Taiwanese people

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This article is about the people governed by the Republic of China. For the Chinese-language dialect known as Taiwanese, see Taiwanese (linguistics)
A group of Taiwanese youth

Taiwanese people (simplified Chinese: 台湾人; traditional Chinese: 臺灣人 also 台灣人; pinyin: Táiwān rén) may refer to individuals who either claim or are imputed cultural identity focused on the island of Taiwan and/or the lands and territories which have been governed by the Republic of China (ROC) since 1949. At least three competing (occasionally overlapping) paradigms are used to identify someone as a Taiwanese person: a nationalist criteria, self-identification (including the concept of "New Taiwanese") criteria, and socio-cultural criteria. These standards are fluid, in keeping with an evolving social and political milieu. The complexity resulting from competing and evolving standards is compounded by a larger dispute regarding the political identity of Taiwan itself, and its potential de jure independence or political unification with the People's Republic of China.

The composite category of "Taiwanese people" is often reputed by many Taiwanese to include a significant population of at least four constituent ethnic groups: the Hoklo (70%), the Hakka (15%), Mainlander (13%), and Taiwanese aborigines (2%) (Copper 2003:12–13);(Hsiao 2004:105). Although the concept of the "four great ethnic groups" was a deliberate attempt by the Hoklo dominated Democratic Progressive Party(DPP) to diffuse Taiwanese-Mainlander tensions, this conception has become a dominant frame of reference for dealing with Taiwanese ethnic and national issues (Makeham 2005:4–5). Despite the wide use of the "four great ethnic groups" in public discourse as essentialized identities, the relationships between the peoples of Taiwan have been in a constant state of convergence and negotiation for centuries. The continuing process of cross-ethnic mixing with ethnicities from within and outside Taiwan, combined with the disappearance of ethnic barriers due to a shared socio-political experience, has led to the emergence of "Taiwanese" as a larger ethnic group (Harrell/Huang 1994:14–15).

Definitions of Taiwanese

Although group identity is often claimed on the basis of ancestry and culture, in actuality it is held together by a common socio-political experience (Corcuff 2000). Any connection Taiwanese may have with one another is purely subjective, based on the shared belief in a common destiny stemming from the very real parameters of daily life including: Government, Economy, Education, Popular culture and Electronic/Print Media (Anderson 1983; Hsiau 2000:10–14). However, political leaders often attempt to manipulate and fix identities for political gain, by assigning an essentialist identity to a community.

It should also be noted that identities are not fixed, but fluid and change with time and memory or in response to a changing environment rather than stemming from a primordial or authentic source (Bhabha 1994:1; Brown 2004:5). New identities are continually emerging based on individuals’ perceptions of commonalities and differences as the patterns of local communities, kinship and language pattern usage change with economic, cultural and demographic change, and on the national experience (Harrell 1996:5).

The history of Taiwanese identity

The earliest notion of a Taiwanese group identity emerged in the form of a national identity following the Qing empire’s ceding of Taiwan to Japan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895 (Morris 2002:3–6). Prior to Japanese colonization, residents of Taiwan developed relationships based on class solidarity and social connections rather than ethnic identity. Although Han often cheated Aborigines, they also married and supported one another against other residents of the same ethnic background. Taiwan was the site of frequent feuding based on ethnicity, lineage and place of origin Lamley 1981; Harrell 1990; Shepherd 1993:310–323.

Japanese era

In the face of the Japanese colonial hierarchy, the people of Taiwan were faced with the unequal binary relationship between colonizer and colonized. This duality between "one" and "other" was evident in the seven years of violence between the Japanese and groups of united anti-Japanese Han and Aborigines (Katz 2005). Only later did the Japanese attempt to incorporate Taiwanese into the Japanese identity as "loyal subjects", but the mismatch between the experience of the colonized and the colonizer polarized the two groups (Fujii 2006:70–73).

The concept of "race" was utilized as a tool to confirm and facilitate Japanese political policies. A system of household registers based on the notion of race to separate and define groups of colonial subjects. From within the group of "non-Japanese" the colonial government divided Han citizens into "Han" and "Hakka" based on their perception of linguistic and cultural differences.The Japanese also maintained the Qing era classification of Aborigines as either "raw" or "cooked" (Brown 2004:8), which to the Japanese embodied the social ramification of ethnic origin and perceived loyalty to the empire (Wolf & Huang 1980:19).

Kuomintang era

In 1945, Taiwan entered the political sphere of the Republic of China (ROC). Shortly after the armistice with Japan, many people in Taiwan simply refered to themselves as "Chinese".[1] Shortly following the Kuomintang's arrival, however, social conflict erupted in the midst of rampant government corruption, soaring inflation and an increasing flow of immigrants from China. The latter were preferred for jobs in the civil service as opposed to Taiwanese who were regarded as "untrustworthy"(Phillips 2003:8–9). Recurrent violent suppression of dissent also played an important role in enforcing a separate sense of "Taiwanese-ness" (Gates 1981:253–275).

Under the Chinese Nationalist structure, "Taiwanese" became a strong "regional" identity. The term has often been used synonymously with benshengren, a term which covered both Hoklo and Hakka whose ancestors arrived in Taiwan before the Japanese restrictions on immigration in 1895. "Taiwanese" was used in contrast with waishengren (mainlanders), who included the people who followed the KMT to Taiwan between 1945 and 1949 and their descendants. The government tended to stress provincial identities, with identification cards and passports issued until the late 1990s displaying one's ancestral province and county. During this period the terms "cooked" and "raw" Aborigines disappeared. The former "raw" Aborigines were termed Gaoshanzu (Mountain Race) or Gaoshan Tongbao (Mountain Compatriots).

Democratic era

With Taiwan's political liberalization in the 1970s and 1980s, encouraged by Taiwan's changing international status, the concept of a "Taiwanese people" became politicized by opponents of the KMT. The "tang wai" movement deployed concepts of "Taiwanese identity" against the authoritarian KMT government, often using extreme tactics to build a short-term ethno-centric opposition to the KMT (Edmunson 2002:34–42). The campaign saw resonance with the people of Taiwan and the term "Taiwanese" has been used py politicians of all parties to refer to the electorate in an effort to secure votes. The concept of a seperate Taiwanese identity has become such an integral factor to the election culture in Taiwan, that identifying as a Taiwanese has become essential to being elected in Taiwan (Corcuff 2002:243–249).

New Taiwanese

The term "New Taiwanese 新台灣人" was coined by former President of the Republic of China, Lee Teng-hui in 1995 to bridge the ethnic cleavage which formed following the February 28 Incident in 1947 and characterized the frigid relations between waishengren and native Taiwanese during forty years of martial law. Although the "xin Taiwan guan 新台灣觀" (New Taiwanese Concept) or "xin Taiwan lun 新台灣論" (The debate on the new Taiwanese identity) was originally aimed at the successive generations of Taiwanese with mainlander ancestry, it has been further articulated by Lee and other political and social leaders to refer to any person who loves Taiwan and is committed to calling Taiwan home. Although critics have called the "New Taiwanese Concept" a political ploy to win votes from native Taiwanese who regarded the KMT as an alien regime, it has remained an important factor in the dialectic between ethnic identities in Taiwan. Despite being adopted early on by former Provincial Governor James Soong (1997) and later by Taipei mayor and KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (1999), the term has since been dropped from contemporary political rhetoric (Corcuff 2002:186–188).

Multicultural future

In contemporary Taiwan the phenomenon of mixed marriages between couples comprising different ethnic groups has grown to include people from the Indian subcontinent, southeast Asia, the Philippines, Europe, the Americas and the Pacific Islands. The increasing number of marriages between natives of Taiwan and other countries creates a problem for the rigid definitions of ethnic identity used by both the ROC and the PRC when discussing Taiwan {{Harvcol}Harrell|1995}}. In one-seventh of all marriages in Taiwan today, one partner will be from another country and one out of every twelve children is born to a family of mixed parentage. Many immigrants to Taiwan seek to gain official ROC citizenship and assume a Taiwanese national identity. As Taiwan's birthrate is among the lowest in the world, this contingent is playing an increasingly important role in changing Taiwan's demographic makeup.

Self identification

Main article: Taiwan independence

In a 2002 poll by the Democratic Progressive Party, over 50% of the respondents considered themselves "Taiwanese" only, up from less than 20% in 1991 (Dreyer 2003). In a poll released in December 2006 by the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), 57% of people on Taiwan consider themselves to be Taiwanese. 23% Chinese and 20% both Chinese and Taiwanese (China Post, 2006). The sense of a collective Taiwanese identity has continued to increase despite fluctuations in support for pro-independence political parties. This has been cited as evidence that the concept of Taiwanese identity is not the product of local political manipulation, but an actual phenomenon of ethnic and sociopolitical identities (Corcuff 2002:137–149, 207; Hsiao 2003:157–170).

History of the major socio-cultural groups

According to the Republic of China government, the majority of Taiwan's 23 million population consist of 98% Han Chinese (GIO 2004) with a minority Austronesian population of less than 500,000. Migration to Taiwan from southern Asia began approximately 12,000 B.C.E. but large scale migration to Taiwan did not occur until the 18th to the beginning of the 20th century as a result of political and economic chaos in China (Shepherd 1993; Bellwood 2000; Blust 1988). The first large scale migration occurred as a result of the Manchu invasion and conquest of China, overthrowing the Ming dynasty and establishing the Qing dynasty, which was established in 1644 and remained until 1911.

In 1624, the Dutch East India Company, with on the suggestion of the Ming Court, established an outpost in Tainan in southern Taiwan. The Dutch soon realized Taiwan's potential as a colony for trading deer hide, venison, rice, and sugar. However, aborigines were not interested in developing the land and transporting settlers from Europe would be too costly. Due to the resulting labor shortage, the Dutch opted to hire Han farmers from across the Taiwan Strait (Andrade 2006). Migration of male laborers from Fujian steadily increased into the 18th and 19th century. In time, this migration and the gradual removal of ethnic markers(coupled with the acculturation, intermarriage and assimilation of plains aborigines with the Han) resulted in the wide spread adoption of Han patterns of behavior making Taiwanese Han the ethnic majority.

It was not until the Japanese arrival in 1895 that Taiwanese first developed a collective Taiwanese identity in contrast to that of the colonizing Japanese (Morris 2002). When the Chinese Civil War broke out between Kuomintang nationalists and the Chinese communists in 1945, there was another mass migration of people from China to Taiwan fleeing the communists. These migrants are known as the Mainlanders. The descendants of Hoklo, Hakka and plains aborigines who have lived together on Taiwan for over four hundred years and have come to be known as benshengren, or native Taiwanese.

Aborigines

Main article: Taiwanese aborigines

Taiwanese Aborigines or Aboriginal peoples (Chinese: 原住民; pinyin: yuánzhùmín; Wade–Giles: yüan2-chu4-min2; Taiwanese Pe̍h-oē-jī: gôan-chū-bîn, literally "original inhabitants") are the indigenous peoples of Taiwan. Their ancestors are believed to have been living on the islands for approximately 8,000 years before major Han Chinese immigration began in the 1600s (Blust 1999). Taiwan's Austronesian speakers were traditionally distributed over much of the island's rugged central mountain range and concentrated in villages along the alluvial plains. Today, the bulk of the contemporary Taiwanese Aborigine population reside in the mountains and the major cities. The total population of Aborigines on Taiwan is around 458,000 as of January 2006, (CIP 2006) which is approximately 2% of Taiwan's population. The cities of Yilan, Hualien, and Taitung are known for their aboriginal communities. In the 1990's several groups of recognized indigenous tribes, which had traditionally viewed themselves as seperate, united under the singular ethnic moniker "原住民“ or 'Aborigines" (Stainton 1999).

Hoklo

The Hoklo communities in Taiwan originated from male laborers from Fujian (hired by the Dutch), some of whom married into Lowland Taiwanese aborigine communities. Official statistics show that aborigines make-up less than 2% of Taiwan's population, they are often referring to those citizens who the government identifies as aborigines and may not reflect actual identification or hybridity. There are fragmented populations of lowland aborigines who still acknowledge their identity and heritage throughout Taiwan. Others have assimilated to a degree where their descendants speak Taiwanese and identify with the Hoklo majority, and it is possible to find families where the older members still identify themselves as lowland aborigine, while the rest of the family may identify as Hoklo.

Hakka

The Taiwanese Hakka communities, although arriving to Taiwan from Eastern Guangdong and the mountains of Fujian, have also likely mixed through intermarriage with lowland aborigines as well. Hakka family trees are known for identifying the male ancestors by their ethnic Hakka heritage while leaving out information on the identity of the female ancestors. Also, during the process of intermarriage and assimilation, many of the lowland aborigines and their families adopted Hoklo and Hakka family names. Much of this happened in Taiwan prior to the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, so that by the time of the Japanese colonization, most of the population that the Japanese classified as "Chinese" Hoklo and "Chinese" Hakka were in truth already of mixed ancestry. Physical features of both Taiwanese aborigine and Chinese can be found amongst the Taiwanese mainstream today.It is also believed by many scholars that the Hakka of Taiwan are mainly the descendants of Hakka assimilated ethnic Shi people from the mountainous area between Fujian and Guangdong, with linguistic relations to Min nan speakers (Norman 1988).

Mainlander

The descendants of mainlanders (sometimes called the "New Taiwanese") settled first within the heart of large urban centers in Taiwan such as Taipei, Taichung, or Kaohsiung. High numbers of government officials and civil servants who followed the KMT to Taiwan and occupied the positions of the colonial government moved into the official dormitories and residences built by the Japanese for civil servants. The ghettoization of mainlander communities exacerbated the divisions imagined by non-mainlander groups, and stymied cultural integration and assimilation into mainstream Taiwanese culture (Gates 1981). Nationalization campaigns undertaken by the KMT established an official "culture", which reflected the KMT government's own preference for what it considered authentic Chinese culture. This excluded many of the local Taiwanese practices and local cultures, including the diverse cultures brought to Taiwan by the mainlanders from all parts of China (Wachman 1994). Unlike, the Hoklo and Hakka of Taiwan, who felt excluded by the new government, the mainlanders and their families supported the nationalists and embraced the official "culture" as their own, with "national culture" being taught in school (Wilson 1970). The mainlanders used their embrace of Nationalist culture to identify themselves as the authentic Chinese people of Taiwan. People identifying themselves as "mainlanders" can now be found in all parts of Taiwan, and through government agriculture and construction campaigns of the 1960s, "mainlander" communities or mixed marriage communities have been established in the high mountains and along the east coast.

Genetic studies

Both Chinese and Taiwanese nationalists have often tried to validate their political claims based on biology and implied ancestry. Despite the advancement of genetic research and diaspora studies of human populations around the globe, there is no clear evidence to suggest any correlation between genetic or biological similarities or differences, and political or national identities.

The Hoklo and Hakka linguistic groups, which statistically make up the majority of Taiwan's population, can trace some of their historical cultural roots to Minnan- and Hakka-speaking peoples come from what is now China, predominantly the southern provinces of Guangdong and Fujian. Much of the original migrations from China were largely male, so there was considerable intermarriage with local plains aboriginal groups. The human leukocyte antigen typing study and mitochondrion DNA analysis performed in recent years show that more than 88% of the native Taiwanese population have some degree of aboriginal origin (Sim 2003). The lack of a definite genetic record of plains aborigines, or conclusive understanding of their proto-Austronesian roots, further complicates the use of genetic data (Blust 1988). A study of the depletion of Asian and Pacific Islanders demonstrates a noticeable difference between Han in China and on Taiwan (Stone 2000:351–357). A Mahalanobis generalized distance survey of 29 male groups categorized Taiwanese as a separate subgroup of Northern Asian different from Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou, associating Taiwanese closer to groups from Hainan, Korea, Ainu and Atayal (Pietrusewsky 2000:400–409).

Famous Taiwanese people

Main article: List of Taiwanese people

Notes

  1. ^ Taiwan independence leader Peng Ming-min, in his memoir A Taste of Freedom recalls: "One day I fell into conversation with two Americans in a jeep beside the road (in early occupied Japan), and in passing explained to them that I was not Japanese, but a Chinese from Formosa. It was something of a shock to find myself for the first time openly and proudly making this distinction" (Peng 1972:45).

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See also

External links

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