China-Taiwan relationship
The issue of Taiwan and its relationship with mainland China has been a main point in the international debate. Changes to the island's relations with China have resulted from two Sino-Japanese wars, World War II, civil war between Communist and Nationalists and the cold war. The control of Taiwan has reflected the balance of power among Beijing, Tokyo and, eventually, Washington.
The PRC disputed and currently claims Taiwan's sovereignty on the basis of identity problems: Taiwan is ethnically Han, therefore it should legitimately be part of the Chinese nation. The question of Taiwan identity, the so-called Taiwan wenti 台湾问题 , poses problems for China's national identity as well, raising issues for other ethnic territories under PRC autorities: Taiwan quest for indipendence may lead to similar claims among Tibetans, Turkish Muslims (Uighur minority) and Cantonese.
Taiwan, in fact, represents a cohesive community characterized by a specific ethnic and cultural identity. Taiwanese identity does not corrispond to any ethnic minority or regional Han ethnic groups of the mainland identities. The Han residents in Taiwan perceive themselves different from the non-Han groups, the Aborigines of the island but there is no cohesion in terms of identity between the Han population.
The term taiwanese was first used only during the 20s, the inhabitants of the island first described themselves as hontojin or benturen 本土人, the term was then changed taiwanren 台湾人. The latter is often used today to refer to the ethnic majority of Taiwan, the Hoklo, it is used as synonym of the expression benshengren 本省人, which includes both Hoklo and Hakka, whose ancestors inhabited the island before 1895, when the Japanese colonial government suspended further immigration from China. Consequently it is opposed to waishengren 外省人, that is Nationalists who came to Taiwan between 1945 and 1949. Relations between benshengren and waishengren were never harmonious, the 228 Incident and the consequential “White Terror” period established by Kuomintang may just be used as examples of the complicated state of affairs between the two main inhabitants of Formosa. Taiwanese were entirely excluded from political power and national corporations during the period of martial law, while mainlander were excluded from small and medium-sized business owned by Taiwanese.
More recently, the political and economic transformations of the island during the 80s and 90s led to a radical change in the perception of Taiwanese identity, becoming increasingly inclusive and nationalist. New Taiwanese identity embraces both the ethnic Taiwanese and the Mainlanders groups as an amalgam of Aborigines and Han origins. These new feeling of national pride came from the sudden realization of the new drastic distance between the two Chinese worlds, separated only by the Taiwan Strait. Since the mid-1980s, Mainlanders and Taiwanese were allowed to visit PRC territory and they were shocked by the standards of living and the loss of Confucian values and virtues and what they perceived as an apparent lack of ethic by the PRC Chinese. Recently, this sense of national pride has been reflected in the political scope; Taiwan indipendent movement has gained new consensus and new political leaders are pressuring Beijing and Washington in order to reconsider ROC international status. In 1996 Li Denghui, candidate of Kuomintang, became the first non-Han president of Taiwan and he was an openly supporter of a process of Taiwanization, even though it is incompatible with the basic Kuomintang policies about Taiwan's relations with Mainland China. This process is mainly supported by the Pan-green coalization and by the Democratic Progressive Party and its aim is to regain recognition as sovereign state to Taiwan and regain the UN seat by rejecting the traditional One China policy.
Taiwan issue is far from reaching a solution and it is still unclear to what extent we can refer to Taiwanese culture, identity and literature as opposed to Chinese culture, identity and literature or if it is better to use the term sinophone in order to refer to Han culture and identiy as whole in order to differentiate it from other ethnic groups of Taiwan, mainly Han vis-à-vis the indigenous population.
Marta P.