Contemporary Taiwanese Cultural Nationalism

A-Chin Hsiau

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781134736713
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Drawing on a wide range of Chinese historical and contemporary texts, Contemporary Taiwanese Cultural Nationalism addresses diverse subjects including nationalist literature; language ideology; the crafting of a national history; the impact of Japanese colonialism and the increasingly strained relationship between China and Taiwan. This book is essential reading for all scholars of the history, culture and politics of Taiwan.

1

Introduction

Taiwan, or the Republic of China (hereafter ROC), held its first direct election for the presidency on March 23, 1996. This election can be regarded as the culmination of a political liberalization process begun fifteen years ago. Under threat of missile tests and military maneuvers carried out by Communist Mainland China, or the People’s Republic of China (hereafter PRC), the election also represented Taiwan’s challenge to the PRC’s claim to sovereignty over the island. Two days before the election, a group of members from several university-student Hoklo language revival organizations protested what they called the “Chinese chauvinism” that dominated Taiwan’s education system. The students also condemned the PRC’s missile tests and military maneuvers which were intended to intimidate Taiwanese voters into not choosing any candidate opposed to reuniting Taiwan with China and who instead, favored Taiwan independence. The students burned official textbooks—such as “History of Chinese Culture,” “National Language” (Mandarin Chinese), “Three Principles of the People” (Sun Yat-sen’s doctrine about Chinese nation-building), and the like—outside the Ministry of Education. They shouted slogans: “We Want to Be Taiwanese, not Chinese!” “Study Taiwanese History, not Chinese History!” “Study Taiwanese Geography, not Chinese Geography!”¹

Two weeks after the presidential election, P’eng Ming-min, the defeated candidate of Taiwan’s largest opposition party, the Democratic Progressive Party (Min-chu chin-pu tang, hereafter DPP), set up his own organization, the Nation Building Union of Taiwan (Chien-kuo-hui), to promote the cause of Taiwan independence through social activism. P’eng had long been a major leader of the overseas Taiwan independence movements.² Blacklisted by the ROC government, he was not allowed to return to Taiwan until recently. P’eng’s action was deemed a symptom of intraparty clashes between members who supported the relatively “fundamentalist” line and members who supported the “pragmatic” line concerning pro-independence policy. P’eng made it clear that the Union had nothing to do with the DPP. In fact, it was an open secret that there had been discord between the central leading body of the DPP and P’eng’s headquarters during the campaign. An important disagreement was whether the idea of Taiwan independence should be used as the major, if not only, appeal to voters. Independence had been the theme of P’eng’s campaign, though the central leading body tended to play it down in an attempt to draw more support from moderate voters.³ P’eng’s campaign and his establishment of the Nation Building Union of Taiwan was enthusiastically supported by members of the Taiwan Association of University Professors (T’ai-wan chiaoshou hsieh-hui), the Taiwan Pen Association (T’ai-wanpi-hui), and several Hoklo language revival organizations.⁴ At the end of April, dozens of leading members of these associations, who were also the major organizers of P’eng’s Union, along with other activists, set up the Coalition for Taiwanizing Education (Chiaoyü t’ai-wan-hua lien-meng), campaigning against what they called “Chinaas-the-core-and-Taiwan-as-the-margin” principle of education and the official cultural policy.⁵

This book is a study of a primary version of Taiwanese nationalism that has been articulated mainly by such humanist intellectuals as writers, literary critics, linguists, activists of language revival movements, and amateur and professional historians. These intellectuals constitute a major part of the “fundamentalist” Taiwanese nationalists. Their vision contributes much to the ideology regarding Taiwan independence and nation building. Underlying this version of nationalism is a concern, if not an obsession, with the uniqueness of “Taiwanese culture” set against “Chinese culture.” The humanist intellectuals’ discourse on Taiwanese cultural particularity has played an important role in shaping a set of distinct conceptions of nationality and forms an integral part of the uncoordinated project of crafting a nation. This study focuses on these questions: How does the idea of cultural uniqueness contribute to the development of Taiwanese “cultural nationalism? “How does ideology about Taiwanese cultural distinctiveness influence nationalist politics through three important realms of intellectual activity, namely, literature, linguistics, and history? What is the role played by humanist intellectuals in the development of Taiwanese nationalism? And how does the articulation of the uniqueness of Taiwanese culture discursively create the concept of a “Taiwanese nation?”

Situated in the context of Taiwan’s political dynamics, Taiwanese cultural nationalism as an important approach to Taiwanese nation building enlists popular support through particular strategies, organizations, and ideology. The essence of this nationalism is a “politics of cultural uniqueness”—an endeavor to construct a new national identity which involves considerable symbolism and rhetoric concerning Taiwanese cultural distinctiveness and includes various political maneuvers to institutionalize these ideas. As the backbone of the project, pro-independence humanist intellectuals articulate the components of Taiwanese cultural uniqueness and pursue the establishment of a new state capable of representing these traits. Viewed from a historical perspective, Taiwanese cultural nationalism has emerged in the last fifteen years or so and can be regarded as the apex of the modern crisis of Chinese consciousness, which emerged in the late nineteenth century when China was forced to open her doors to the West. Moreover, Taiwanese cultural nationalism has developed not only in the fields of literature, language, and history, but has also made its appearance in other domains of cultural activity, such as the fine arts. ⁶Compared to the three realms on which this book focuses, however, the other fields are much less significant, as far as their contributions to the development of Taiwanese cultural nationalism are concerned. Since the early 1980s, the locus of the politics of Taiwanese cultural uniqueness has been in literature, language, and history.

The rest of this chapter is organized as follows. First, a brief description of the people, language, and history of the island is provided. Second, I make a brief criticism of the current study of the historical development of Taiwanese nationalism, the major approaches of which can be categorized into the “imagined community” and the “political competition” models. The proponents of both approaches have not addressed cultural nationalism as a significant part of the Taiwanese nationalist project because of their limited concern with “political nationalism.” Third, the relationships between dominated ethnic groups, nationalism, and humanist intellectuals are examined. The role of humanist intellectuals of oppressed ethnic groups constitutes the focus of the analysis of Taiwanese cultural nationalism in this book. Fourth, I move to the discussion of the difference between cultural nationalism and political nationalism. Fifth, a brief account of the nature of the politics of cultural uniqueness is given. Sixth, I address the issue of the relationship between modernization ideology and cultural nationalism. This discussion concerns Taiwanese cultural nationalism as both a general Third-World phenomenon wherein modernization is at issue and as a particular experience on the island. Seventh, the channels through which cultural nationalists disseminate their ideas are briefly dealt with. The last part of the chapter is about the organization of the book.

The People, Language, and History: an Outline

The ancient history of Taiwan is still unknown. Scholars are not sure when the Chinese acquired knowledge of the island and began to sail there (Hsu 1980:3, 5). Fragmentary historical records show that since the second half of the sixteenth century, fishermen, peddlers, and adventurers migrated into Taiwan from Fukien, a southeastern province of China close to the island (Ch’en [1966] 1979a:452). Before that time several groups of aborigines of southeast Asian origin whose languages belong to the Malayo-Polynesian family had inhabited Taiwan. Ethnic conflicts occurred frequently between the Chinese immigrants and the aboriginal people. During the past four centuries the aborigines’ languages diminished as a result of the assimilation policies under different regimes, the decrease of the aboriginal population, and the decline of their socio-economic status.

It was not until the end of the seventeenth century that Han Chinese settlers dominated the island. The Han Chinese population has been increasing since then (Ch’en [1966] 1979a: 453). In 1683 the forces of China’s Manchurian Ch’ing Empire invaded Taiwan to purge loyalists of the ruined Ming Dynasty who had fled to the island. The Ch’ing ruled the island from 1683 to 1895.

During the Ch’ing period, poor Han Chinese kept moving to Taiwan to seize land, while the Empire forbade official immigration lest the island once again become a refuge of its challengers. Almost all of Taiwan’s immigrants were drawn from two provinces of southern China: Fukien and Kwangtung. Those who came from Fukien were divided into two groups according to their respective hometown prefecture: “Changchou people” and “Chüanchou people.” These two groups were lumped together and called “Hoklo” (or “Fuklo”) despite the fact that they spoke different accents of Southern Min. The language has also been called “Hoklo” (or “Fuklo”). The third group was the Hakka, who migrated primarily from Kwangtung and spoke the Hakka language.

By the turn of the nineteenth century, about eighty per cent of the Han Chinese immigrants were from Changchou and Chüanchou. As a result, the Hoklo language dominated Taiwan’s linguistic makeup. By contrast, the people of Kwangtung origin made up about fifteen per cent of the population and the Hakka language occupied a marginal position in society. In the Ch’ing era, Changchou, Chüanchou, and Kwangtung immigrants treated one another as distinct ethnic groups. The competition for land and other economic resources was usually based on ethnic identity. Competition caused frequent and intense armed conflicts among the three groups during the period from the late seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century (Huang 1992:52–4).

In 1895 the Ch’ing Empire and Japan signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki. Taiwan was ceded to the victor of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95. Before Japanese colonial rule, the Han Chinese on the island referred to themselves and one another as “Fukienese,” “Kwangtung people,” “Changchou people,” “Fuch’eng people,” “Luk’ang people,” and the like, which were all based on localism. It was primarily because of the confrontation between the colonized and the colonizer that the categories of “‘tai-oan-lang” (which means “Taiwanese people” in Hoklo) and “tai-gu” or “tai-oan-oe” (which means “Taiwanese language” in Hoklo) were created. The first term referred to the people of Han Chinese origin, despite their different Mainland home towns. The latter term mainly signified the major local language, Hoklo. In some contexts it also included Hakka. For the Han Chinese these classifications represented a sense of identity under the alien rule (Hsu 1993:40–3).

Japan ruled Taiwan from 1895 to 1945. As a result of military suppression in the first two decades of colonial rule, Taiwanese armed resistance was successfully crushed. The 1920s saw the development of Taiwanese non-violent anticolonialism influenced by such modern political concepts as democracy, socialism, and national self-determination. By the end of the 1920s, however, all Taiwanese radical, left-leaning anticolonial organizations, which typically demanded the complete emancipation of the Taiwanese from colonialism, were crushed. The moderate, reformist anticolonialists continued pressing for the home rule of the Taiwanese under the colonial administration with a low-key approach. They were forced to cease their campaign when Japan and China went to war again in 1937 (see Chapter 2).

Meanwhile, the non-Han Ch’ing Empire was overthrown by the revolution of 1911, led by Sun Yat-sen, and the ROC was established. The Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, hereafter KMT), which was founded in 1919 and traced its origins to several political organizations founded by Sun, was led by Chiang Kai-shek after Sun’s death and became the ruling party of China. As far as the relationship between Taiwan and republican China is concerned, the KMT’s policy toward Taiwan was still unclear after the Sino-Japanese War erupted in July 1937. In the Cairo Declaration of December 1943, President Franklin D.Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek announced that “all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such as Manchuria, Formosa [Taiwan], and the Pescadores, shall be restored to the Republic of China.” While China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs had made a similar announcement the previous year, it was at the Cairo Conference that China’s decision to recover lost territories was internationally recognized (Woody Cheng 1991:218–19).

Following Japan’s defeat, Taiwan was taken over by Chiang Kai-shek’s military forces and made a province of the ROC in the fall of 1945.⁷ Taiwan’s population generally welcomed the arrival of KMT government officials and troops. Before long, however, the Taiwanese became disappointed with the KMT’s rule because of political suppression, economic chaos, and the policy of discrimination against them. A sequence of violent anti-KMT actions took place in the spring of 1947 and culminated in bloody suppression—in an event now known as the “Taiwanese Uprising of February 28, 1947” or the “2–28 Incident” (Erh-erh-pa shih-chieh). This incident soured the relationship between the Taiwanese and the Chinese newly arrived from the Mainland (hereafter “Mainlanders”). The distrust bred by this event has dominated ethnic politics on the island ever since. In fact, the 2–28 Incident is a major source of Taiwanese nationalism.

In December 1949, the KMT-controlled ROC government retreated to Taiwan because it lost the civil war to the Chinese Communist Party (hereafter CCP). In the 1950s and 1960s, the US protection of the island, based on a mutual security treaty, offered a guarantee of security under which political stability could be maintained and economic development could proceed, though the KMT reiterated their determination to “destroy the Communist bandits and return to the Mainland.” The political system was basically a centralized single-party system modeled on a Leninist Party-State. Chiang Kai-shek was the head of the KMT, president of the ROC, and commander in chief of the armed forces, retaining the final authority for all important decisions. The introduction of democratic elections in local politics, which provided a limited avenue for Taiwanese engagement in political activity, did not fundamentally change the authoritarian character of the KMT government. Political opposition was successfully suppressed. Civil and political rights were limited by martial law and wartime regulations (see Chapter 3).

After enjoying two decades of political stability and economic prosperity, Taiwan encountered a series of diplomatic setbacks in the early 1970s. The major diplomatic challenge to the KMT government, among others, was that American support for the preservation of Taiwan’s seat in the United Nations was withdrawn because the US was seeking a rapprochement with the PRC. In October 1971, the UN voted to admit the PRC and to expel Taiwan, and thus Taiwan failed in its struggle for legitimacy in representing all China.

Chiang Ching-kuo became chairman of the KMT and president of the ROC after his father, Chiang Kai-shek, died in 1975. Despite moderate reforms, the authoritarian nature of the political system offered little change in the early years of Chiang Ching-kuo’s rule. Taiwanese political opposition, however, began to develop during this period. In the beginning of 1979 the US eventually severed diplomatic relations with Taiwan and recognized the PRC, acknowledging that there was only one China—the PRC. During the political turmoil caused by this sudden change, Taiwanese opposition activists were still trying to organize and mobilize support across the island. However, in 1979, a Human Rights Day demonstration in Kaohsiung, a major city in southern Taiwan, resulted in arrests of a large number of the opposition leaders and local activists. The Kaohsiung Incident paved the way for the radicalization of the opposition movement in the first half of the 1980s. The rising militant wing of the opposition began to adopt a confrontational line in their promotion of Taiwanese nationalism. The mobilization strategy and ideology gradually inspired nationalist sentiments in an increasing number of Taiwanese writers, literary critics, linguists, and historians. Hence Taiwanese cultural nationalism emerged during this period. In September 1986, Taiwan’s first postwar opposition party, the DPP, was eventually established, which was legalized in 1987 when martial law was lifted. The KMT government’s tolerance toward the DPP harbingered a sequence of political reforms conducted in the ensuing years in response to the opposition’s challenge. These reforms resulted in an environment much more favorable to political competition than before.

Not only were the vast majority of the DPP’s supporters Taiwanese, but the leadership of the opposition movement was also overwhelmingly composed of Taiwanese. Since its establishment, the DPP has pressed for Taiwan’s independence and challenged the KMT government’s Chinese nationalism, which justified the Mainlanders’ domination of the island and the suppression of civil and political rights in the name of the anticommunist wartime expedience. The DPP’s platform advocates the reentrance of Taiwan into the United Nations and self-determination for Taiwan’s residents regarding their political future. In spite of official suppression, the second half of the 1980s saw the rapid development of the drive for Taiwan independence. KMT political control was gradually liberated during this period. As the PRC played an increasingly active role in the international political arena in the name of the sole legitimate government representative of all China, so the DPP emphasized the importance of rejecting the PRC’s claim of sovereignty over Taiwan as well as their opposition...