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Is Taiwan Chinese?: The Impact of Culture, Power, and Migration on Changing Identities (Berkeley Series in Interdisciplinary Studies of China)
The "one China" policy officially supported by the People's Republic of China, the United States, and other countries asserts that there is only one China and Taiwan is a part of it. The debate over whether the people of Taiwan are Chinese or independently Taiwanese is, Melissa J. Brown argues, a matter of Han ethnic identity, Chinese national identity, and the relationship of both of these to the new Taiwanese identity forged in the 1990s. In a unique comparison of ethnographic and historical case studies drawn from both Taiwan and China, Brown's book shows how identity is shaped by social experience―not culture and ancestry, as is commonly claimed in political rhetoric.
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 5, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 19, 2014
Thanx for saying the same over and over on more than 3 hundred pages...
August 17, 2010
When it comes to the issue of China and Taiwan, most people are either very aware of it and what it implies, or they have never heard of "Taiwan". Among the people who are aware of the issue, they can subsequently be broken down to three categories: the pro-independence, the pro-unification, and "we just want to live our lives without these political rhetoric".
Melissa Brown had tackled this long debated question from every possible angle. She clearly detailed historical background of each claim made by each side of the debate, and laid down the reasons behind it. Let it be cultural, political, or ethnical. This is important because debaters of this issue usually tend to focus on one or two claims and disregard other social elements involved in order to further their point. Her comparison of the 2 studies done, one in China, one in Taiwan, also helps clarify and dismystify some claims made by general debaters.
This book is well-written, well-organized, and well-researched. Her knowledge of the China/Taiwan issue is impressive and vast. Although one fact she might have misinterpreted was the claim that the Japanese colonial government officially banned foot-binding thus from that point forward, one could visually distinguish Taiwanese Han and Taiwanese aborigines (feet bound or not).
But when the Manchurian took over China in the mid-17th century, they had banned foot-binding instantly, especially among the royalties. This was about 200 years before what Brown had claimed. Also, from my personal history of growing up in Taiwan and having huge family on both side of my parents, neither of my grandmothers nor their sisters had their feet bound. I remember seeing one old woman with bound feet near our home when I was young, and both my brother and I could not stop staring at her because it's such a rare sight. This might greatly affect her theory of aborigine population count from the time of Japanese occupation.
Her conclusion of the book might not satisfy some readers as she did not really "answer" the question posed in the title. But if one had read the whole book, one can see how difficult it is to answer such question.
Melissa Brown had tackled this long debated question from every possible angle. She clearly detailed historical background of each claim made by each side of the debate, and laid down the reasons behind it. Let it be cultural, political, or ethnical. This is important because debaters of this issue usually tend to focus on one or two claims and disregard other social elements involved in order to further their point. Her comparison of the 2 studies done, one in China, one in Taiwan, also helps clarify and dismystify some claims made by general debaters.
This book is well-written, well-organized, and well-researched. Her knowledge of the China/Taiwan issue is impressive and vast. Although one fact she might have misinterpreted was the claim that the Japanese colonial government officially banned foot-binding thus from that point forward, one could visually distinguish Taiwanese Han and Taiwanese aborigines (feet bound or not).
But when the Manchurian took over China in the mid-17th century, they had banned foot-binding instantly, especially among the royalties. This was about 200 years before what Brown had claimed. Also, from my personal history of growing up in Taiwan and having huge family on both side of my parents, neither of my grandmothers nor their sisters had their feet bound. I remember seeing one old woman with bound feet near our home when I was young, and both my brother and I could not stop staring at her because it's such a rare sight. This might greatly affect her theory of aborigine population count from the time of Japanese occupation.
Her conclusion of the book might not satisfy some readers as she did not really "answer" the question posed in the title. But if one had read the whole book, one can see how difficult it is to answer such question.
June 28, 2021
A comparative ethnographic study of several rural communities in Taiwan and Hebei based on the author’s field research in the ‘90s. An interesting anthropological case study.
April 18, 2022
The author made some interesting points early on:
1) if Taiwanese are allowed to "leave" the nation because of ethnic differences, then why not Tibetans, Turkic Muslims or Cantonese?
2) According to her, the "regional" differences among the Han are really ethnic differences, both by Stalinist criteria purportedly used to define ethnic groups in China and by comparison to ethnic differences elsewhere in the world. But they can't be because that is needed to justify Han political and demographic dominance as natural and predestined.
She also uses the different definitions as to who counts as jewish and who doesn't, to highlight her point in this regard.
It was fascinating to read how much older Taiwanese narratives have in common with the Chinese narratives. Both basically ignore the Aborigines of the Island and the Dutch incentive for "Han" immigration and ignore Taiwanese acceptance of Japanese rule and how the Zheng/Koxinga invasion established Han rule for the first time on the island. And the Big Brother attitude in the China of Han towards the minorities is not only very Orvellian, but China's imperialism and would be instantly criticized if any European/North American country would do it. And ironically, if you say that Han is defined culturally, then how can a Chinese American who is Christian and speaks only english etc. be considered a Han in China and Taiwan? Also, how valid is the culture claim anyhow when it was only a convenient explanation as to why people with paternal Han ancestry should be allowed to become Han? This ancestry seems to have been the true criterion for assimilation. And if you use Confucian criteria related to ancestor worship to classify people as Han, Taiwanese would be more Han than those in China. And apparently there is the argument that the "periphery" (e.g. Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, overseas chinese in Bangkok and San Francisco) are more confucian than the Chinese. So are Chinese really still Han?
And the Qing/Chinese attitudes towards the Taiwanese aboriginese resembles European colonial attitudes. Even so far that later on someone said he could tell who was really Aborigine and indicated his own high cheekbones as an example of physical characteristics that can be used to detect plains Aborigines. That is very reminiscent of all those Americans pointing to high cheekbones as evidence of their alleged indigenous ancestry. What is it with cheekbones? Plus, have they never seen Han with high cheekbones? However, in other cases the colonial situation in Taiwan resembled that of Europeans in Africa more than that of Europeans in the Americas: colonizers were more affected by disease than the colonized. Thus, it appears that Han had higher mortality rates than Aborigines. However, in most cases the colonizing of Taiwan was eerily similar to that of the Americas.
In fact, there was this big conversion to christianity among aborigines because of the cheating and abuse by Han chinese and the aborigines saw conversion as a way to ally themselves with foreign powers that they considered stronger than the abusive chinese.
No wonder the KMT is not liked so much anymore in Taiwan, they did not sound great either. However Taiwan got on the way to move beyond that and in this book Taiwanization really sounds more like decolonization to me.
In the early Japanese colonial times the response "We savages didn't bind feet" indicates the degree to which local people had accepted that classification. They had internalized enough Han cultural ideas to believe that lack of footbinding proved them less than civilized, less than Han. Thus their very acceptance that this marker indicated non-Han identity indicates how much they were culturally Han. Before the footbinding ban imposed by the Japanese, Aborigine men and women had troubles finding marriage partners outside their groups. Also, Hoklo considered a man marrying into a woman's family (residing near them) as immoral (only very poor families did that). Aborigine men usually only married Hoklo women if they were widows and were secondary marriages for the man. And not only is remarriage immoral in confucian terms, but being the 2nd wife means she is a concubine.
And at least back then the Taiwanese term for a pack of matches was hoan-a-hoe, lit. "savage fire"... and hoan-a refers to westerners here.... wow, and people over here got offended about some dirt on your face. Which is mentioned here is way worse, the book mentions people who remembered the draconian enforcement of Nationalist policies favoring Mainlanders, including the policy which allowed only Mandarin to be spoken in public places. One Taiwanese woman told the author about being fined in the 1970s for speaking Minnan in a private conversation with a friend as they strolled across the campus of National Taiwan University. And I bet antiquity being used for authenticity was also part of the whole deal, which is used because such claims are harder to refute.
Also, it appears that short-route identity change, unlike long-route change, did contribute Aborigine cultural influences to local models of Hoklo Taiwanese culture, just as the newly constructed narratives of Taiwan's past suggest. And big surprise, what culture you belonged to changed over time based on what was more advantageous: under the Dutch it was more advantageous to claim Aborigine identity and under the Zheng (Koxinga) regime it was more advantageous to claim Han identity. And of course converting to Christianity was often done simply to marry, as the Taiwan frontier saying goes "having a wife is better than having a god." And chinese sources also report of Han men marrying Aborigine wives, well into the Qing period, with it being sufficiently common to be a source of tension between Han and Aborigines, And as Aborigine women did not have bound feet, they could also perform agricultural labor, aka not only would marrying one bring social benefits via family connections but provide additional income.
And there were many Hoklo men from Fujian coming to Taiwan because it looked more promising than crowded Fujian. Southern Hoklo in Taiwan had less minor marriages than the others due to Aborigine contribution and in 1905 only 68 percent of Hoklo women in Taiwan had bound feet, probably also due to Aborigine contribution as well as economical consideration. According to the author this long route Han identity change pattern is what appears to be unique to Taiwan, But so what if there are short term identity changes in China as well, it was with other groups? It it because China claims that there was no de-sinicization in Taiwan, and that the changes have not gone on long "enough" for China to accept them as markers of identity change. The author afterwards went quite into detail into the topic of affirmative action, identity change and regional variation in China, and while it was interesting, I don't think it was necessary to go into so much detail to show the process in China and how it varied over time. Ironically, if those same standards from the early days of China as a nation were applied today, many people classified as Han in China would have to be reclassified as non-Han while most people in Taiwan would be classified as Han. Thus, Taiwan's self-representation as both Han and non-Chinese may not be as far-fetched as it at first appears.
And it is true, that lots of identity based political conflict was created and exacerbated due to unrealistic predictions and policies that fuel tensions rather than damping them. And in regards to China, it is clear that some consider it blasphemous to considered that western practices and ideas have been introduced to China without aggression and domination.
But at least I could remember that, all this theoretical stuff on power relations, natural selection and something I forgot already was sooooo boring. I hoped the next passage on "becoming Han" would be more interesting.
And thankfully, it was. The cultural revolution destroying religious traditions and thereby paving the way for foreign religions is really ironic. And her anectdote about one person asking in 1996 as to whether china was deliberately provoking war to reduce the surplus population is very telling as well. Not to be outdone, the legacy of the enduring devastation wrought by the Cultural Revolution also contributed to the new Taiwanese identity. Taiwanese visiting were struck by the poverty and apparent sense among Chinese that those escaping the Cultural Revolution owe them restitution. That plus the whole being freer with religion/culture thing. And ironically, this time settling Han somewhere else seems to result in non-Han identity, unlike in the past where indeed Han were settled somewhere because the were considered more compliant. And apparently there are people in China who resent America for cutting off ties with China because they belief then there would have been no great leap forward and no cultural revolution. And they might resent Taiwanese even more because they are descendants of either those being important enough to be taken to Taiwan or were part of the Japanese empire... there is logic in this.
This was of course a long and somewhat exhausting book, but well worth the read. Even though it does have 99 pages of notes.
1) if Taiwanese are allowed to "leave" the nation because of ethnic differences, then why not Tibetans, Turkic Muslims or Cantonese?
2) According to her, the "regional" differences among the Han are really ethnic differences, both by Stalinist criteria purportedly used to define ethnic groups in China and by comparison to ethnic differences elsewhere in the world. But they can't be because that is needed to justify Han political and demographic dominance as natural and predestined.
She also uses the different definitions as to who counts as jewish and who doesn't, to highlight her point in this regard.
It was fascinating to read how much older Taiwanese narratives have in common with the Chinese narratives. Both basically ignore the Aborigines of the Island and the Dutch incentive for "Han" immigration and ignore Taiwanese acceptance of Japanese rule and how the Zheng/Koxinga invasion established Han rule for the first time on the island. And the Big Brother attitude in the China of Han towards the minorities is not only very Orvellian, but China's imperialism and would be instantly criticized if any European/North American country would do it. And ironically, if you say that Han is defined culturally, then how can a Chinese American who is Christian and speaks only english etc. be considered a Han in China and Taiwan? Also, how valid is the culture claim anyhow when it was only a convenient explanation as to why people with paternal Han ancestry should be allowed to become Han? This ancestry seems to have been the true criterion for assimilation. And if you use Confucian criteria related to ancestor worship to classify people as Han, Taiwanese would be more Han than those in China. And apparently there is the argument that the "periphery" (e.g. Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, overseas chinese in Bangkok and San Francisco) are more confucian than the Chinese. So are Chinese really still Han?
And the Qing/Chinese attitudes towards the Taiwanese aboriginese resembles European colonial attitudes. Even so far that later on someone said he could tell who was really Aborigine and indicated his own high cheekbones as an example of physical characteristics that can be used to detect plains Aborigines. That is very reminiscent of all those Americans pointing to high cheekbones as evidence of their alleged indigenous ancestry. What is it with cheekbones? Plus, have they never seen Han with high cheekbones? However, in other cases the colonial situation in Taiwan resembled that of Europeans in Africa more than that of Europeans in the Americas: colonizers were more affected by disease than the colonized. Thus, it appears that Han had higher mortality rates than Aborigines. However, in most cases the colonizing of Taiwan was eerily similar to that of the Americas.
In fact, there was this big conversion to christianity among aborigines because of the cheating and abuse by Han chinese and the aborigines saw conversion as a way to ally themselves with foreign powers that they considered stronger than the abusive chinese.
No wonder the KMT is not liked so much anymore in Taiwan, they did not sound great either. However Taiwan got on the way to move beyond that and in this book Taiwanization really sounds more like decolonization to me.
In the early Japanese colonial times the response "We savages didn't bind feet" indicates the degree to which local people had accepted that classification. They had internalized enough Han cultural ideas to believe that lack of footbinding proved them less than civilized, less than Han. Thus their very acceptance that this marker indicated non-Han identity indicates how much they were culturally Han. Before the footbinding ban imposed by the Japanese, Aborigine men and women had troubles finding marriage partners outside their groups. Also, Hoklo considered a man marrying into a woman's family (residing near them) as immoral (only very poor families did that). Aborigine men usually only married Hoklo women if they were widows and were secondary marriages for the man. And not only is remarriage immoral in confucian terms, but being the 2nd wife means she is a concubine.
And at least back then the Taiwanese term for a pack of matches was hoan-a-hoe, lit. "savage fire"... and hoan-a refers to westerners here.... wow, and people over here got offended about some dirt on your face. Which is mentioned here is way worse, the book mentions people who remembered the draconian enforcement of Nationalist policies favoring Mainlanders, including the policy which allowed only Mandarin to be spoken in public places. One Taiwanese woman told the author about being fined in the 1970s for speaking Minnan in a private conversation with a friend as they strolled across the campus of National Taiwan University. And I bet antiquity being used for authenticity was also part of the whole deal, which is used because such claims are harder to refute.
Also, it appears that short-route identity change, unlike long-route change, did contribute Aborigine cultural influences to local models of Hoklo Taiwanese culture, just as the newly constructed narratives of Taiwan's past suggest. And big surprise, what culture you belonged to changed over time based on what was more advantageous: under the Dutch it was more advantageous to claim Aborigine identity and under the Zheng (Koxinga) regime it was more advantageous to claim Han identity. And of course converting to Christianity was often done simply to marry, as the Taiwan frontier saying goes "having a wife is better than having a god." And chinese sources also report of Han men marrying Aborigine wives, well into the Qing period, with it being sufficiently common to be a source of tension between Han and Aborigines, And as Aborigine women did not have bound feet, they could also perform agricultural labor, aka not only would marrying one bring social benefits via family connections but provide additional income.
And there were many Hoklo men from Fujian coming to Taiwan because it looked more promising than crowded Fujian. Southern Hoklo in Taiwan had less minor marriages than the others due to Aborigine contribution and in 1905 only 68 percent of Hoklo women in Taiwan had bound feet, probably also due to Aborigine contribution as well as economical consideration. According to the author this long route Han identity change pattern is what appears to be unique to Taiwan, But so what if there are short term identity changes in China as well, it was with other groups? It it because China claims that there was no de-sinicization in Taiwan, and that the changes have not gone on long "enough" for China to accept them as markers of identity change. The author afterwards went quite into detail into the topic of affirmative action, identity change and regional variation in China, and while it was interesting, I don't think it was necessary to go into so much detail to show the process in China and how it varied over time. Ironically, if those same standards from the early days of China as a nation were applied today, many people classified as Han in China would have to be reclassified as non-Han while most people in Taiwan would be classified as Han. Thus, Taiwan's self-representation as both Han and non-Chinese may not be as far-fetched as it at first appears.
And it is true, that lots of identity based political conflict was created and exacerbated due to unrealistic predictions and policies that fuel tensions rather than damping them. And in regards to China, it is clear that some consider it blasphemous to considered that western practices and ideas have been introduced to China without aggression and domination.
But at least I could remember that, all this theoretical stuff on power relations, natural selection and something I forgot already was sooooo boring. I hoped the next passage on "becoming Han" would be more interesting.
And thankfully, it was. The cultural revolution destroying religious traditions and thereby paving the way for foreign religions is really ironic. And her anectdote about one person asking in 1996 as to whether china was deliberately provoking war to reduce the surplus population is very telling as well. Not to be outdone, the legacy of the enduring devastation wrought by the Cultural Revolution also contributed to the new Taiwanese identity. Taiwanese visiting were struck by the poverty and apparent sense among Chinese that those escaping the Cultural Revolution owe them restitution. That plus the whole being freer with religion/culture thing. And ironically, this time settling Han somewhere else seems to result in non-Han identity, unlike in the past where indeed Han were settled somewhere because the were considered more compliant. And apparently there are people in China who resent America for cutting off ties with China because they belief then there would have been no great leap forward and no cultural revolution. And they might resent Taiwanese even more because they are descendants of either those being important enough to be taken to Taiwan or were part of the Japanese empire... there is logic in this.
This was of course a long and somewhat exhausting book, but well worth the read. Even though it does have 99 pages of notes.
April 10, 2021
A stunningly insightful scholarly work, this book is not only an interrogation of the concept of Chineseness but it also functions as history and a comparative ethnology of two ethnically-ambiguous areas, one in Taiwan, one in Hubei. Brown examines how the discourses of Chineseness, Chinese identity and ethnic minority have been deployed by political actors and individuals.
June 16, 2010
This is a terrific study - one I think every person in Taiwan should read. Brown takes on the concept of cultural superiority, the kind some Taiwanese subscribe to when they say "we are of the pure race of the Han". In fact, immigration of women from China was restricted from 1624 (the start of the Dutch era of colonialism, when Dutch ships first started bringing Chinese people to Taiwan) until 1788. As a result, Chinese frontiersmen married Aboriginal women leading to the complete absorption of the Plains Aborigines (平埔族) into Taiwanese culture. Brown estimates 85 percent of the Taiwanese people have Aboriginal blood today.
January 11, 2008
Some might say that if this question even needs to be asked, then you already have your answer. Unfortunately the author was unwilling, as are most academics, to come out and simply say what anyone would already know after talking with her for 5 minuets.
September 7, 2016
A very rich volume, well researched and well thought through, breaking down basic notions of culture and identity with respect to the Taiwan question.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews