The United States has been rocked by large street protests over the past two weeks, sparked by the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died while being arrested by four police officers. These nationwide protests have brought the problems of societal racism and discriminatory policing toward the Black community in the U.S. to the forefront.

Taiwan, on the surface, might seem like a serene society that lacks much racial discrimination. Dig a little deeper, however, and the story is much different.

The truth is that Taiwan’s tranquility masks serious exploitation of foreigners, especially from developing countries, as well as discrimination against foreigners. The poor treatment of foreign Southeast Asian workers, who number in the hundreds of thousands, is widespread, while there are discriminatory policies and behavior towards non-Taiwanese residents.

Most Taiwanese may not be outwardly racist, but there is still an ethnocentric way of thinking that facilitates discriminatory attitudes and a tendency to regard some non-locals, especially from Southeast Asia, as lesser beings. Ethnic homogeneity and an unfamiliarity with foreigners among some citizens might play big factors, but in an age of technology and globalization, these need to be overcome.

While Taiwan is relatively homogeneous, with over 90% of the population tracing their ancestry to China, there is also a sizable indigenous minority.

Taiwan’s indigenous peoples, who academics believe have been in Taiwan for at least 5,500 years, were often displaced from their ancestral lands after colonizers, including the first ethnic Han, arrived on the island. They managed to hold out against the Qing, which ruled Taiwan from the late 17th century to 1895, but eventually were brought under colonial control by the Japanese. While indigenous Taiwanese are not actively targeted by the police, they are still economically and socially marginalized in modern Taiwan.

This issue was starkly illustrated recently when Presidential spokesperson Kolas Yotaka, who is an indigenous person, received a comment from a member of the public demanding that she stop using her indigenous name, which is spelled using Latin characters, and change it to a Chinese one. Kolas asserted her right to use her indigenous name, which she has used for over 10 years, and was backed by her government colleagues.

The incident showed that there are still a few Taiwanese who clearly have issues with non-Chinese indigenous names, even that of a prominent Taiwanese woman. Kolas was also a recipient of mockery over her name on social media in 2018 when she was appointed as the Executive Yuan’s spokesperson.

Another group in Taiwan that is not fully accepted are the hundreds of thousands of workers from Southeast Asia. Hailing mainly from Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines, they contribute substantially to Taiwan’s economy by working in factories, fishing boats, senior homes, and households. And yet many of these factory workers, fishermen and domestic helpers are being exploited, harassed or having their pay withheld.

The latest example of labor discontent was on June 2 when over 800 Vietnamese workers at a Compal factory went on strike over a high wage deduction for boarding and poor dormitory living conditions. The labor authorities had to step in to negotiate and eventually the two sides reached an understanding.

Employing tens of thousands of foreign crew members, Taiwan’s massive fishing industry is rife with physical abuse, shoddy conditions, and contract violations of primarily Southeast Asian fishermen at sea. Beatings are not uncommon, nor are wage deductions and coercion of workers to remain on board their ships.

In addition to poor working conditions, foreign crew members are also sometimes victims of human trafficking. Ship owners often fail to legally register workers, leaving them with no legal protection and entirely at the mercy of Taiwanese boat owners and labor brokers. This has been an issue for years and international media and NGOs, along with U.S. government reports, have condemned this exploitation.

Meanwhile, even international students at Taiwanese universities have been exploited by being tricked into unpaid labor at factories. In recent years, hundreds of students from the Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka have allegedly been forced to do manual labor at factories and even a slaughterhouse. In January 2019, Indonesia even suspended allowing its students to enter work-study programs in Taiwan due to reports of Indonesian students being used as cheap labor.

The most recently revealed case involved dozens of students from Eswatini, Taiwan’s only African diplomatic ally, who were allegedly made to work in a chicken factory illegally in 2018 as part of a work-study program. The Ministry of Education is investigating this case, while the students’ university has claimed it had done nothing wrong.

The use of public space by domestic helpers on their weekly day off has been contested, after the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) said last month it would ban people from sitting in the main hall of Taipei Main Station after the lifting of social distancing measures implemented due to the coronavirus. Given that domestic helpers often use this area to relax in during their days off, the ban would affect them.

As for foreigners in Taiwan with residency status, especially those from the West and white, they usually don’t experience too many problems. If anything, Western residents are treated much better by Taiwanese than non-Western and non-white residents.

However, discrimination still pops up in daily life and policies.

It is also well-known that some Taiwanese bushiban English tutoring centers and kindergartens prefer to hire white, Western tutors to teach their kids. This preference for white candidates means that African-American and even Asian-Americans have been discriminated against, demonstrating a clear and disturbing racial bias that ignores actual language and teaching abilities.

During the height of the coronavirus outbreak in April, a few restaurants and bars issued bans or restrictions on serving foreigners, including those with residency status in Taiwan and who had not even been away. This was when there was an influx of imported cases from people coming to Taiwan from the U.S., Europe and other countries. While it’s understandable that restaurants might be wary of serving guests who had been abroad, restricting only non-Taiwanese people ignored the fact that the vast majority of these returnees were actually Taiwanese coming back from abroad.

Meanwhile, local dance groups have dressed up in blackface to perform a skit copying Ghanaian funeral dancers who earned global fame for their moves while carrying coffins recently. Despite a slight uproar over its racist nature, more than one Taiwanese dance group has used blackface.

For foreign residents who formally want to become Taiwanese, citizenship is extremely difficult to apply for and attain, especially as it does not allow dual citizenship and hence requires renouncing one’s existing citizenship. While the law was changed in 2017 to allow for exceptions, this is also very onerous—one must be a “high-level professional” or have made special contributions to Taiwan—and few people actually do so.

Taiwan society will need to change its mindset and be more open to foreigners, due to a need to attract talent and immigrants, increase its low and declining birthrate, and to fit into a globalized world.

It will especially need to learn to accept Southeast Asians as residents and not merely as laborers. Already, Southeast Asian spouses are growing in number, with 390,000 married to Taiwanese as of 2020. In 2019, Southeast Asian spouses made up over 40% of transnational marriages involving Taiwanese. However, it can be difficult for these spouses to obtain permanent residency in Taiwan since marriages between Taiwanese and Southeast Asian nationals are subject to additional background checks by immigration officials.

There has been progress over the years in labor and residency issues, especially as Taiwan reaches out more to Southeast Asia via its New Southbound Policy, but more needs to be done.

The authorities need to strengthen labor laws to protect Southeast Asian and other foreign workers, as well as crack down harder on factories that mistreat and violate their workers’ rights. Universities that “farm” out their foreign students as manual labor should also be punished more severely. Meanwhile, policies need to be reformed to make it easier for people to immigrate to Taiwan legally and for spouses of Taiwanese citizens to gain permanent residency. The authorities should also work with relevant NGOs to make the public more aware of how much foreign workers contribute to Taiwan’s economy.

Whether it be ending systematic exploitation of workers and students from developing countries, or reforming government policies that discriminate against foreigners or handling casual discrimination in normal life, Taiwan has many issues it needs to work on.

This article was updated on June 11, 2020 to clarify academic understanding of how long Taiwan’s indigenous peoples are believed to have inhabited the island.

(Cover photo by Hoia Saerda Mea 28 via Wikicommons, CC BY-SA 4.0)