Taiwanese do not share a sense of a community of common destiny or a sense of national identity. Struggling between the remnants of China and a newborn Taiwan, how should Taiwanese conceive of their national identity?
When World War II ended in 1945, Japan gave up colonies in Taiwan and Korea. The latter declared independence, dividing into North Korea and South Korea.
Without the awareness of being a nation, Taiwan took on the name the Republic of China (ROC) and inherited the Qing government. However, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) defeated the ROC in the Chinese Civil War in 1949. Since then, Taiwan has been mired in the never-ending struggle between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) representing the PRC and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) representing the ROC.
Intellectuals who fled to Taiwan with the KMT had expected the ROC to become a democratic nation in Taiwan. However, under the regimes of former presidents Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), dissidents were repressed for having a conscience.
Taiwanese democracy pioneer Peng Ming-min (彭明敏) in 1964 drafted “A Declaration of Formosan Self-Salvation” with his students, expecting “residents in Taiwan” to build a new nation together.
Peng, an expert in international law, who had been recruited as an adviser to the ROC’s delegation to the UN by Chiang Kai-shek, called the then-president’s dream of “retaking the mainland” unattainable, and advocated for “one Taiwan, one China,” a new constitution, joining the UN as “Taiwan” and creating a free nation.
Peng then became a political prisoner and remained in exile for more than two decades until Chiang Ching-kuo was succeeded by then-president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) in the early 1990s.
The ROC under Lee’s rule had encouraged a community of common destiny, but the vision of establishing a new democratic nation was not accepted by supporters of a colonial party-state.
Most of these privileged supporters of the KMT’s party-state appeared to be anti-CCP and patriotic, and yet they conspired with and benefited from the KMT’s authoritarian rule during the Martial Law era. Ever since Taiwan democratized, they became reactionaries who impeded the forging of a Taiwanese community.
“Pro-China” supporters, who appear to root for the ROC, often get US citizenship for their families to avoid risks. Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is one example.
Many of the mainlanders who fled China with the KMT after 1949 — the so-called waishengren (外省人) — have already identified with Taiwan. However, some of them who came from the military faction of the KMT’s party-state and the culturally privileged group do not share the vision of Taiwan as a new democracy.
It is astonishing for a political clown like Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) to become the KMT’s choice to organize the Double Ten National Day celebrations.
He compared former president Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) remarks on safeguarding the ROC on Taiwan to “locking up a little old man suffering from malnutrition in a dark house for the past eight years.”
Who is trying to eliminate the ROC? Who is trying to murder the ROC on Taiwan? Is it not the PRC?
Ending the exile of the ROC, wiping out its remnants and rebuilding the nation, returning the Chineseness to China and ending sovereignty disputes are the only ways that we can turn a new page in the history of a community with a common destiny and national identity.
Lee Min-yung is a poet.
Translated by Fion Khan
Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention. If it makes headlines, it is because China wants to invade. Yet, those who find their way here by some twist of fate often fall in love. If you ask them why, some cite numbers showing it is one of the freest and safest countries in the world. Others talk about something harder to name: The quiet order of queues, the shared umbrellas for anyone caught in the rain, the way people stand so elderly riders can sit, the
After the coup in Burma in 2021, the country’s decades-long armed conflict escalated into a full-scale war. On one side was the Burmese army; large, well-equipped, and funded by China, supported with weapons, including airplanes and helicopters from China and Russia. On the other side were the pro-democracy forces, composed of countless small ethnic resistance armies. The military junta cut off electricity, phone and cell service, and the Internet in most of the country, leaving resistance forces isolated from the outside world and making it difficult for the various armies to coordinate with one another. Despite being severely outnumbered and
Taiwan’s fall would be “a disaster for American interests,” US President Donald Trump’s nominee for undersecretary of defense for policy Elbridge Colby said at his Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday last week, as he warned of the “dramatic deterioration of military balance” in the western Pacific. The Republic of China (Taiwan) is indeed facing a unique and acute threat from the Chinese Communist Party’s rising military adventurism, which is why Taiwan has been bolstering its defenses. As US Senator Tom Cotton rightly pointed out in the same hearing, “[although] Taiwan’s defense spending is still inadequate ... [it] has been trending upwards
After the confrontation between US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday last week, John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, discussed this shocking event in an interview. Describing it as a disaster “not only for Ukraine, but also for the US,” Bolton added: “If I were in Taiwan, I would be very worried right now.” Indeed, Taiwanese have been observing — and discussing — this jarring clash as a foreboding signal. Pro-China commentators largely view it as further evidence that the US is an unreliable ally and that Taiwan would be better off integrating more deeply into
RSS