Taiwan is a land of diversity. Travelers on Taipei’s Rapid Transit Metro hear announcements in four different languages: English, Mandarin Chinese, Hakka, and Holo. For metro travelers and statesmen alike, this diversity is both a blessing and a burden. With its many ethnic groups and languages, and without a long history as an independent country, Taiwan is finding it difficult to create a tangible national identity that encompasses all of its 23 million residents. For Taiwan’s current leaders, there has never been a more important time to construct a distinctly “Taiwanese” national identity.

Many members of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) see the establishment of national identity as a vital element to Taiwan’s quest for eventual independence. The DPP administration of Chen Shui-bian, taking the lead from former Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui, has undertaken a revolutionary program of desinification, defining a national Taiwanese identity solely in opposition to that of China. Chen is using the power of the government to impose this supposedly genuine “Taiwanese” identity. The problem is that Chen himself does not seem to know what being “Taiwanese” really means; he can define national identity only in a negative, oppositional way.

Chen’s efforts to construct national identity are not motivated by genuine concern for the Taiwanese peoples’ ambivalence, frustration, or confusion regarding who they really are. Chen, for partisan purposes, is instead politicizing the process of creating national identity in order to pursue Taiwanese independence and, more importantly, to draw a greater separation between what he claims as the “foreign,” almost traitorous Kuomintang (KMT) party and his own Democratic Progressive Party. Two types of politicization are at work: first, Chen’s partisan motives and their effects, and second, his treatment of national identity as if it were in the realm of politics, when in fact national identity should emerge from the experiences and truths of a nation’s history and culture. National identity, in other words, is something with an authenticity of its own, something inherently apolitical.

Perhaps the worst result of such politicization is that Taiwanese do not see national identity as a separate and sacred concept on its own; because of Chen’s heightened politicization of national identity, many Taiwanese simply relate national identity with a political party, KMT or DPP. This will ultimately fracture Taiwanese society as well as jeopardize the future of Taiwan’s international status. If Taiwan desires to make progress on its road to independence or increase its global status, it must work on the formation of a national identity that is free from the chains of political battles and is instead rooted in Taiwan’s history, culture, and interactions with other countries in the region. Chen’s policies are, ironically, contributing to a further division—even racist polarization—of Taiwanese society. How can Taiwan ever expect to be a nation if it does not bring its own people together first?

Taiwanese Politics and National Identity

Taiwan’s history is largely based on outside influence, particularly China’s. Taiwanese aborigines, related to Malay or Polynesians, first settled more than 4,000 years ago. Currently known as “indigenous peoples,” they comprise two percent of the Taiwanese population. Historical records indicate that the Chinese first settled in islands off the west coast of Taiwan in the 1100s; and the island was mostly under Chinese authority, with a Dutch interlude, until 1895. From 1895 to 1945, Japan brutally colonized and ruled Taiwan, its first formal colony. The Japanese devastated Taiwanese society with an oppressive rule aimed at turning Taiwanese into obedient and loyal worshippers of the Emperor. When Japan invaded China in 1937, Taiwan was transformed into a factory to produce war materials for Japan.

After the war, Taiwan returned to China’s Nationalist government under Chiang Kai-shek, who fled to Taiwan with more than one million followers in 1949. Chiang’s government ruled Taiwan with an iron fist, expelling the Japanese, implementing martial law, and putting restrictions on the press. In 1988 Lee Teng-hui assumed the presidency after the death of Chiang Ching-kuo, Chang Kai-shek’s son. In 1996 Lee became the first democratically elected president, winning 54 percent of the popular vote.

Even though Lee led the KMT party from 1988 to 2000, his policies were the first to undermine the positions traditionally held by most KMT supporters. In regards to national identity, Lee supported the Taiwanese localization movement, which prioritized anything Taiwanese and opposed anything Chinese. Lee believed that Chinese and Taiwanese identities were completely incompatible. During his presidency, many members of the KMT believed he was intentionally damaging the party from within; this accusation was arguably verified by Lee after his presidency, when he became one of the foremost vocal supporters of an organization that favors Taiwanese independence, the Taiwan Solidarity Union.

Lee is a perfect example of the conflict that many Taiwanese face—the exact meaning of “Taiwanese” means. For all his support of Taiwanese localization, Lee himself is unabashedly pro-Japanese, having grown up during the years of Japanese imperialism in Taiwan. In numerous speeches, Lee urged Taiwanese to support Japan, the nation most likely to support Taiwanese independence from China. After he retired from the presidency, Lee even entered the arena of Japanese cinema, playing a hawkish principal in a boy’s school on the show Sakigake Otokojuku to promote his upbringing in Japan. Additionally, Lee publishes only in the Japanese language and submits only to Japanese-run publications. Lee wanted Taiwan to be independent—and in his mind, the most effective way to accomplish this was to align Taiwan with Japan and Japanese culture. Lee even went so far once as to suggest he was not Chinese at all but more Japanese, a comment which incited controversy and anger.

In 2000 Chen Shui-Bian was elected president, largely on a platform of pro-Taiwanese independence, ending the five-decade rule by the KMT. He won election again in November 2004, after a suspicious assassination attempt the day before elections, which disenfranchised thousands of Taiwanese police and military personnel (Chen declared a state of emergency, prohibiting them from reaching the polls). Chen won the election against the KMT challenger, Lien Chan, with a razor-thin margin of just over 30,000 votes.