Nowadays with the Democratic Progressive Party in the Presidency (at least for now) we hear a lot in Taiwan about ethnic group cultures and identity; the term is “zu qun” in pinyin, something like race/nation, and it’s supposed to be important and explain all kinds of social and political behavior. If the zu qun are balanced in representation in the media and in all kinds of social groups there will be social harmony – or that is at least the wishful vision of the ruling party.
The DPP of course originated when the native Taiwanese majority broke through the martial law imposed by Chiang Kai-shek’s refugee government. It ruled Taiwan as if the Republic of China were just temporarily squeezed into the one province of China, and the head warlord and the Shanghai bankers had a permanent charter. Writing “Made in Taiwan” on a product was sedition; it had to be “Made in ROC”. And in the old days, Chinese provincial ethnicity was written on your ID card; it gave your father’s native place as your own, and this was significant for quotas of national representation of China in government employment.
But as soon as the Chinese orthodoxy of the mainlander 13% was cracked, it became obvious that there were restive issues as well within the native Taiwanese majority that predated Chiang Kai-shek. The Hakka (closer to Cantonese) resented being hugely outnumbered almost four to one and linguistically endangered by the Hoklo (or Hokkien, from Fujian); they had been given certain niches in railway work and other government jobs under the Chiangs’ divide-and-conquer strategy. The Hakka relished a creation story that they had originated in the central plain of the Yellow River, and had been forced south a thousand years ago by Mongol invasions; they kept their ancestral listings to nearly thirty generations, while the Hokkien mostly kept only three. But the Hokkien were often coopted as well under Chiang Ching-kuo’s “Taiwanization” policies of the 1970’s.
As for the indigenous tribes (maybe 4% of the population in 1950) that are now recognized as Austronesians, like the Filippinos, they were told that their distant ancestors came from China and they were part of the great Chinese nation as well, although their languages were unrelated. Large numbers of retired mainlander soldiers were settled in remote villages and on the east coast; marrying indigenous women, the children became “Chinese”. Since mountain land was designated reservation land under the central government and the main avenues of advancement were military and police work, the long dependency of the indigenous people ironically has made them supporters of the most conservative political forces espousing Chinese nationalism -- while the Taiwan independence advocates want to use Taiwan’s supposed Austronesian roots for differentiation from China. In practical terms, indigenous people sometimes say, “We learned Japanese, we learned Mandarin, so why should we learn Taiwanese now? They are all outside oppressors.”
But now over sixty years after the Taiwanese stopped being Japanese subjects and were forced to learn Mandarin, the whole issue of zu qun, in my opinion, is overrated. Taiwan is not Malaysia, where the Malays, Chinese, and Indians speak entirely different languages, have different racial features, practice mutually exclusive religions, and eat different food (notably, the matter of pork). In Taiwan everybody reads Chinese characters, the distinguishing feature of Chinese culture, and eats about the same food with chopsticks. The enforced Mandarinization was largely successful, in that nearly everyone under age seventy can understand Mandarin, even though Hokkien is the language of the south and of the working class, even in police precinct offices.
The change has not been in one direction. The mainlanders and their children have intermarried and shifted towards identifying as Taiwanese. I think the big change came in the late 1980’s when it became legal to go to China. Mainlanders who had been asserting their cultural superiority over the native Taiwanese for decades, even while Taiwanese became opulent with the export economy, were suddenly faced with the stagnation and poverty of their dusty hometowns in Hunan or Guangxi and the avarice of distant cousins. Many who swore to live out their lives in China came back to Taiwan soon and now called it home.
As Chinese emigrants began to stream out of China in the 1990’s through the smuggling activities of “snakeheads”, the professional and business people from Taiwan who were living and traveling abroad, whether native Taiwanese or “mainlander”, became anxious to label themselves as from Taiwan, not China. Till now, this distinction may be accentuated rather than obscured by the large presence of Taiwanese entrepreneurs in China, even though the PRC government strong-arms them into denouncing Taiwan independence. The future of this economic integration and its impact on Taiwanese identity remains to be seen.
In my view, the underlying dynamic of political confrontation within Taiwan is now not so much even cultural or political identity (Taiwanese versus Chinese) as who gets what cut of the pie, given that Taiwan’s government expenditures are a very large and rich pie. The same goes for the red shirts on Ketagalan Boulevard, no matter their shrill cries about corruption and their faint façade of Chinese nationalism. Hopefully it will continue to be a process of the ballot box.
Comments
Ben
"...even though Hokkien is the language of the south and of the working class, even in police precinct offices"
A disagreement from me...Hokkien is the language of pretty much of the entire Taiwan region (including Penghu island, Kinmen island, Mazhu island, etc) except for part of Hsinchu, Taoyuan, and Miaoli counties where majority of the Hakka population reside. And, not just the working class..just about the entire specturm of the society.
"...underlying dynamic of political confrontation within Taiwan is now not so much even cultural or political identity (Taiwanese versus Chinese) as who gets what cut of the pie, given that Taiwan’s government expenditures are a very large and rich pie."
Disagreed...it is about Taiwan being rightfully and legally returned back to the hand of Taiwanese people (be it the aborigianl, the Hokkien, the Hakka, the post WW-II comers, or newly immigrants), and not being ruled by a group of political refugees (or their 2nd-generations) that was defeated by THE party in China and now so ironically has be-friended with them (to harm Taiwan in many ways).
December 3, 2007 6:22 PM
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December 5, 2007 4:15 AM