Some misconceptions about Taiwan

I often see misconceptions about Taiwan:

1. People sometimes suggest that the majority of the population is native Taiwanese, and that a small group of “Chinese” who came over after the 1949 communist revolution ruled over this Taiwanese majority for decades.

2. People sometimes suggest that Taiwan claims to be an independent country, but China won’t recognize that claim.

Neither assertion is true.

Let’s start with the term ‘Chinese’. This could be defined in several ways. One definition is “residents of China”. By that definition, all Taiwanese residents are technically Chinese, as both China and Taiwan technically regard Taiwan as being part of China. At least that’s their official position.

But most people around the world, both Chinese and non-Chinese, use the term ‘Chinese’ in a different way. The term generally refers to an ethnic group called the “Han”. Thus people contrast “Chinese” residents of Malaysia with Malay or Indian residents of Malaysia. Or they contrast “Chinese” with “Tibetan” or “Uyghar” residents of the PRC. In everyday speech, “Chinese” generally means Han.

Using this definition, Taiwan is more “Chinese” than the PRC. Taiwan is over 95% Han, whereas the mainland is about 91% Han. Only a tiny portion of Taiwanese are native people.  As an analogy, East and West Germany were separate countries, but both places were mostly German. Residents of both North and South Korea are Korean. If there is an argument for Taiwanese independence, it should not be based on the myth that the “native Taiwanese” are somehow ruled over by “Chinese”. That would be as absurd as saying “Fujianese” people are ruled over by the Chinese.

On the second point, the Taiwanese constitution says there is only one China, and it includes both Taiwan and the mainland. (Also Mongolia, BTW, which is a rather silly claim.)

I’m a pragmatist, and thus I’m perfectly happy with the current arrangement. Taiwan is much richer and freer than the mainland, so it’s no surprise that they don’t want to unify at the moment. It would be a horrific mistake for the PRC to suddenly force the issue with an invasion. But it also makes sense to view re-unification as a long run goal, to be achieved peacefully after the mainland has achieved levels of prosperity and freedom that are roughly on par with Taiwan. Just as East and West Germany eventually reunified peacefully, and North and South Korea will likely eventually unify peacefully.

Maintaining the aspiration of eventual reunification will have the advantage of minimizing the risk of a ruinous war, which might be triggered by a rash decision of Taiwan to declare independence.

PS. Of course you can make the argument that Taiwanese are now a separate ethnic group, having lived apart for so long. But in that case you must make the same argument about Korea, which split in two at almost exactly the same time. Koreans have lived under vastly different conditions, even more different than the two groups of Han Chinese. And yet I see very few people denying that both North and South Koreans are indeed “Korean”.


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18 Responses to “Some misconceptions about Taiwan”

  1. Gravatar of Mark Mark
    13. July 2019 at 17:17

    The question of what we consider “Chinese” is interesting. I think it’s a bit more complicated than “Chinese” means Han. China has over 50 ethnic minorities, and the only ones that many Americans might consider non-Chinese are the Tibetans and more recently, the Uighurs. Many other non-Han groups in China are generally considered Chinese, such as the Manchurians for example. That’s why the country ruled by the Qing Dynasty is called China or sometimes even the Chinese Empire, and not Manchuria. This is just from my American perspective though. It would also be interesting to consider what most Chinese people consider to be Chinese (my impression is that Chinese generally consider all of the official minorities, including Tibetans and Uighurs, to be Chinese), and whether most Tibetans, Uighurs, Manchurians, etc. consider themselves Chinese.

    All this leads to the larger point that ethnic identification is pretty arbitrary and not a good way for outsiders to decide what the legitimate government of a territory is or should be.

  2. Gravatar of Market Fiscalist Market Fiscalist
    13. July 2019 at 18:00

    ‘People sometimes suggest that the majority of the population is native Taiwanese, and that a small group of “Chinese” who came over after the 1949 communist revolution ruled over this Taiwanese majority for decades.’

    Leaving aside the probably tricky question around what Chinese ethnicity means it is a historical fact that a large number of people from the Chinese Mainland arrived in Taiwan in the 1940’s and (effectively) ruled for some decades over people whose ancestors had lived in Taiwanese for many generations. To that extent what “many suggest” is actually correct !

  3. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    13. July 2019 at 18:12

    Mark, China has been called “China” in the West for over 2000 years. The Qing dynasty was founded in the 17th century. So that’s not where the name came from. I believe it came from the Qin dynasty of roughly 500 BC, but am not certain.

    The Chinese people often think in terms of the Han when they refer to “the Chinese”.

    You said:

    “All this leads to the larger point that ethnic identification is pretty arbitrary and not a good way for outsiders to decide what the legitimate government of a territory is or should be.”

    I certainly agree.

    Market Fiscalist, After WWII, millions of Americans from the north moved to Florida, and by the 21st century this group was “ruling over” the small number of Americans whose ancestors lived in Florida before WWII.

    Again, Taiwan is definitely part of China, and the people who live in Taiwan are overwhelmingly Chinese. The fact that Chinese people move around within their own country is not very interesting.

    People misunderstand this point, and assume that Taiwan was not a part of Chinese before the “Chinese” arrived in 1949.

  4. Gravatar of Market Fiscalist Market Fiscalist
    13. July 2019 at 18:30

    ‘The fact that Chinese people move around within their own country is not very interesting.’

    I think the movement of people from the Chinese mainland to Taiwan is both interesting (and important) if one wants to understand modern Taiwanese history in full context. Would you also say that the movement of people from mainland Britain to Ireland was not very interesting as its just Europeans moving around within their own continent ?

  5. Gravatar of dtoh dtoh
    13. July 2019 at 18:38

    Scott,
    I basically agree, but I’m not sure I would define ethnicity along Han (Sinitic) non-Han (non-Sinitic) lines. And certainly from a cultural perspective, I think the distinction between Hokkien and Mandarin speakers is probably the most relevant for the Taiwanese. Hokkien speakers who regard themselves as native Taiwanese have for a long time (and even to a certain extent now) view the Mandarin speakers who came over with the KMT as foreign invaders.

  6. Gravatar of BC BC
    14. July 2019 at 01:27

    Scott, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt by assuming that you’re speaking out of ignorance even though you are parroting the same lines that mainlanders, both Communists and KMT exiles to Taiwan, propagate out of disingenuousness. Taiwanese that lived in Taiwan before WW2 view themselves as Taiwanese, not Chinese, as both Market Fiscalist and dtoh point out. Before the KMT arrived, Taiwanese had Japanese names, spoke Japanese, and even after the KMT takeover continued to call each other in many cases (mostly older generation) by their original Japanese names. That’s because Taiwan was unambiguously part of Japan from 1895 to the end of WW2. That “split”, which happened before *both* the ROC and PRC even existed, happened long before the Korean split, which was after WW2. In fact, when the KMT occupied Taiwan, they had to embark on a deliberate program of forced sinicization to suppress Taiwanese identity, including for example discouraging people from speaking Taiwanese dialects in favor of Mandarin [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinicization#Taiwan]. Taiwanese view themselves as neither Japanese nor Chinese, but distinctly Taiwanese. (Of course, during KMT military rule, saying so in public might land one in prison or get one disappeared.) At least, that’s what my parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents all tell me, and they are the people in question, people born in Taiwan long before the KMT arrived.

    Calling Taiwanese people Chinese is like calling Americans and Canadians British. Yes, there are many shared cultural elements and roots. But, they are distinct identities.

    What you call the “Taiwanese constitution” is actually the ROC constitution. Agreed that the ROC government has democratic legitimacy today. However, the KMT forced that constitution on the Taiwanese initially and ruled under martial law from WW2 until the the 1990s. Since that time, the PRC has threatened to take Taiwan by force if Taiwan should declare independence. So, the Taiwanese are not completely free to write their own constitution.

    Finally, when the KMT forces arrived in Taiwan after WW2, they were indeed officially a military occupying force, holding Taiwan *on behalf of the Allied Powers* under authority of MacArthur’s General Order No. 1, pending a treaty to determine the final status of all former Japanese territories. The Treaty of San Francisco (1951), however, left Taiwan’s status unresolved, as it remains to this day. Even the ROC Minister of Foreign Affairs, after signing the separate Treaty of Taipei with Japan in 1952, conceded: “[Taiwan and Penghu] do not belong to us.” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Taiwan#1952_%E2%80%93_Treaty_of_Taipei]. See also [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Taiwan#Legal_Status_Dispute_under_International_Law], [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrocession_Day#Controversy], [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_Undetermined_Status_of_Taiwan].

    The long run goal should be for China to mature enough that the Chinese and Taiwanese can co-exist peacefully, without threatening each other’s sovereignty, self-determination, and freedom.

  7. Gravatar of dtoh dtoh
    14. July 2019 at 03:59

    BC – Great explanation.

  8. Gravatar of E. Harding E. Harding
    14. July 2019 at 05:14

    Both assertions have grains of truth to them.

    1. Most of the ancestors of present-day inhabitants of Taiwan arrived over a century ago, before the Japanese occupation, and, unlike Korea, Taiwan is an island, allowing it to diverge from the mainland for a much longer time and greater extent than the two Koreas have diverged. Similarly, Taiwan is only a fiftieth of China in population, while both Koreas are over a third of the population of the Korean peninsula.

    2. The current Taiwanese leadership does claim Taiwan is not part of China:

    https://twitter.com/MOFA_Taiwan/status/1129901169906552833
    https://twitter.com/MOFA_Taiwan/status/1112011821907480582
    https://twitter.com/MOFA_Taiwan/status/1085924168179347458

    However, it refuses to force the issue with a declaration of independence.

  9. Gravatar of E. Harding E. Harding
    14. July 2019 at 05:20

    Anyway, I think any sane person can see that Russia has much greater legitimacy in Krim (and even Donbass, and, in fact, perhaps even all Ukraine) than current China does in regards to Taiwan.

  10. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    14. July 2019 at 07:34

    dtoh, If language were the criteria, then maybe Taiwan should unify with Fujian province, and declare independence from Beijing. Is that your view?

    BC, Yes, I’m well aware that Japan was a colonial power in Taiwan from 1895 to 1945. Japan was also a colonial power in Korea during roughly the same time. Did that cause Koreans to no longer be Koreans? What’s the point?

    Harding, Nice try, but Ukraine is an independent country, invaded by Russia.

    As far as Taiwan being an island, so is Hainan. Is Hainan an independent country?

  11. Gravatar of Matthias Görgens Matthias Görgens
    14. July 2019 at 11:17

    PRC and Taiwan can just stay as Federal Republic of Germany and Federal Republic of Austria are to each other.

    Austria as being separate from Germany proper was mostly a result of 19th century power politics to get Prussia to dominate the Empire. But no one wants to unify them these days, and why would they?

    And there are also the (German) Swiss and the Dutch, who also used to be part of the HRE.

  12. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    14. July 2019 at 16:07

    But it also makes sense to view re-unification as a long run goal, to be achieved peacefully after the mainland has achieved levels of prosperity and freedom that are roughly on par with Taiwan. Just as East and West Germany eventually reunified peacefully, and North and South Korea will likely eventually unify peacefully.

    Scott,

    Of course you’re right, but how likely is this scenario? There are currently no signs that Mainland China will become free. On the contrary, the Communist Party seems to be becoming more powerful and illiberal in Mainland China. Germany’s reunification only worked because the communist part collapsed completely. How likely is that scenario in Mainland China?

    The German way would mean that the democratic Taiwan would take over Mainland China, not the other way around. So tell the whole story or don’t tell it at all. Your half-truths won’t get us anywhere. It’s just embarrassingly apologetic. The dictatorial Mainland China is preying on democratic Taiwan like a rabid tiger. Almost every month they announce another threat. You forgot to mention that little part, didn’t you?

    It’s the way Matthias Görgens says. The realistic scenario is that the countries will remain separate, and eventually become completely separate, like Austria and Germany today, or Austria and Hungary, or Austria and Bohemia, or Austria and Galicia (poor Austria losing so many territories lol), or Germany and Poland, or Russia and Ukraine. It’s over Mainland China. Find another territory to prey on.

  13. Gravatar of BC BC
    14. July 2019 at 19:40

    @Scott: “Japan was also a colonial power in Korea during roughly the same time. Did that cause Koreans to no longer be Koreans?”

    Well, it certainly didn’t turn Koreans into Chinese! Both Koreans and Taiwanese see themselves as separate and distinct from both Japanese and Chinese.

    Hopefully, the Chinese will look at the special relationship among the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand and one day realize that such relationship has only been possible and can only be maintained precisely because the British learned to respect the independence and self-determination of its former colonies. They will learn the lesson that parents of all adult children must learn, which is to not cling so tightly that they end up pushing their children away. Probably, the most sage advice for the Chinese would be, “If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they’re yours; if they don’t they never were.”

  14. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    15. July 2019 at 08:48

    Matthias and BC, (I won’t even dignify Christian’s idiotic post with a reply),

    If the Mainland and Taiwan decide on a amicable divorce (similar to Czechoslovakia), that’s their perogative. But that has no bearing on anything I said in this post.

  15. Gravatar of MORGAN WARSTLER MORGAN WARSTLER
    15. July 2019 at 10:46

    Scott you need to a post on how Peter Thiel is bad and China / Google is good. thats all that is missing here.

    no wait, another one on the concentration camps things.

    We’re about to plunge deep into tech Cold War until China opens its markets and lets US tech corporations have direct access to their 1B consumer / user nodes.

    We favor Taiwan bc it helps us exert hegemony in the region.

    But compared to keeping China out of 5G radio market, this is nothing.

    I’d expect you’d cheerlead China bending the knee, but you also think Trump is a Nazi.

  16. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    15. July 2019 at 13:19

    I won’t even dignify Christian’s idiotic post with a reply

    I just think you don’t have a substantive answer. But you couldn’t just let it go either, so you had to mention me. I have won all the substantive arguments: China is preying on Taiwan like a rabid Tiger. The difference between Russia preying on Ukraine isn’t that substantial. Maybe China is even worse. They want everything not “just” Crimea. You can’t have it both ways. Wake up, Scott. Knock, knock, is anyone home?

    The threats by Mainland China are even more extreme than the threats the GDR made against democratic Germany at the time. And these threats were already really extreme, but they were never so extreme that the GDR would have started a war just because the FRG declared its independence. Mainland China does exactly that. It’s just despicable. It’s shameful.

    And you call America the worst bully in the world. It’s so laughable. Mainland China bullies very large parts of its own population. In the end of the day they bully close to all of their citizens, because it is in fact a totalitarian surveillance state. And because that’s still not enough for them, they bully territories like Tibet, Taiwan, Cambodia, Venezuela and any other country they can their hands on.

  17. Gravatar of JMCSF JMCSF
    15. July 2019 at 18:34

    What do the residents of Taiwan want? If through a democratic process they voted to be recognized as an independent country, shouldn’t the world accept that?

    Where is public opinion on the issue?

  18. Gravatar of Matthias Görgens Matthias Görgens
    17. July 2019 at 00:07

    JMCSF, I suspect the Taiwanese most of all don’t want to be involved in a war.

    Scott, I didn’t mean to contradict your post. Rather expand on it with some more examples for comparison that go beyond the East/West Germany unification that gets brought up so often.

    Btw, Austrians are also sort-of ethnically speaking Germans, but no one gets (too) confused or angry that German can refer to the language, country or ethnicities. Or English (though the Scottish get a bit angry sometimes.) Chinese is the same. My adopted home of Singapore is about three quarters Chinese by population, but not many people confuse us with mainland China.

    Scott, btw you might like The Discovery of France about how even a country as seemingly culturally monolithic as modern France was a patchwork not so long ago.

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