Identity In Taiwan Research Articles

Research on the Mechanism of Establishing National Identity: Based on the Analysis of Taiwan’s History from 1895 to 2000

Taiwan’s autonomy and status in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have always been contentious. The visits of numerous Western officials and Taiwan’s steadfast assertion of its national identity have introduced uncertainties in the security of the Indo-Pacific region. Exploring the development of Taiwan’s self-awareness regarding its national identity is crucial for understanding how Taiwan navigates its position in the PRC, paving the way for a practical approach for the mainland to improve cross-strait relations. With a deep analysis of factors contributing to deteriorating Taiwan’s identity recognition, the article will continue to examine Taiwan’s history from 1895 to 2000 and the evolution of its national identity. It concludes that historical factors significantly shape Taiwan’s identity and considers how the mainland can enhance its relationship with Taiwan’s utilizing mechanisms. To promote a Chinese identity in Taiwan, the article suggests strategies such as fostering economic cooperation under the One-China principle, facilitating youth education exchanges, and acknowledging cultural and national identity.

From Outsider to Insider: Women's Marital Names and Family Identity in Nineteenth-Century Taiwan

This article explores the naming customs of married women in Taiwan during the nineteenth century. By attempting to unveil the factors that caused women to prefix the husband's surname, it shows that the practice likely developed from legal and property documents. It also elaborates the convention's relationship with women's family identity, arguing that women were “dual outsiders” in both the natal and affinal family. However, this study finally demonstrates that prefixing the husband's surname did not connote their passivity or subjugation as married women, especially widows who could rely on it to call upon their rights within the family and society.

The Openness of Death: (Re)constructing Indigenous Identity in Post–martial Law Taiwan

Abstract This article presents a set of interrelated close readings of works by four Indigenous Taiwanese cultural producers—the Puyuma writer Sun Dachuan, the Atayal painter Anli Genu, the Truku sculptor Labay Eyong, and the Atayal director Laha Mebow. I discuss the important symbolic role Taiwan’s Indigenous population has played in the development of a Taiwanese national imaginary and how this has affected Indigenous cultural expression. I argue that rather than trying to root out the improper intrusion of this ‘outside’ force into Indigenous cultural life, the works of these four cultural producers instead show how Indigenous identity can flourish through an honest navigation of the relationship brought about by that intrusion. They present an understanding of Indigenous identity in Taiwan as convoluted and changing, never fully in possession of itself but not any less authentic for that. My theorisation of this builds on Sun Dachuan’s notion of ‘the openness of death’, which he uses to highlight the need for Indigenous culture to transform itself in dynamic relation to the wider context in which it is embedded.

The Ramifications of Changing Identities in Taiwan for U.S.-Taiwan Relations

The Ramifications of Changing Identities in Taiwan for U.S.-Taiwan Relations

민진당 재집권 이후의 대만사 연구 경향

This article aims to elaborate on the current trends and features of Taiwan history research and to provide a direction for Korean academic to understand Taiwanese society and history. In the main, this article will attempt to analyse the current trends and characteristics of Taiwanese history research, with a particular focus on the changes since the DPP's return to power and their impact. In the 2016, Taiwanese presidential election, the DPP won power, and Tsai Ing-wen was re-elected in the 2020 presidential election. There is an ongoing debate on how these political changes affect the study of Taiwanese history, and how Taiwan's identity and inherent capabilities have been historically emphasised in the context of de-Chinaisation.
 In addition, the overall trend in Taiwanese history research has been to move away from a focus on colonialism and continental nationalism in the past, and to emphasise the need for Taiwanese to write their own history and to be seen as the agents of Taiwan's history. This shows that the study of Taiwanese history is endeavouring to understand historical agency from different perspectives. The study of population movements and migration to Taiwan since prehistoric times is also being conducted from a variety of perspectives. Recent research trends have been characterised by an exploration of the background and characteristics of Taiwan's population movements in various areas, including geographical and economic causes, as well as political fluctuations, changes in political structures, and changes in identity.
 Since 20 century, the study of Taiwan history has reflected a diversity of values and emphasised the recognition that Taiwan is a pluralistic society. In particular, efforts have been made to identify the impact of social phenomena such as migration, economic change, and natural disasters on Taiwanese history, as well as political change and the expansion of power. In addition, recent studies of Taiwanese history have sought to demonstrate that ethnicity, religion, and community are indicators of current social conflicts. These themes are emerging as important aspects of Taiwanese history, which is an indication of the growing interest in studying how they operate as axes of change and conflict within Taiwanese society.

The Chinese Threat and Changes of Identity in Taiwan

The importance of identity in understanding contemporary politics has been well articulated in the social sciences literature. Employing the theory of threat, this study examines the effects on Taiwanese citizens’ identity of Beijing’s repressive measures in Hong Kong and its military intimidation of Taipei. Using three waves of panel data collected in Taiwan between 2018 and 2020, we find that respondents shifted significantly toward identifying as Taiwanese and away from identifying as Chinese. Rather than encouraging identification with China, Beijing’s repressive actions in Hong Kong and military threats toward Taiwan have only strengthened the island citizens’ identity as Taiwanese. Previous scholarship has often assumed that identity is mainly a domestic issue, but we find that events beyond and across national borders can affect the dynamics of identity change.

Why Does Taiwan Identity Decline?

Since 1992, the percentage of Taiwanese identifying as “Taiwanese only” increased by 50%. The literature explains the increase by generation, democratization, and military threat. None of these foresees the decline of Taiwan identity between 2016 and 2018. We argue that the decline can be explained by issue ownership + hedging. After the Democratic Progress Party (DPP) won both the presidency and the Congress for the first time in 2016, DPP’s performance was used by voters to evaluate the utility of Taiwan identity. Propensity score matching and regressions on three groups of surveys (TEDS, TISS, and TNSS) support the theory and rule out alternative explanations.

Legal Indigeneities: Identity, Authenticity, and Power in Taiwan’s Indigenous Courts

Abstract In this article I examine performances of Indigeneity in encounters between Indigenous people and the Taiwan legal system. Studying displays of Indigenous identities reveals the processes through which individuals and communities draw upon histories and practices to fashion themselves as Indigenous and engage with wider publics through performances and performative acts. Focusing on three encounters between Indigenous people and the Taiwan legal system, displays of Indigeneity in these encounters were multivalent and involved a repertoire of creative performative acts as Indigenous actors used court spaces, like the new ad hoc Chamber of Indigenous Courts, to perform identities that confounded essentialist conceptions of Indigeneity, introduced alternative ontological parameters, and assumed state governance responsibilities. These performances suggest a contextually situated engagement with the postcolonial state where Indigenous identities are anchored in the past and forward-looking, reinforce or challenge the category of Indigeneity, and themselves operate as techniques of power.

Hmali’, rgrgyax and Gaga: a study of Tayal elders reclaiming their Indigenous identities in Taiwan

This article examines how older Tayal, an Indigenous people in Taiwan, regain, reclaim and renegotiate their identities by reconnecting to Hmali’ (the Tayal language), rgrgyax (mountains) and Gaga (the Tayal Law). A critical qualitative design informed by Tayal hermeneutics was used. In total, 14 bbnkis (elders) were interviewed, and the data were thematically analysed. The aim of this article is to contribute to the ongoing revitalization processes in Taiwan. Such revitalization processes often tend to reinforce the quest for authentic Indigenous identities, as if indigeneity could be reduced to a pale reproduction of how things used to be in the old days. Our findings show that indigeneity is not about returning to a fixed past. Instead, it is about writing back against the colonial framework that was imposed on the Indigenous peoples and, in that way, healing from trauma.

Evolution of Our Times: Developing Democratic Identities in Hong Kong and Taiwan

Two trends have become increasingly apparent from public opinion polls in Taiwan and Hong Kong over the past decade. One is a growing identification with and confidence in being exclusively Taiwanese or Hong Konger. The other is increasing public support for democracy. Existing research investigates the association between local identity and democracy, but does not address the meanings people in Taiwan and Hong Kong ascribe to their identities. This limits a fuller understanding of the relationships and driving forces between and behind these trends. One interpretation is that demands for greater democracy mask growing nativism, even xenophobia. An alternative one is that heightened local identification reflects aspirations for greater political participation and restraint on executive authority in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Using discourse analysis collected through the Making Identities Count in Asia project, alongside polling data, we submit that elite and mass discourse reveal an integration of democratic expectations with local identity and its broadening appeal in Taiwan and Hong Kong. People in these two societies take principles associated with democracy to be closely tied to their sense of identification and locality. Such ideas do not eschew the value of tradition rooted in local experiences and can outweigh economic growth. However, Hong Kongers and Taiwanese have come to identify substantively more with democracy than the exceptionalism implied in "localism," "Asian values," or some form of nativism. PRC attempts to appeal to local concerns in Taiwan and Hong Kong need to grapple with either meaningful respect for democratic aspirations or e ectively repressing them. PRC insistence on the erasure of such values will likely result in continued tensions with Taiwan and Hong Kong, and include mass resistance and the need for force, even violence.

The ‘national’ imagining of contemporary Taiwan: the representation of cultural heritage from the Japanese colonial era

ABSTRACT This study aims to discuss how the government and society of Taiwan have appropriated the heritage from Japanese colonial rule into the discourse of Taiwanese culture to bolster the national identity of Taiwan. The interconnected theoretical concepts of ‘imagined communities’ and ‘nationalising the past’ ground the analytical framework of this study. With a focus on the ‘selective’ presentations of the colonial heritage in historic Tainan City, this study explores how the official and social discourses have trivialised, reorganised, simplified, and recontextualised the historical intricacies of legacies of the Japanese colonial era through the process of heritagisation. The research results suggest that the meaning of colonial legacies has been shaped and reshaped from being a mark of the dark past and deprivation to constitute a glorious contribution fulfilling the discourse of multi-faceted Taiwanese culture. This case also suggests the possibility for a post-colonial society to extricate itself from a mimicking mentality and to redevelop their culture discourse as a buttress of the national identity.

‘What if I was not adopted’: transnational Chinese adoptee English teachers negotiating identities in Taiwan

ABSTRACT While race in TESOL has gained traction in recent years, less research has focused on Asian American teachers working in Asian contexts, not to mention Chinese adoptees from the US working as English teachers in Asia. Drawing from our larger study on the work narratives of Asian Americans teaching English in Taiwan, this paper examines how Chinese adoptees negotiate their linguistic and cultural competencies and identities in Taiwan. We uncover the various forms of emotional labor that they experienced. Similar to other Asian American teachers, they also grappled with notions of authenticity and legitimacy in the ELT field in Taiwan. However, teaching in Taiwan provided Chinese adoptees with the opportunity to negotiate the roots and routes of transnational adoptee identities and simultaneously deploy their adoptee identities as pedagogical tools for teaching about racial and family diversity, which complicates and extends research on racial identities as pedagogy in ELT. It is inevitable that their racial identity and transracial family makeup are invoked, and they are confronted to take action on it. The process can be laborious, yet teaching students about diversity through these adoptees’ own vantage points also constitutes their professional identity as a competent teacher.

Tongzhi Sovereignty: Taiwan’s lgbt Rights Movement and the Misplaced Critique of Homonationalism

Abstract This essay reviews the influential work of a group of Leftist ‘sex liberation’ scholars who pioneered queer sexuality studies in Taiwan in the 1990s. In doing so, it focuses on their post-2000 political rift with the mainstream Taiwanese lgbt (tongzhi) rights movement. What ostensibly began as a split over views of same-sex marriage has developed into a contentious politics of Chinese versus Taiwanese national identity and what I call ‘tongzhi sovereignty’. In bringing together both national identity and sexual politics in Taiwan as increasingly intertwined sites of contestation, I argue that the two must be theorised in tandem. As a fertile site for unpacking this contentious divergence, I examine and problematise the way that cultural theorist Jasbir Puar’s popular concept of homonationalism has circulated in scholarship of cultural/sexuality studies about Taiwan as a slanted and largely unchecked analytic to criticise lgbt sociolegal progress and, for some scholars, obscures a pro-unification agenda.

Re‐imagining the ‘Taiwanese’ nation in the interpretation of the Chinese‐oriented heritage

AbstractThis study aims to discuss how Chinese‐oriented heritage from Ming and Qing dynasties has been incorporated in the discourse of ‘Taiwanese’ culture to bolster the identity of Taiwan. Drawing upon the interconnected theoretical concepts of ‘imagined communities’ and ‘nationalising the past’, this study focuses on the ‘selective’ presentation of the Chinese‐oriented monuments in historic Tainan City, where the documented history of Taiwan began. This study concludes that these Chinese‐oriented monuments are represented as containing a wealth of transposable imagery, as one embodiment in the context of Taiwanese culture, and the mark of political distinction between ‘Taiwan’ and ‘China’, in the process of heritagisation. In the interpretation of heritage, this research result also suggests that the state of Republic of China (ROC) re‐invented ‘Taiwanese’ nationhood and that the state's goals of cultural establishment could be reinforced through social agents.

Empire of Infields: Baseball in Taiwan and Cultural Identity, 1895–1968

Empire of Infields: Baseball in Taiwan and Cultural Identity, 1895–1968

공생(共生)의 재구(再構) : 대만과 중국의 미술교류

With the Handover of Hong Kong in 1997, China announced the principle of “one country, two systems” and demanded the democratic government of Taiwan to follow their “one China” campaign. As Taiwan’s political attitude toward China swayed between “anti-China” and “unification,” the cultural exchange between the two countries was repetitively paused and resumed as well. After the re-election of the Kuomintang in 2008, various plans regarding art exchanges between government offices were made in line with the concept of “Cross-Strait relations (Mainland– Taiwan relations).” By 2009, the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (Taizhong) and the National Art Museum of China (Bejing) were considered as equivalents of each other, and thus, they sought to promote active exchanges of Contemporary art within themselves. As for the Taipei Palace Museum, they consistently promoted the exchange with the Mainland in the academic sphere, and later broaden it into exhibitions. In particular, the Special Exhibition Landscape Reunited: Huang Gongwang and “Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains ” at the Taipei Palace Museum held in 2011 was an event planned as a way to unify the Cross and the Strait through this encounter of artworks while being free from any conflict of political ideology. The exhibited collections of the National Palace Museum not only represented the national identity but also were the model of “Symbiosis” as “Taiwan of China,” and thereby, the exhibition could be regarded as an attempt to reconstruct the identity of Taiwan and China as a united country. Therefore, this paper aims to examine the pattern of the antagonistic conflict between unification and independence revealed in art exchanges between China and Taiwan in the context of Sinocentrism.

O legado colonial japonês e suas atuais implicações políticas no estreito de Taiwan

Although the majority of Taiwan’s population is descended from Chinese settlers who immigrated to the island between the 17th and 19th centuries, the Taiwanese independence movements refuse to accept unification with China, that since its founding in 1949 has claimed Taiwan as its own territory, and insist on designating Taiwan as a separate independent political entity from China. However, the existence of these independence movements is relatively new and begun in the mid-twentieth century, after the end of the fiftieth year of Japanese colonization in 1945. This article aims to analyse how the Japanese colonial and post-colonial experience played an important role in changing the perception of national identity in Taiwan, and currently is the main source of tension in relations with China. The article concludes that the fifty years of Japanese colonization and the violent Chinese repression in the post-war period were essential for the formation of a Taiwanese national identity distinct from the Chinese one and for the emergence of the Taiwanese independence movements.

Book Review: The Great Exodus from China: Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Modern Taiwan by Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang

Book Review: The Great Exodus from China: Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Modern Taiwan by Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang

The Temporality of Identity in Planned Cities: A Case Study of Zhong Xing New Village, Taiwan

In 1957, the Kuomintang (KMT), Chiang Kai-Shek’s nationalist government, planned and built Zhong Xing New Village (ZXNV), a garden city, to house the Taiwan Provincial Government. Despite the benefits of public housing, healthcare, and education, ZXNV experienced a two-third drop in population after 1985. The political liberalization and democratization of Taiwan in the 1980s and 1990s led to the reclamation of Taiwanese national identity that rejected the hegemony of the KMT and the physical manifestations of this colonial history, including ZXNV. ZXNV was a utopian ideal constructed during a time of authoritarian rule for a specific political purpose and homogenous population. ZXNV’s inability to change its purpose and identity led to its ultimate depopulation. Ethnographic fieldwork reveals the changes in ZXNV’s built environment and neighborhood culture influenced by socio-political transformations over the last sixty years. Fourteen interviews were conducted with two generations of ZXNV residents, and archival research reveals the intended design and policies of the city. Key findings include the structural flaws in the city’s design, the exposure of political tensions between the national and provincial governments, and the changing national identity of Taiwan due to globalization, all of which led to the ultimate downfall of Zhong Xing New Village.

Chinese and Taiwanese Identities in Taiwan as Epistemic Challengers

Abstract This paper deals with two theoretical dilemmas concerning Chinese and Taiwanese identities in Taiwan: their vague classification and the unclear dynamics of change. By using grounded theory to analyse 110 in-depth interviews, the research identifies three crucial themes behind individuals’ conceptualisations and interactions with the two identities: (1) ethical narrative, (2) cultural hierarchy, and (3) political ideology. Further theoretical comparisons generate a new epistemic framework which understands identity as a discourse of value: identity in its essence is merely a generic idea; only when associated with other discourses of value can an identity acquire full functions such as arousing people’s sentiments and mobilising them to take actions. The theory suggests that Chinese and Taiwanese identities should be regarded as unique generic concepts attached with distinctive values. People seek identity change upon becoming aware that the original identity can no longer represent the values they have dearly cherished and followed.