Two narratives dominate discourse on Taiwanese identity. The first is the “Free China” view — an idea that Taiwan is historically and culturally Chinese, and that its non-communist values and free institutions are the only aspects separating it from the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The second posits Taiwan’s cultural overlap and shared identity with China as a weakness in the island’s fight for self-determination.
Both narratives are questionable at best. To more accurately reflect its history as well as the sentiments of its people, Taiwan should be regarded as an agent in history vis-à-vis all its colonizers, including China. Equally, it is crucial to recognize Taiwan’s multifaceted ethno-cultural landscape and position in the broader Asia-Pacific, with Chinese influences being just one of many transnational connections — characteristic of any modern nation-state.
Treating Taiwan as such in diplomacy, public discourse, and media will empower the Taiwanese people to break away from foreign-imposed narratives, explore, and ultimately stand up for their identities at home and abroad. With the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) increasing the tempo and scale of its military exercises around the island as well as its rhetoric, a confidence boost for Taiwan is urgently needed.
Taiwan’s Historical Resistance
Taiwan has historically been an island of refuge and freedom for persecuted peoples, merchants, and vagabonds looking for a new life. It is, too, an island disturbed, violated, and oppressed by empire after empire — whether European, Japanese, or Chinese.
Chinese imperial dynasties never ruled the entirety of Taiwan. While the island’s west coast came under Qing rule in the late 17th century until Japanese colonization in 1895, Taiwan’s interior and east coast were never enclosed. Far from regarding it as a “civilized” Chinese province, the Kangxi emperor once referred to the island as nothing but a “ball of mud.” When a local tribe killed a U.S. trading delegation that had shipwrecked on Taiwan’s shores in 1867, U.S. officials negotiated a deal for safe passage with a Taiwanese aboriginal leader, not Chinese officials.
Moreover, the CCP never set foot on the island. After Taiwan’s liberation from the Japanese in 1945, the island became a stronghold for the Kuomintang (KMT) government during the Chinese Civil War. Facing defeat by the communists, the KMT retreated to Taiwan in 1949, bringing with it its army and civil service. From 1949 until 1987, Taiwan was governed by martial law under the KMT.
The nation still reels from the KMT’s military dictatorship, which many in Taiwan refer to as the White Terror Period. A truth and reconciliation effort is underway: families are now learning their relatives’ last words before execution, sites of torture and imprisonment are being turned into museums, and school textbooks finally correctly reflect this history.
The island’s inhabitants resisted every occupier, from the Dutch in the 17th century to the KMT after 1945, suffering brutal oppression and violence, most prominently during the “228 Incident” in 1947. In response to popular protests against corruption and oppression, the KMT government killed 18,000-28,000 suspected Taiwanese nationalists, left-wing activists, and regular protestors.
Notions of a glorious past, when Taiwan flourished peacefully as part of the Chinese nation, are fictional. The “re” in reunification – a term Chinese officials and Western commentators frequently use – is imperially charged and historically erroneous. “Colonization,” “annexation,” “occupation,” or “invasion” are more suitable.
Decolonizing Taiwan’s Diversity
Like most nations, Taiwanese society boasts of evolving transnational connections, exchanges, frictions, and identity conflicts.
In school, students learn traditional calligraphy and study Chinese literature. Taiwan is home to the National Palace Museum, which preserved much of China’s imperial treasures from the wrath of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Many in Taiwan speak with great pain about the destruction the Communist Party has brought to China and its peoples. Undoubtedly, a cultural and linguistic Sinosphere exists beyond the island of Taiwan.
Taiwan is also home to a vibrant aboriginal culture, which forms a nexus in the first human settlement of the Pacific. Existing in a cultural sphere reaching across the Pacific and despite past oppression by all non-aboriginal peoples on the island, Taiwanese aboriginals have been the nation’s fiercest defenders. Representing 3 percent of the island’s population today, they make up over 60 percent of Taiwan’s most elite military units.
The Hakka people – roughly 15 percent of Taiwan’s population – are another significant ethnic group on the island. They have their own grievances, identity, and history. Having been persecuted in China for centuries, many Hakka fled to Taiwan from the 17th century onwards, while others settled in Southeast Asia and Southern China. Their cultural sphere, too, transcends the borders of Taiwan.
More recently, Taiwan’s growing Southeast Asian population, with many arriving as migrant workers, has created new frictions in national identity. Low Taiwanese birthrates and increasing levels of intermarriage are changing the island’s demographic and cultural landscape, all while creating new cross-border cultural ties.
Aside from its colonial history, the Sinosphere should not receive special treatment, let alone be conflated with an affinity for the PRC. In an evolving cultural and demographic environment, it is only just another component of a constantly developing Taiwanese blend of identities. If anything, through its destruction and appropriation of traditional Chinese cultures for propaganda purposes, the CCP has alienated Taiwan’s Sinophiles from the PRC, driving an irreconcilable wedge between culture and state.
Implications for Taiwan Policy
As much as adherence to the KMT’s past vision of “reunification” under a “Free China” is misguided and ignores Taiwan’s unique history, one must not ignore Taiwan’s many transnational connections with the rest of Asia-Pacific. Those who fear that such nuance could harm Taiwan’s “warrior ethos” or foster unification sentiments may rest easy. The Taiwanese, whether aboriginal, Hakka, or Sinophile, understand that the CCP’s brutal nationalist rhetoric, iron-fisted rule, and economic impotence are antithetical to their values, identities, and ways of life. After all, a celebration of Taiwan’s diversity is what best represents its emancipation from European, Japanese, and Chinese imperialism.
What’s more, both the “Free China” narrative and ignoring Taiwan’s diversity play right into the CCP’s hands. If the first reinforces its idea of the “inevitable” unification, the latter contributes to CCP’s propaganda that conflates the defense of freedom in Taiwan with the suppression of its citizens’ true identities. Diplomacy that trusts Taiwan to define its national identity will only strengthen the confidence and will to fight of the Taiwanese people. To maximize their commitment to any alliance, Taiwanese must feel welcomed and accepted as well as free to explore their identities.
Taiwan deserves credit for reconciling with its past, exploring its identity, and strengthening its democracy, all while fighting off Chinese coercion and preparing for a potential all-out war. Faced with a difficult process of soul-searching amid growing cross-strait tensions and an increasingly aggressive China, Taiwan’s democracy has remained resilient. China’s asymmetric and information warfare efforts against Taiwan have failed, despite its complex and ever-changing identities providing seemingly fertile ground.
Recognizing and learning from Taiwan’s success in this unlikely feat will not only instruct Western efforts to contain China but also provide much-needed self-confidence to the Taiwanese people. Emerging from centuries of colonization and military dictatorship, Taiwan has become a prosperous democracy. Taiwan’s flourishing against all odds must be understood as a product of its historical agency – the Taiwanese deserve nuanced engagement as they defend their society against a totalitarian superpower.