Here’s what six Taiwan residents want the world to know about their culture, their future and China’s threats.
Taiwan is an island , but historically that hasn’t meant peaceful isolation; far from it. It’s been under the rule of powers from beyond its shores for much of the last millennium — from the Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch in the 16th and 17th centuries to the Ming and Qing Chinese dynasties to Japanese control from 1895 to 1945.
In 2020, a Pew Research poll found that 66 per cent of Taiwan’s 23 million people solely identified as “Taiwanese” while 28 per cent identified as both Chinese and Taiwanese.There are 16 recognized Indigenous tribes in Taiwan, as well as hundreds of thousands of migrants from all over Asia. Yet in the West, discussions over the future of the island democracy too often exclude the voices of Taiwanese people, let alone capture their diversity.
I clashed more and more with my father, and we had a lot of fights over this issue. My parents lived through the White Terror but said they didn’t personally suffer. Now, I don’t feel like I’m Chinese anymore, because I don’t feel like I’m someone ruled by the Chinese Communist Party. I feel like I’m Taiwanese because I grew up in Taiwan, and while China is in my blood, geographically my home is Taiwan., because there are similarities between mainland Chinese, Hong Kongers, Taiwanese, Singaporeans and overseas Chinese. We came from the same land in different eras.
Taiwan’s Indigenous groups have lived under the rule of the Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese and Chinese empires. This has led to a great loss of language, culture and land. When Taiwanese Indigenous people leave Taiwan, I think most tell others we are from Taiwan. And if people inquire future, we may explain that we are Taiwan’s original people.