Taiwan’s Mainlanders: A Diasporic Identity in Construction

Abstract

This paper looks at the construction of diasporic identity in Taiwan among the Mainlanders who arrived with Chiang Kai-shek at the conclusion of World War II. In the early decades of Chinese Nationalist rule, which many Taiwanese perceived as colonial rule, ethnic differences between Mainlanders and Native Taiwanese were constructed through state violence, political oppression, and discrimination in favour of Mainlanders. With democratization, the numerically dominant Native Taiwanese began to assert Taiwanese nationalism and Mainlanders started to question their identity. Some adopted a diasporic identity as Chinese in Taiwan while others resisted change. Mainlander diasporic identity is constructed primarily in relationship to the nativist nationalism of the Native Taiwanese, but also to the autochtonous identity of Taiwan’s indigenous tribes. Diaspora identity is thus relevant not only in situations of immigration, but also in processes of colonialism and subsequent decolonization.