Democratic Progressive Party Chairman Yu Shyi-kun recently coined the term Chinese Taiwanese, to describe himself and others in Taiwan. In addition, Insight City Guide: Taipei, a tour book published by a German company in May, but partially sponsored by the Taipei City Government, claimed that the term "Taiwanese" made some Mainlanders feel uncomfortable.
These incidents stirred up a lot of opposition. It is clear that identity is important to people in Taiwan in terms of both political gains and self worth. Samuel Huntington of Harvard University summarized in his 2004 book Who Are We? that there are six primary sources of identity: one, Ascriptive, Cultural, Territorial, Political, Economic and Social.
Moreover, in 2004 Melissa Brown of Stanford University described in her book Is Taiwan Chinese? The impact of Culture, Power, and Migration on Changing Identities that several assumptions and concepts about Han (
One, Han ethnic identity is linked to Chinese national identity.
Two, Chinese national identity is linked to Han culture.
Three, Chinese national identity has a clear border, and a person or a group is located on one side or the other. This border separates Chinese from non-Chinese, Han from non-Han. All of these assumptions and concepts, some derived from Confucian "culturalist" principles, have serious problems in "stamping" others' identity. However, based on her excellent field work in Taiwan and in China, Brown theorized and successfully demonstrated that the following points were true:
One, identity is based on social experience, not cultural ideas or ancestry. Two, cultural meanings and social power constitute two distinct -- though interacting -- systems that affect human behavior and societies differently. Three, demographic forces such as migration affect human behavior and society in other ways.
I am an active board member in the St. Louis chapters of both the Taiwanese Association of America and the North America Taiwanese Engineers' Association. In these organizations, we call ourselves Taiwanese and Taiwanese Americans.
However, because of this, the organizations and its members were often labeled by Chinese Americans as "Taiwan Independence groups" and "exclusive."
They sometimes prescribe a remedy that asks us to be "inclusive." This kind of characterization is not only overly simplistic, but also mean-spirited. The root cause I think for this mischaracterization is their premeditated bias and agenda.
The term "Chinese" in English means "Zhongguo ren (
However, the meaning of "Zhongguo ren (
But, on the other hand, I often wonder what the problems are for those who were born in Taiwan, grew up in Taiwan and were educated in Taiwan that make them so fearful or uncomfortable to be identified as Taiwanese or Taiwanese Americans?
Instead, they are most comfortable calling themselves and others "Zhongguo ren" -- people of China, a country that is authoritarian, barbaric and most of all, extremely hostile to Taiwan.
Most ironic of all, when others want to be called Taiwanese or Taiwanese Americans, they are now labeled as "exclusive."
They should learn to be "inclusive." It is sad and pitiful. I maintain that striving for a de jure independent Taiwan and inclusiveness are not at all mutually exclusive.
Donald Shengduen Shih is a materials scientist at the Boeing Company.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
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