ABSTRACT
Over the last two decades, national identity has been the most studied topic in Taiwanese political science. Few scholars would contest Hsieh’s assertion that in Taiwan, ‘Among the political issues, national identity is often regarded as the most signifi cant in distinguishing among the various political parties.’ 1 The size of the literature was apparent from the fact that articles on Taiwan’s national identity and nationalism made up the whole fi rst volume of The Politics of Modern Taiwan . The popularity of identity studies is not without its drawbacks. With so much research in this fi eld, it is not easy for scholars to fi nd new and innovative angles. In response to the glut in publications on national identity, I coined the term ‘national identity and cross-Strait fatigue’ a few years ago. 2 Although national identity is a salient issue in Taiwan, there is also a danger of exaggerating its importance. When voters are asked which issues they view as most pressing, identity issues usually get ranked rather lower than many politicians or electoral scholars would like. Nevertheless, identity issues often get entangled with other seemingly unrelated issues, such as social welfare and political corruption. Moreover, politicians tend to view it as the most powerful issue. As the former DPP presidential candidate Peng Ming-min explained, ‘In election speeches you have to talk about what people want to hear (i.e. national identity).’ 3
Another diffi culty we face in studying national identity in Taiwan is that both the general public and politicians’ views on the topic cannot always be taken at face value. For instance, some surveys in the 1980s showed that the majority of respondents viewed retaking the mainland as the government’s most pressing task. However, this may be more of a refl ection on political correctness at the time than a genuine desire to achieve Chinese unifi cation by launching all out war against the mainland. We can see similar patterns at the elite level. This was summed up in the words of a senior DPP politician,
There are some things that you can do, but cannot say. You can be independent, but you cannot say you’re independent. And there are some things you can say but you cannot do. The KMT says it wants to retake the mainland. But if you tell the KMT not to say this, it’ll lose much of its legitimacy. 4
Core concepts and defi nitions Before tackling this fascinating topic in detail, we fi rst need to set out some core working defi nitions of the key concepts and how they are applied in the Taiwan case. For Gellner, ‘Nationalism is primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and national units should be congruent.’ 5 A simple way of thinking about nationalism is to view it as two core questions: Who are the people and what are the boundaries of the nation state? In other
words, are the people Chinese or Taiwanese and are the boundaries of the state limited to Taiwan and its surrounding islands or should the Chinese mainland also be regarded as part of the territory of the state?
