The China-Taiwan story has long been defined by China’s sovereign claims on the island. This “renegade province” story is a legacy of the Chinese civil war of 1927 to 1950 fought by the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Communist Party of China (CPC), and which drove the KMT to Taiwan.
But today the war is about far more than the CPC’s continued sovereign claims on the island. In fact, the sovereignty issue may have far less to do with China’s Taiwan bellicosity than most of us realize.
When journalists write about Taiwan, they generally evoke its vibrant and hard-earned democracy, which is obviously a subject that Beijing’s autocrats would prefer was never discussed.
But the byproducts of Taiwan’s democratic evolution are also anathema to Beijing because they make a mockery of the CPC’s much-touted claims of having evolved a magical rule-all model for governance based on – of all things – Marxism.
As China’s president Xi Jinping continues to push his Marxist-based China model, Taiwan stays on course with experiments in diversity that have no place in the CPC’s China. Obvious examples include the Constitutional Court ruling in 2017 that the current civil-code definition of marriage as being only between a man and woman is unconstitutional, setting a two-year time frame for the legalization of same-sex marriage.
China only legalized homosexuality in 1997, and the Health Ministry only delisted it as a “mental disorder” in 2001. Meanwhile, a 2016 Peking University report found that only 15% of Chinese gay respondents had “come out” to their families and more than half said they had suffered discrimination as a result.
Another area of divergence between Taiwan and China is freedom of the press. The latest World Press Freedom Index, which ranks 180 countries according to “an evaluation of pluralism, independence of the media, quality of legislative framework and safety of journalists” by Paris-based NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF), placed Taiwan 42nd out of 180 countries. This made it the highest-ranking country in East Asia. China was placed 176th, putting it close to the very bottom of the list, ahead of Syria, Turkmenistan, Eritrea and North Korea.
But perhaps most telling of all in this tale of two political entities is attitudes towards language policy. Take the mass rapid transit in Taipei, and you will hear announcements in English, Mandarin, Minnan (the dialect of Fujian Province known in English as Hokkien and locally as Taiwanese) and Hakka, the language of China’s most diasporic ethnic group and spoken by approximately 7 percent of Taiwanese. Hakka was designated as a national language by legislators in December of last year.
The 42 dialects of Taiwan’s 16 officially indigenous languages were recognized in June of the same year, requiring that the government allow them to be used for legislative and legal affairs, and that the government establishes a foundation to support the languages with the development of writing systems and dictionaries.
This leaves the vexing question of Taiwanese, which is believed to be spoken by more than 80% of the population. Under KMT rule, the language was effectively banned and students were punished for using it at school. Today its use is mandatory for public transport public announcements, but a draft bill promoting national languages, which will require that Taiwanese is included in school curriculums, is expected to be passed very soon.
This will put Taiwanese on an equal footing with Mandarin as a national language. The reason this move has been so long in the making is fear that making Taiwanese part of Taiwan’s mandatory 12-year educational curriculum will be viewed by Beijing as yet another step in the direction of formalizing Taiwan’s functional independence.
It is provocative precisely because China’s national language policy is focused on Mandarin – and to the extent that many of the country’s estimated 298 languages are considered to be under threat. In a report on the Phonemica Project by The Atlantic in 2013, Phnonemica co-founder Kelly Parker said: “In many … places, the generation after today’s children won’t be able to speak the local language.
“These aren’t small languages either; we’re looking at languages that have tens of millions of speakers … More and more people are consciously using Mandarin at home,” she added.
This is particularly the case in regions of China that Beijing perceives as problematic, such as Tibet and Xinjiang, where the government appears to be set on erasing the non-Sinitic languages of Tibetan and Uyghur.
In short, the challenge for China in dealing with Taiwan is that the rise of Taiwanese identity is a threat not only to China’s claims on the island, but that Taiwan is speaking non-CPC endorsed languages, and protests, such as the Sunflower movement, against China and Taiwanese China-aligned politicians, are often carried out in Taiwanese, not Mandarin
The threat also is that Taiwan is evolving its own model for governance based on values that are not merely inclusive but also make “universal” sense – unlike the mind-bending intellectual acrobatics required to understand Xi’s interpretation of Marxism as a guiding light for global governance.
This might be simply summed up as a standoff over whether dissent is defined as inimical to state interests or whether it has a role to play in advancing inclusive national creativity.
It is not a debate that China tolerates, but Taiwan is pressing ahead with it all the same – simply because it has allowed its citizens to become part of an argument about how they define themselves and how they own their future – assuming that China decides it is not militarily ready to stop them from doing so.
Really, morally theirs?Do you mean parts of Russia in the Far East and Outer Mongolia as well?China couldn’t risk a war with the Russians since they have the means to wipe out the entire Chinese landmass with their vast nuclear stockpiles. "Recovering" historical territories would end up losing even more territories as it’ll certainly be in the case of any cross-straits unification endeavor just look at the dissolution of Austria-Hungary with its humongous ethnic minorities whose politio-social situation also shared by contemporary China. And the Han-Chinese people couldn’t even psychologically bear losing Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Chinese-Occupied Turkestan which together accounts for roughly 50% of China. An other war could lead to China returning to the epoch of post-Qing anarchy. Do you even want that or just acknowledging the independence of Taiwan like Gorbachev did for the Baltic states and avoid another what you would call "post-modern century of humiliation?
the communists played the opportunist and took advantage of the chaos of the second world war. Mao even directly thanked the Japanese for invading because it made overthrowing the nationalist government so much easier. this "moral obligation" nonsense is just ccp propaganda that is used to justify taking any territory it desires.
Chris Taylor,
I personally cannot see what the big hoohah is about at the familial level.
I am Malaysian but have family members in both Mainland and Taiwan.
And guess what! I am Hakka/Hokkien.
My wife is from HK and so she is Cantonese.
In HK I hear ‘We are Chinese, there is only one Middle Kingdom, but HK is a different regime which we want to retain. We do not want to be Communist.’
I hear the same with family members in Taiwan – ‘We are Chinese, there is only one Middle Kingdom, but Taiwan is a different regime which we want to retain. We do not want to be Communist.’
I think if the West stop making a big thing about it and leave the Chinese alone, so that, unlike in the West where you play musical chairs every election, in the Middle Kingdom, we play it differently – we are Chinese but here in HK or Taiwan, we are ‘voting’ (sort of) for a different regime.
It is like in my extended family and bigger again through marriage – all of us Chinese but all having different religions. Do we try to convert one another? No!
So Mainland, Taiwan, HK or the Chinese diaspora overseas like in Singapore etc we should just be One People or Middle Kingdom but different regimes or ideologies. Who knows? In 100 years time Mainland could be democratic and Taiwan communist!
So, leave your Western mindset to yourself! Do not stir the pot!
Who cares whether it is a black cat or a white cat!
I tell you what is the commonality that we Chinese have – filial piety and a mercantile mind – go out and make a living and strive to be wealthy! Every family function we talk money most of the time. No money, no talk! Politics? Only when you are drunk! And then it is always about ‘corruption’. Never about analysing what ideology is supreme or ideal or best.
As I said, no money, no talk! Whatever ideology facilitates the making of money – there we Chinese are!
And this is the fundamental truth from the shop floor or family gathering level.
Vincent Cheok
25 years ago, Taiwan’s GDP was 45% of China’s GDP; last year, it was only 4.5% of that of China. The starting salaries for the young people and college graduate are falling behind those of the wealthy coastal cities in Chinese mainland.
Taiwan’s much vaunted so-called democracy has prove to be a huge dispappointment to majority of the Taiwanese, with the very low approval rates for all the elected "presidents" or jailed president due to corruption. The demagoguery by the pro-indepdence DDP has thrown the island politics and society into endless internal striffles and fighting, polarizing and twisting the populace at large.
It used to be twenty years ago that Taiwanese media and entertainments had gig influence in mainland China. Today, the reverse is true.
Most westerners are pretty ignorant of the current affairs and the latest developments across Taiwan Straits. They’re still singing the same tune that has been out of step with the reality. All they can resort to are just some labeling, such as "robust democracy," "dictatorship," "freedom." Really they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Arthur Micol e Paule Mello
This goes a long way to explaining why over a million Taiwanese live in mainland China. I guess it also explains why Taiwanese are presently moving to mainland China in droves looking for a better life. So many are moving at present that the Taiwan government is terrified of brain drain on the island. …Maybe it’s because their government can no longer function because there is no common language anymore?
The author of this article is simply trolling cold war rhetoric like a parrot. China is pretty happy to let Taiwan keep its current systems as long as there is one China and Taiwan recognizes it is part of China like Hong Kong and Macau. Taiwan, HK and Macau can talk or do all the democracy they like as long as it is not undermining China’s national security. It seems Chris Taylor is so ignorant that he does know China’s one country two system policy.
Beside Taiwan is no democracy, even the Taiwanese themselves call their political environment is thug politics ruled by a mobster government with white terror policies.
Though China’s current Socialist political system with Chinese characteristic is not perfect, but it is superior to the greedy, selfish, passionless, extreme inequality, and corrupted western democracy which is an obfuscation to disguise inhuman feudal caste societies. The Author should ask the USA to adopt Chinese system so that USA can lift its 50% of Americans out of poverty just like China has lifted 800 hundred millions out poverty, otherwise the 50% of American poor makes a mockery of the American “of the people, for the people and by the people.”
Harry Berry, You should know Chinese is not European. European is greedy, selfish and tribal, that’s why the dissolution of Roman Empire, Austria-Hungary Empire, French Empire, British Empire, etc. only happens in Europe not in China. The European Empires are static, once they are dissolved they are gone like Dodo.
Chinese is different, China is a living entity like a heart, it contracts and expands, no matter how long the members of China have been apart they always want to join together again to create a new and better civilization like phoenix. Anyhow such dynamic and grand scope is beyond the comprehension of the tribal and provincial people like you. Taiwan’s separation is temporary in the Chinese historical view, it cannot escape too far, it will come back to China just like in the past few thousands of history.
On the other hand USA has not endure any hard test like China, so its long term survivability is questionable; a lot of people said in the second half of this century USA will be broken into 6 warring states like the quarrelsome European due to inequality, climate change, financial mismanagement and military people’s ambition.
Why didn’t the British wage wars against the American and French to get their land back? Why didn’t Russian wage wars against American to Alaska back? Why didn’t the German wage wars against Poland to get their ancestor’s land back and liberate the Germans under the Polish rule? . . . Are you saying they are chicken and avoid another "post-modern century of humiliation?" European is weird their logic is all screwed up.
DPP government is sending security agents to question anyone wants to study in China, work in China, and having relatives in China, it is worse than KMT first arrived Taiwan, White Terror is the name of the day, Taiwan online media said.
Taiwanese youth already made their choice in issue of reunification. Mainland China is their first choice for further study and for work. This trend deepened as liberalization increased in mainland China. In Taiwan the infighting between political parties turn more vicious everyday. Taiwanese economy is shrinking when it wrongly tried to distance itself from mainland China, the leading economy in the region if not the world.
Yep likely the writer is a propagandist from the CIA payroll. Pretending to be pro-Taiwan when they’re really pro-US. Doing everything they can to get the two Chinese territories to start fighting each other instead of uniting against the US.
Where does the billions in the CIA budget go? Paying hack writers like this to spread disinformation everywhere it goes.