ABSTRACT
During 2008–2016, the Ma Ying-jeou administration strongly pushed for rapprochement with “Mainland China” and tried to persuade Taiwan’s population that the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to the same Chinese nation. However, increasing economic integration, massive tourism from the PRC and academic and cultural exchanges did not produce a sense of shared “cross-strait Chineseness” or create a will to unify with China. On the contrary, many recent studies show that identification with Taiwan is rapidly consolidating. This is especially the case among young Taiwanese born during the 1980s through the middle 1990s. This chapter analyzes the key factors contributing to the strengthening of the identification with Taiwan as a nation-state and the different meanings of “being Taiwanese” among this generation. The chapter relies on several surveys of young people, two of which were conducted by the author.
