Published in the University of California Press's Interdisciplinary Studies of China series in 2004, the book "Is Taiwan Chinese? The impact of culture, power and migration on changing identities" by Stanford University anthropologist Melissa Brown is a scholarly yet accessible work that examines the ways in which identity underlies the political debate in Taiwan over China relations.
Brown tackles the issue as an anthropologist, and three of the book's six chapters are based on detailed empirical case studies that she carried out in the field, mainly in the early 1990s. This fieldwork was undertaken in three villages in Tainan County in Taiwan's southwest, and in the Enshi Tujia-Miao Autonomous Prefecture in Hubei Province of central China. Both of these districts, one each in the ROC and the PRC, represent areas where rich evidence of identity-change is available. It is the author's contention that this evidence provides a framework for the analysis of the political implications of identity in Taiwan and China in a fashion that can inform policy decisions about the island's relations with the PRC.
The first quarter of the main text of the book consists of two chapters that provide an important backgrounder for its main theme. The first of these, subtitled "Culture, identity and the 'Taiwan problem,'" clarifies certain terminology and concepts important to the principal argument developed in the book.
Brown opens her first chapter by distinguishing between her usage of Han and Chinese throughout the book. As she points out, the English language does not differentiate in its use of Chinese between ethnic identity and nationality. Thus, theoretically at least, a particular Chinese ambassador could be ethnically Japanese while an ethnic Chinese, whose family had been resident in, say, Australia for many generations, would be Australian by nationality. In the book, therefore, Han is used to refer to ethnic identity and Chinese only to nationality.
In this chapter, Brown expands on the core concept of group identity, which she asserts is held together by common sociopolitical experience and not, as is commonly claimed, by purported common descent or culture. This interpretation of identity contradicts the idea, put forward by the PRC, and apparently accepted by Taiwan at least prior to 1999, that if Taiwan's people are culturally Han, they should therefore be part of the nation of China--though, from the Taiwanese point of view, not under the current Beijing regime.
The second chapter, subtitled "Reinstating Plains Aborigines in Taiwan's History," examines the role of the Pingpu people in Taiwan's history and leads into the important proposition that Taiwanese identity incorporates an amalgam of aboriginal and Han ancestry amongst its shared experience. It observes that the 1990s saw a renewed interest, both scholarly and popular, in the history of Taiwan as opposed to the history of China. Many historical projects, in researching the formation of Taiwanese culture and society, explored the inclusion of the Pingpu, a people who Brown believes "disappeared twice from historical discussion."
The purpose of the fieldwork, described in considerable detail in the book, is to document and analyse the 20th-century identity change of plains aborigines to Han, the ethnic majority on Taiwan, and briefly discuss their recent reclassification as plains aborigines again. For purposes of comparison, the Tujia people in the Chinese province of Hubei are examined as another group with a history of identity changes from non-Han to Han and then back again. Brown records that both groups had adopted many cultural ideas and practices of the Han majority, yet had quite different historical experiences, notably before Taiwan came under Ching rule in 1683, and after 1895 when it became a Japanese colony.
The three chapters on fieldwork are packed with information obtained from historical records. In addition to census data, these include household registry information from Taiwan and data from the ethnic identification project in Hubei. Extensive personal interviews were conducted in both regions. The individuals interviewed represented large proportions of the targeted populations.
The information collected includes data on intermarriage between Han and non-Han individuals, and on cultural practices covering language and customs like funeral rites, marriage rituals, residence patterns, and surname and property inheritance.
Although the fieldwork chapters in the book are fundamental to the author's argument, they are likely to be too detailed for the general reader interested primarily in her conclusions. While accepting the importance of these chapters to the reasoning behind those conclusions, the final chapter, "Theory and the Politics of Reunification," will have the greatest appeal to the layman.
Brown opens her final chapter with the statement "The 'Taiwan problem'--the question of whether Taiwan should be a part of the Chinese nation or its own independent nation--is a political one. Moreover, it is fundamentally an issue of identity."
The first part of the chapter enunciates the theoretical basis of Brown's analysis of the "Taiwan problem" and discusses issues such as the definition of culture, social power and demographic conditions as they relate to the concept of identity change. Identity change is important to the issue of the "Chineseness" of Taiwan, which has much to do with the claims of the PRC on the status of the island as part of a "one China."
The chapter argues that identity change in Taiwan, specifically the move towards Han identity by plains aborigines, was strongly affected by two circumstances: the migration, largely of men, from Fujian province in the mid-17th century and the enforcement of the foot binding ban by the Japanese colonial government in 1915. The first encouraged migrants to marry aboriginal women or women of mixed Han-aboriginal descent, and the second made it possible for aboriginal women to adopt a Han identity.
Identity formation, Brown claims, is based on social experiences, broadly construed to include political experiences passed down as oral history. On the basis of the evidence from the fieldwork undertaken by the author, she describes the social experiences that formed the new Taiwanese identity before 1949 as much the same as those undergone in Hubei, where Han and non-Han people also came together. These experiences were migration, intermarriage and regime change.
After 1949, the experiences of people in Taiwan diverged from those of the people studied by Brown in Hubei, a situation that led to critical differences in identity. Before 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang arrived, all the Taiwanese Han were locals. Initially, intermarriage between the newly arrived mainlanders and the Taiwanese was frowned upon, and many affluent mainlanders brought wives and children with them in their escape. Intermarriage increased gradually, however, especially as successive generations of mainlanders learned the Hoklo Taiwanese language and their Taiwanese counterparts were forced to learn Mandarin.
Brown argues that a series of socio-political experiences shared by most of Taiwan's population in the years immediately following the end of World War II and the takeover of the island by the Kuomintang solidified an "ethnic" Taiwanese identity. She identifies two experiences that she suggests were particularly significant. These were the change of national language, virtually overnight, from Japanese to Mandarin, which led to many Taiwanese losing their jobs since they could not speak the new language, and the heavy-handed government response to the Feb. 28 Incident of 1947, which affected many, if not most, Taiwanese families. Brown sees this incident as having created political forces that spurred a new, inclusive and national Taiwanese identity and ultimately paved the way for a democratization movement. This "national identity" was reinforced, she avers, when the PRC warned the Taiwanese against voting for Chen in the 2000 presidential election.
The author concludes that the clear differences in sociopolitical experiences between Taiwan and China since 1945 have formed a very real national identity for Taiwan, and that an analysis of the underlying identity issues in the "Taiwan problem" shows how difficult it will be to work out the political impasse over Taiwan's future.
It is interesting, and relevant, to note that surveys by the Election Study Center at National Chengchi University reveal that, in 1992, more than 25 percent of the population called themselves Chinese--a term that is synonymous with Han in Brown's terminology--while only about 17 percent identified themselves as ethnically Taiwanese. At the end of 2005, the proportion identifying as Chinese had dropped to less than 7 percent while the proportion claiming to be Taiwanese had risen to well over 40 percent.
Brown lists three options open to the PRC, given its adherence to the ideological position that Taiwanese people are Chinese and therefore part of China. These options are to go to war; to proceed with their own political reforms that might actually lead to democratization in order to draw Taiwan into unification with the mainland; or to accept that Taiwan will not return to China's fold. She does not believe that any of these options is likely to be favored by the PRC government.
She adds that, since the ROC government accepted the new Taiwanese identity as a real part of the political landscape in the 1990s, its current problem is how to make that message resonate elsewhere, both in China and internationally. In Brown's words, "If Taiwan can negotiate a separate identity in either realm, it has leverage for its negotiation in the other."
Brown's book is a substantial scholarly work that offers strong and carefully researched anthropological evidence for concluding that the Taiwanese have developed their own identity which differentiates them from the mainland population. If such an ethnicity were the principal reason for the establishment of a nation-state, as is commonly claimed, then the case is made for an independent Taiwan. However, it is hard to conceive that nothing other than political and economic issues will determine the final outcome of the cross-strait impasse, and it is incumbent on all with the interests of the island at heart to ensure that any outcome is achieved peacefully and with the majority support of the Taiwanese people.
Copyright 2006 by Philip Courtenay.