values. When introduced to the idea of sovereignty in the latter half of the nineteenth century by importunate Westerners, imperial officials initially rejected it.
Japan also learned the term from unsolicited contact with foreign powers, but quickly grasped its possibilities. Under the principle of international law that allows unadministered territories to be taken over, Tokyo laid claim to Taiwan. Beijing responded by bestowing provincial status on the island, only to forfeit possession a decade later when it lost a war with Japan. Some scholars believe that the cession of Taiwan was an important factor in the creation of Chinese nationalism. They point out that, for example, Sun Yat-sen set up his first revolutionary nationalist organization in the same year, 1895, that Japan assumed jurisdiction over the island. However, the status of Taiwan did not become an important issue until World War II. Hughes's research shows that Taiwan was not listed as a province in the Chinese republic's draft constitutions of 1925, 1934 or 1936. Hence, being regarded as "lost territory" of the Ching Dynasty (1644-1911) was not interpreted to mean that the sovereignty of the Chinese nation extended to the island.
Nor did the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regard it as such. Mao Zedong, talking with Edgar Snow in 1936 about territories lost to Japan, said that Manchuria must be regained, but that if Korea and Taiwan wanted to break the chains of Japanese imperialism, the CCP would help them in their struggle for independence. The issue resurfaced at the Cairo confer ence of 1943, when Chiang Kai-shek stated his desire to recoup not only territories lost to Japan in 1937-39, but in 1895 as well. US President Roosevelt, anxious to keep China in the war, overruled British objections that Japan should simply cede Taiwan and the Penghu Islands rather than have them awarded to China. Since the CCP had portrayed itself as the spearhead of the patriotic struggle against Japan, Mao could scarcely have objected to this agreement.
In stating that it was only after Deng Xiaoping had consolidated power in 1978 and begun to depart from the "mistakes" made by Mao Zedong that Taiwan again became a major issue, Hughes plays down the Great Helmsman's considerable post -1949 efforts to retake the island. He neglects to mention the naval expedition that failed. Had it not been for Mao's eagerness to enter the Korean conflict, the Communists would have tried again--and probably would have eventually succeeded in taking the island. The US-ROC Security Treaty, a direct result of the Korean conflict, upset Mao's calculations. Nor is attention paid to the bombardment of the offshore islands in the late 1950s, which prompted Khrushchev to commend the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk--under which the Soviets traded space for time--to an infuriated Mao. Mao's secret conversations with Kissinger--revealed only after Hughes's book was published--also confirm the importance he attached to "recovering" Taiwan.
The reason the Taiwan issue resurfaced under Deng Xiaoping is not that Deng was rectifying Mao's mistakes, but that circumstances had changed. First, Deng was no longer bargaining with Kissinger, a tough negotiator, but with a weak and inept Carter administration which apparently wanted a normalization agreement at any price. Second, the Beijing leadership was aware that the health of Taiwan's president, Chiang Kai-shek's son Chiang Ching-kuo, had begun to fail. They antici pated, correctly, that he would be replaced by a native-born Taiwanese, and that this would adversely affect prospects for unification.
If it has been difficult historically for residents of Taiwan to identify with the Chinese nation, it has also been difficult for them to develop a sense of Taiwanese identity. As Hughes points out in this meticulously researched work, the island's population has always been both culturally and linguistically diverse. The ancestors of the largest group emigrated from Fujian Province, but even they were riven by distinctions based on clan lineage and native villages in different parts of Fujian. Taiwan's indigenous people are descended from nine major tribes, and the island's large Hakka minority originated largely in Guangdong Province. Each group has its own language (or "dialect") and customs, and each absorbed Japanese culture in its own way and to differing degrees. The influx of mainlanders from 1945 to 1949 added another group to the mix, and they also spoke a variety of languages.
It was unfortunate that Chiang Kai-shek's administration took the role of avenger against those it saw as having collabo rated with the Japanese, rather than that of liberator of oppressed fellow Chinese. Children were made to learn Mandarin and study the history of China rather than that of Taiwan. These attitudes aroused intense resentment against the Nationalists (KMT) and mainlanders in general, which crystallized in the February 28 Incident and subsequent demonstrations. As Hughes explains, the government's brutal suppression thereof silenced, but did not alter the views of, those who refused to accept the mainlander concept of Taiwan as the outpost of a temporarily occupied China.
Hughes examines how, two decades after the arrival of the KMT, daring intellectuals such as Peng Ming-min began to articulate an alternative vision of a nation. The term "islanders," said Peng, should no longer refer to those who had not arrived recently from the mainland, but to all individuals who live in Taiwan. Regardless of place of origin, they comprise a political community with a sense of shared destiny that transcends language, culture, and ethnic/geographic origin. This formulation also enabled Peng to reject the concept that anyone of Han ethnicity should be under Chinese rule: he felt that Chiang Kai-shek was using nationalistic mythology to support a government so undemocratic that it spoke not for China or Taiwan or even for the KMT, but only for a faction within the KMT.
Peng's ideas were carried forward by Tangwai (literally, those "outside the party," since the KMT was at that time the only legal party). Its members rejected the definition of patriotism advanced by Chiang Kai-shek's government--that of a sacred mission in which individuals sacrificed personal interests for the sake of national salvation. Rather, they argued, patriotism is a function of the individual's relationship to the community. This amounts to a contract-based vision of society. Such views did not endear their holders to the governing authorities, and the more outspoken Tangwai members were imprisoned or went into exile.
The democratization introduced in the closing years of Chiang Ching-kuo's presidency legalized opposition parties. Many Tangwai, including Peng, joined the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which quickly became the KMT's leading rival for power. Democratization did not, however, resolve the issue of Taiwan's status. Meanwhile, derecognition by most countries, including the United States, had rendered the ROC's claim to represent all of China increasingly hollow, as Hughes explains. It fell to Chiang's successor, the Taiwan born and raised Lee Teng-hui, to deal with a party and a society that were sharply divided on national identity and reform. The two issues were interconnected in ways that were potentially explosive. For example, how should the Legislature be reformed? Elected on the mainland in 1947 and continued on Taiwan with representatives from all mainland provinces, it clearly underrepresented Taiwan, which was the only province the govern ment actually administered. However, as Hughes points out, recreating the Legislature in the direction of one-person, one -vote would further undermine the KMT's claim to rule the mainland--as well as its legitimacy on Taiwan.
Hughes skillfully documents Lee's deft moves to advance democracy, maneuvering between militants' demands for a plebiscite on Taiwanese independence on the one hand and conservatives' reluctance to surrender their psychological identi fication with mainland China on the other. The process was fraught with danger, both to the well-being of the island--the PRC had threatened to invade if Taiwan declared independence--and to Lee himself. Hughes recalls how, on June 3, 1989, with Beijing in the heat of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations, Lee "finally told a plenary session of the [KMT] Central Committee...that the CCP governed the mainland"--and how angry KMT conservatives responded by announcing a chal lenge to his leadership. Lee placated his opponents, then seized on popular resentment engendered by one of their ambitious moves to mobilize public opinion, in order to advance his own democratization/Taiwanization agenda. He has defined his concept of the nation in terms of the German Gemeinschaft ("community"). This is translated into Chinese as shengming kungtung ti, literally "living community." Hughes argues that Lee's concept and Peng Ming-min's notion of "community of shared destiny" (mingyun kungtung ti) are "easy to associate." A consensus has also developed between the two major parties that a plebiscite or declaration of independence is unnecessary, since the Republic of China is already an independent sover eign state.
In Taiwan, intermarriage rates rose among those of different ethnic and geographic origin, muting many resentments. Identity cards issued since 1986 include the cardholder's place of birth; cards issued after 1992 do not list the holder's father's place of origin. In May 1999, the China News became the Taiwan News. In addition, there has been a gradual acceptance of multiculturalism. Taiwanese, Hakka, and aboriginal languages are taught in elementary schools in addition to Mandarin. Indigenous groups have sought and received government support for their rights. A new museum celebrates their cultures; the old, somewhat pejorative term shanpao ("mountain compatriots," by Hughes's translation) has been replaced with yuanchumin (indigenous peoples), and a permit must be obtained to visit certain areas that have been set aside for preservation of their traditional lifestyles. An irony is that the Republic of China's first popularly elected president, Lee Teng-hui, was born in Taiwan, while Taiwan's first popularly elected governor, James Soong, was born on the mainland.
An important symbolic marker occurred during the 1998 election campaign. President Lee, speaking in Mandarin, asked KMT candidate for mayor of Taipei Ma Ying-jeou, born in Hong Kong of mainlander parents but raised in Taiwan, "Where is your native place?" Ma replied in accented but clear Taiwanese "I am a 'New Taiwanese,' eating Taiwan rice and drinking Taiwan water." While undoubtedly carefully planned, as political events typically are, the concept of New Taiwanese has gained acceptance as an indication of the new belief community forming on the island. The "new centrism" of opposition leader Chen Shui-bian speaks from the same premise: problems confronting the nation--such as law and order, education, economic competitiveness, and security--must be addressed pragmatically, rather than through the distorting prism of place of origin.
The emergence of a domestic consensus within Taiwan does not, unfortunately, resolve the problem of its status within the world community. Searching for a name for this status, Hughes adapts a concept from noted political scientist Hedley Bull, calling it an "intermediate state." Bull might not recognize this as his concept; Hughes extrapolates the notion from Bull's highly skeptical analysis of arguments by other scholars that the appearance of actors other than states could signal the decline of the international society of states. The splintering of the Soviet Union and its client states into ethnicity-based units fiercely devoted to their privileges as sovereign states would seem to affirm the wisdom of Bull's skepticism.
Nonetheless, the characterization of Taiwan as suspended short of statehood, as Hughes argues, is accepted by most of the international community. Given the disparity between its size and that of the mainland, it would be difficult for Taiwan to demand that other states recognize the reality that it is a separately governed society with an emerging national identity that has similarities with, but is not the same as, that of the People's Republic of China. Hence, Taipei has been forced to develop what Hughes calls imaginative diplomatic practices--for example, to argue that, although there is but one China, this does not preclude the existence of two sovereign governments, each of which represents a different political entity and holds jurisdic tion over only one side of the Taiwan Strait. The crucial question, however, is whether states as the building blocks of the international order will be able to withstand Beijing's strident rejection of this interpretation. As Hughes points out, the global system does not have an impressive record when dealing with conflicts between the sanctity of statehood and the principle of self-determination.
June Teufel Dreyer is a professor of
political science at the University of Miami.
The third edition of her book, China's Political
System: Modernization and Tradition , was
recently published by Longmans.
Copyright 1999 by June Teufel Dreyer.