A good period of time has elapsed since a legislator or party official complained about his or her enemies playing the "ethnic card" for political gain. What this comfortable lull in the increasingly contrived ethnicity debate highlights is that the issue is repulsive to the great majority of people. And for good reason: the bulk of things the average person worries about can no longer be framed in simple ethnic terms.
The erosion of ethnicity as a weapon is a remarkable thing given the pervasive discrimination against non-Mainlanders on the basis of their ethnicity by previous Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) governments. And it remains the case that the military, academic, educational and the other public service sectors carry a deep imprint of ethnic stacking that buttressed KMT rule for so many years.
The inner sanctum of the KMT may still be disproportionately of Mainlander origin, but this is of significance now only if this group of men and women discriminate in policy terms against Taiwanese of non-Mainlander ethnicity. This is because the majority of KMT support is ethnic Taiwanese. A reliance on the Mainlander vote -- and conspicuous contempt toward ethnic Taiwanese -- would crucify the party, a fact that the Democratic Progressive Party has not worked hard enough to understand.
Whatever the explanation for the general lack of enthusiasm shown by Taiwanese for mobilizing along ethnic lines -- colonial residue, economic disincentives -- the fact remains that Taiwanese politicians and activists looking to make hay must focus increasingly on matters of common interest.
The most common interests at present are economic and military, though for ordinary people the former is more compelling and has greater currency at election time. The Chen administration has failed most spectacularly in turning this fact to its advantage, neglecting to promote Taiwan's economic successes and concentrating its campaign armory on dead-in-the-water defense initiatives and humdrum nation-building symbolism.
However, there is another common interest, though few care to speak of it: cross-ethnic national culture. Though differences in language and sensibility may mark one ethnic group from another, there is undoubtedly a common Taiwaneseness that is emerging and that can transcend explicit identification with either a "unified" China, an independent Taiwan or a Taiwan that is in sovereign limbo.
It is this common culture that hardliners on both sides of the unification-independence spectrum do their best to deny and undermine. But it is this very thing -- a sense of polity and common good -- that will eventually force Beijing to concede its mission of annexation must change radically if it is to amount to anything more than the prospect of an open-ended, brutal occupation. In China, provincialism (in the sense of identifying with one's province) is remarkably weak, particularly compared to the federalism of the US and many European states. China's conception of Taiwan as another province therefore can only divorce itself more and more from reality as time progresses.
It is said that former dictator Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) called himself a Taiwanese on his deathbed. Yet to this day many Mainlanders (and some ethnic Taiwanese) continue to harbor suspicion toward associating one's nationality with this island and the few other smaller islands that make up our home. These days, this fear is not of the concept so much as the people who are attempting to (often clumsily) champion it.
To which we say: Open your eyes, stand tall and be free of fear. This is everyone's home. All that matters is that it be protected from those who would harm it. And those enemies belong not to any ethnic group within but to another government that terrifies its own people to stay in power.
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