Taiwan's National Identity Issue

Comment on Taiwan's National Identity Issue

July 11, 2011

Since my seminar paper topic is also related to Taiwan’s national identity, I’m very much interested in this topic. In the reading, the author mainly discussed the four symbolic changes which are redefinitions of National Identity. Taiwan’s national identity is always linked to its differentiation from mainland China.

I am presently working on writing a research paper about the identity of Taiwan’s younger generation and their sentiment toward mainland China. According to my research, 127 people out of 139 said that they define themselves as “Taiwanese”, not “Chinese”. From this result, I think I can say that this generation is sort of the result of “Taiwanization”. Some of them had used the “Knowing Taiwan” textbook when they were junior high school students. I first thought that they might have gotten some influences from the textbooks of history, geography, and social studies textbook through their junior high school education. However, as I do more research, I started to feel the present political situation would have a stronger influence on the thoughts of the younger generation.

Therefore, when I look back on the period when the tridemism was overthrown or when textbooks were recompiled many times (This period is the transitional period of taiwanization/ de-sinicization), each event was real and personal for the people in Taiwan at that time. There must have been a lot more of Waishenrens who strongly believed that Taiwan and mainland China should be unified. Especially after 1987, Benshenrens’ idea that Taiwan should be an independent nation must have been stronger than now too.

When I look at the banknote, I see some Chinese elements and Taiwanese elements. Therefore I suppose how both parties should come to terms with each other must have been an important matter in Taiwanese politics and society at that time. Through this period of transition, the people in Taiwan have been gradually Taiwanized and as I mentioned above, the younger generation feel a stronger Taiwanese identity naturally, which should be differentiated from mainland China.