To Love Taiwan with Veritable Truth, Rationality and Seek a New Cross-Strait Consensus Series Part 2: Taiwanese Are Chinese

  To Love Taiwan with Veritable Truth, Rationality and Seek a New Cross-Strait Consensus Series Part 2:

 Taiwanese Are Chinese

China Times Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan, ROC)

June 5, 2017

 Translation of an Except

Are Taiwanese Chinese? According to a survey conducted by East Asia Democracy Studies Center in 2014, 68.9% of the people only identify themselves as Taiwanese, those who identified themselves as both Taiwanese and Chinese plummeted to 27.2%, while identifying themselves as only Chinese accounted for only 2.1%. But in just two short years, and against the DPP home court advantage, Chinese identity, on the other hand, has rebounded upwards. A survey conducted by the Taiwan Competitiveness Forum in the end of 2016 found that Chinese identity rebounded to 52%, the highest among its various surveys.

How do we interpret these two contradictory pieces of information? The core concept is "time." Identity, in fact, will change with time, social events, and political trends. However, since the Chinese identity of Taiwanese has experienced a drastic morphing, it precisely explains that identity is not a constant, but a fluid state.

Most Taiwanese come from the Mainland; language, writing, religion, and habits of living also derived from the Mainland. After 300 years of development, although a pluralistic culture has formed, the main ingredient is still Chinese culture. When Mainland tourists come to Taiwan, they perhaps feel more like they are breathing on their own land than in Hong Kong. The Mainland has had strong momentum in economic development in recent years, with a more and more well-to-do society. Thus the Mainland, in theory, should be a strong magnet to Taiwan; that Taiwanese renew their Chinese identity should have a very good basis.

The Mainland should follow and encourage the trend; in formulating Taiwan policies, it should hold as a guiding principle, seeking Taiwanese being re-identified as Chinese with pleasure and no regret. The dividing line between royal rule and despotic rule lies in the rule of people with virtue and the rule over people with brute force. If it could allow Taiwanese to revert to Chinese identity under their own will, this Chinese identity will be truly solid.

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