A History of Taiwanese Identity

The idea of a unified Taiwanese identity for everyone across all ethnic lines is a relatively new one. Up until very recently, Taiwan’s history is marked with successive bouts of foreign occupation and colonization, with layers of conflict between a whole slew of ethnic groups, many of which still coexist in Taiwan.

For thousands of years Taiwan’s population was made up of various Austronesian peoples speaking a variety of languages and with distinct cultures and identities. A brief period of European colonization, on the west coast by the Dutch and in the north by the Spanish in the 17th century, brought in Chinese immigrants as workers. The European colonies didn’t survive the 17th century, and their colonies on Taiwan, along with China, Tibet, Mongolia and Xinjiang, were colonized by the Manchurian Qing Empire. The waves of migrants from China continued to arrive in a similar way, and during a similar time frame, as Europeans colonized North America–with similar results on the indigenous peoples.

During the period of Qing colonization, the Chinese immigrants didn’t primarily identify themselves as Taiwanese, or even as Chinese. They identified themselves as being part of one of three groups from different areas in China: Quanzhou from southern Fujian, Zhangzhou from central Fujian, or Hakka, from Canton. The Quanzhou and Zhangzhou spoke Hoklo (or Holo), a type of Fujianese today often referred to as Taiwanese, while the Hakka have their own language.

The three groups were frequently at war with each other, or with the indigenous Austronesian peoples, and often maintained well fortified villages and armed militias, vestiges of which can be found in ceremonial martial arts groups today. The different peoples also, however, traded and intermarried–in the process mixing and matching families and customs. Towards the the end of the Qing colonial era in the mid 19th century, about two-thirds of Taiwan was Qing territory with the remainder still sovereign to the indigenous peoples.

The Qing designated indigenous populations under their control as “cooked savages” (more culturally assimilated) and those still independent as “raw savages” (not culturally assimilated), designations later changed to “plains people” and “mountain people”. The plains designation is still used today, but “mountain people” took on a derogatory tone and was phased out in the 1990s in favour of “aborigine.”

Modern concept of “Taiwanese”

Taiwan’s cultures were unique and varied, but still very tribal in outlook for the average person. That began to change after the Manchurians handed Taiwan over to Japan in 1895 after being defeated in war. The Manchurians themselves had rarely ventured to Taiwan, preferring to use ethnic Han proxies to rule, but the Japanese began to arrive in large numbers to build their model colony. They disarmed the militias and in the process started blurring the lines between the two linguistically common Fujian-descended groups of ethnic Chinese immigrants, so much so that today few Hoklo (Taiwanese) speakers know which of the two previously often violently hostile groups they descend from, though Hakka remain distinct.

The Japanese also, over a couple of decades, step by step invaded the territory of the independent indigenous peoples, eventually bringing the entire island under their control. However, they kept the “mountain” designation for the previously free indigenous peoples and administered them under different rules, which had the practical effect of allowing some of their culture to be maintained–though the Japanese did actively crack down on a few traditions like headhunting and facial tattooing.

The Japanese treated non-ethnically Japanese Taiwanese as second class citizens. Though they spread education widely, it took some time before they opened up the highest levels of education to non-Japanese. As far as the Japanese Empire was concerned, the Quanzhou, Zhangzhou and Hakka were all ethnically “Chinese” subjects, giving all three groups a common identity vis-a-vis the Japanese. While that enhanced a Chinese identity on the one hand, they were also subjects of the colony of Taiwan, and referred to as “Taiwanese.” As lower level education spread and some Taiwanese were granted access to higher education, a literate class of Japanese speakers emerged. By the 1920s Taiwanese intellectuals formed organizations calling for Taiwanese to be given rights to political participation, with many calling for self government for Taiwan within the Japanese Empire and a few for independence.

By the 1930s Japan had turned Taiwan into one of the most modern places in Asia, with widespread education, sanitation, good infrastructure and stable rule of law. The population was educated Japanese style in the Japanese language, and in 1935 some limited political participation was granted. However, Japan was also becoming increasingly militaristic, and launched an invasion of the Republic of China in 1937. In Taiwan the government launched the Kominka, or “Japanization” movement, which explicitly set out to erase native cultural identities with a Japanese one–with incentives offered to people who took Japanese names and other forms of Japanese culture and identity. While handfuls of Taiwanese joined the Chinese cause in the war to defend their ethnic cousins as fellow Chinese, the vast majority of Taiwanese combatants fought in the name of the Emperor of Japan.

The defeat of the Japanese Empire brought the arrival of a new occupier, the Republic of China. The Chinese deported the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Japanese back to Japan, and set about removing vestiges of Japanese culture and religion. Ethnic Chinese Taiwanese initially welcomed the new rulers from China, but the welcome turned to open revolt within two years, leading to a bloody crackdown on Taiwanese that left tens of thousands dead or imprisoned. The government declared martial law, and continued a harsh level of repression until the early 1990s.

The new government was corrupt and disorderly, and dismantled much of Taiwan’s economy both as loot and to fund the civil war in China. Ethnic tension also played a major role. The Chinese had suffered mightily at the hands of the Japanese during the war, and hadn’t forgotten that the Taiwanese had been on the Japanese side. The Taiwanese found that they were far better educated, orderly and “modern” than their Chinese counterparts who’d been suffering in various wars since 1911–and were in some ways very influenced by the Japanese culturally after 50 years as an imperial colony. The Chinese also used Mandarin as their official language, a foreign language to the Taiwanese.

In 1949 the Republic of China collapsed, losing the civil war to the Chinese Communists. The ROC government decamped to Taiwan, bringing with them an estimated two million people from China, increasing Taiwan’s population by about 20%. Following the Taiwanese uprising, locals weren’t trusted, and positions of power and privilege were handed over to an elite class within the new arrivals. Like the Japanese before them, the ROC government led by the KMT set about making Taiwan culturally Chinese. Instruction in schools was switched to Mandarin and children were fined for speaking native languages. No effort was spared to instil Chinese patriotism and identity. Traditionally Chinese elements of Taiwanese culture were encouraged, as was taking pride in Chinese ethnicity and China’s glorious past. Generations of children were taught little of their local past in schools or from their parents, who were often too afraid to tell their children for fear the children wouldn’t keep their mouths shut. More assimilated indigenes quietly shed their indigenous identities, and the less assimilated were forced to take Chinese names. In many respects the KMT’s efforts were successful; for example, today Mandarin is spoken as a native language by most people in Taiwan.

Towards diversity

The end of martial law and the start of the democratic era in the 1990s saw an open revival of interest in Taiwanese identity and history, and in the 2000s the DPP introduced more localized education. The percentage of the population identifying as Taiwanese only went from being a minority of the population to a majority, while Chinese only identity plunged. A significant minority, however, retains both identities to this day.

Of those that identify as Chinese only, the majority are in fact born in China. Over half a million spouses have emigrated to Taiwan from China in the last three decades. The residents of the islands of Kinmen and Matsu just off the coast of China were not connected with Taiwan during the Japanese era, and only through historical accident remain part of the Republic of China, not the People’s Republic of China. Some elderly people were born in China before 1949 and came over with the KMT, many as children. Others who consider themselves Chinese only are the children or grandchildren of KMT soldiers or officials. The percentage of the population that identifies as Chinese only, and whose families arrived in Taiwan well before 1949, is most likely very small.

At the opposite end of the spectrum are those whose families have been in Taiwan hundreds of years and suffered under KMT led oppression during the martial law era. Many of them not only identify as Taiwanese only, they view the KMT and the Republic of China as foreign occupying colonizers. Some of those old enough to remember the Japanese era retain some Japanese identity, such as ex-President Lee Tung-hui.

For younger Taiwanese people who grew up in the democratic era, the ethnic “mainlander” 1949 Chinese and “Taiwanese” hatred that once flared so hotly is largely gone, no matter which group they are descended from. Intermarriage, the reopening of opportunity to Taiwanese and growing up together has largely blurred the differences among the young. Indeed some younger Taiwanese who identify as Taiwanese only can be seen proudly waving the ROC flag as their own.

Today most people in Taiwan, regardless of whether they have some Chinese identity, see themselves as distinct from the residents of China. Already a unique society in the Qing Dynasty, the Taiwanese have been governed (outside of a few years in the 1940s) separately from China since 1895—a longer time than Australia has been independent. Taiwan didn’t go through the years of suffering through civil war and Japanese invasion that China did, and didn’t experience the horrors of Communist Chinese economically disastrous rule under Mao Zedong. Taiwanese people were influenced by the American soldiers stationed in Taiwan until 1979, listening to rock n’ roll and eating hamburgers while China remained isolated from much of the world. While traditional religions and cultures continued to be practiced in Taiwan, the Cultural Revolution destroyed much of that in China. The younger generations in Taiwan grew up with democratic freedoms and sensibilities—while China grows more repressive.

The road ahead

In 2014, civil society groups worried that the KMT administration under then President Ma Ying-jeou was railroading bills that would effectively sell out Taiwan economically to China through the legislature. They spontaneously entered and occupied the legislature building–an occupation that ended up lasting for weeks. Their actions drew widespread support as hundreds of thousands rallied to their cause in the streets.

Taiwanese identity, Taiwanese pride and a newly energized pro-Taiwan electorate propelled the DPP to overwhelming electoral victories in both the local elections in 2014 and national elections in 2016. Most polls showed that the percentage of the population identifying as “Chinese only” was in the low single digits, and over half of the population identifying as “Taiwanese only,” with the remainder identifying as both.

However, in the last two years, there has been an uptick in the number of people identifying as “both,” and that has correlated with the defeat of the DPP in the most recent local elections. The KMT came back in a big way, taking advantage of voter disappointment with DPP policies on labor, energy, pollution and economic stagnation. But what does this pendulum swing back to the KMT mean for Taiwanese and Chinese identity in Taiwan? Head over to Will Taiwan See a Post Election Revival of Chinese Identity? to find out.

(Feature image “Formosa, from the latest authorities” by W. Campbell, first appearing in “The island of Formosa: Its past and future” in The Scottish Geographical Magazine, 1896)