ABSTRACT
There has been an increasing amount of literature on the changing identity of the people in Taiwan since the inception of democracy in the early 1990s. Whatever the approach, the main theme has been invariably the rising tide of Taiwanization at the expense of Chinese nationalism, the ideology that predominated during the authoritarian rule of the Kuomintang (KMT) (Lynch 2004, Schubert 2004, Wang and Liu 2004, Wang and Chang 2005, Cabestan 2005, Schubert 2006). In the craze to identify and demonstrate this trend, it is all too easy to lose track of the staying power of the old identity, and its political advocate, the reinvented KMT. This chapter tells the story of the other side, of how the old force has been striving to maintain its political relevance by reformulating its ideals and reconciling Chinese and Taiwanese identities.
