Taiwanese vs Chinese Identity

Record high Taiwan identity.

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I remember back in 1999, a French researcher named Stéphane Corcuff wrote a book called Vent doux, soleil léger. Les Continentaux de Taiwan et la transition de l’identité nationale that discussed Taiwan’s shifting self-identity.

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Isnt it innevitable? Chinese oppression vs new taiwanese progression. Like it or not, as the old farts who were ultra china style die off, the new generations who enjoy basic human rights might feel obliged to retain said basic human rights.

This isnt super complicated. Its only political. Strangely the majority of pro taiwanese still are quite comfortable finacially supporting the CCP if it means they can have new tvs and cellphones (as an example) which is absolutely retarded in the most literal sense. Probably taiwan will eventually rest with the rest in waiting till its too late to make ny meaningful change and suffer untold.misery to try and correct the mistake it knew it could have done decades prior. And even.now, when everything is well known and on the table, people still dont take any personal reaponsibility or action. Always waiting for the few heroes that actually sacrifice their everything for the better good :frowning: again, the definition of retardation…

But yeah, the polls certainly make all us sheep feel good bout ourselves with all our inaction. Hurrah for selfish laziness :slight_smile: if only Tsai could turn water into wine, then we’d have them commy bastids!

Interesting. Always seemed to me that Taiwanese people have a highly ambivalent attitude towards “Chineseness”. On the one hand they want to be associated with all that “4000 years of history” stuff (even though about 3900 of those years involved some of the most appalling oppression, bloodlust and barbarism the world has ever seen), and on the other hand they don’t like the reality of what’s happening in eg., Hong Kong.

I guess it’s a good thing that most people are seeing reality for what it is.

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The issue here isn’t with Taiwanese wanting to be associated with Chinese history, culture, and literature. The issue here is thinking that one has to be Chinese to do so.

An American doesn’t need to self-identify as British or English to enjoy Shakespeare, and no one needs to be Jewish to worship Jesus, or Indian to worship the Buddha.

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If the CCP wasn’t so horrific and especially of late, I think Taiwanese wouldn’t shun the cultural Chinese identity so much. In the 80s when Hong Kong was the torch bearer for Chinese culture and making all the cool music and movies, sure that it was something people wanted to align with.

But who would want to share a cultural identity with China now? Especially as the Rhetoric and aggressions fr Xi are In overdrive.

I’m separating the political Taiwanese identity from the cultural one here. Politically Taiwan would move towards more of an Independent entity, no matter what

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The modern Briton seems to take pride in being born in the country that eg., produced Shakespeare. They have absolutely no justification for this, since they did nothing to affect history and don’t actually give a rat’s ass about maintaining the best of their culture. Americans have an even more tenuous claim to that heritage; Jews would have none at all. I suppose it’s the same for people of Chinese heritage today.

One thing they, we, all have in common is a shared love in taking credit for other peoples hard work :slight_smile:

Building bridges.

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We need a stronger and more substantive definition of what Taiwanese identity is. The current one is shallow at best (“We’re not Chinese”), empty at worst. It’s too weak to make people sacrifice.

The 5,000 years of history BS, “we were going to the great learning when white people were still hanging off trees” (or “living in caves,” as is the Korean variant) at least instills some pride.

Completely disowning whatever the KMT brought over doesn’t help either, that just shaves Taiwan down to less and less. You throw out all the good writings of Sun and K.T. Li, the baby with the bathwater.

I propose Taiwan sees itself as a mixture of diaspora Chinese, pre-cultural revolution Chinese with some Japanese influences.

Hybrid identities can work. Palestinians, for example, have one of the strongest national identities. It’s also a newly created and hybrid one.

How so?

To me, the current definition is “Citizens ahd expasts who values the Taiwan identity, acknowledges Taiwan’s sovereignty, upholds Taiwan’s democracy and right to self-determination.”

That has been established by CSB and is maintained by President Tsai.

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That’s a circular definition.

I think it’s a given that a Taiwanese would value Taiwan identity.

You haven’t defined what Taiwan is yet. What’s Taiwan? A bunch of rocks?

Taiwan is a democratic sovereign nation governing the island of Taiwan and adjacent islands, including Penghu, Jinmen, and Mazhu.

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Why? Just let Taiwan be Taiwan. Identity is fluid.

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Yes, always good to instill pride by comparing yourself to other cultures, ethnicities, races, etc. and convincing yourself that you’re superior. Nothing bad has ever happened on the basis of a national identity based on this thinking. :roll_eyes:

By this metric, perhaps the Indonesians should be among the proudest people on the planet. They were painting caves 45,000+ years ago.

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Does it have a history? Is it unique in any way?

Also, I think the gutting of mandatory military service really destroyed a shared experience among Taiwanese men.

You can say that about anywhere, but I haven’t really seen that among Taiwanese- most seemed to regard it as waste of time that had to be put up with.

Yes a distaste for military service is a shared cultural trait. It’s due to atrocities by soldiers in the warring states period.

But they also told me that if you don’t serve, you’ll feel left out when everyone complains about it.

It’s because there is a lot of wasting time when they could be doing something more productive

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