US embassy cable - 05TAIPEI3182

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 TAIPEI 003182 
 
SIPDIS 
 
WASHINGTON PASS AIT/W 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/29/2015 
TAGS: PGOV, PREL, TW, Cross Strait Politics, Domestic Politics 
SUBJECT: GROWING TAIWAN IDENTITY AFFECTS DOMESTIC POLITICS 
AND CROSS-STRAIT RELATIONS 
 
REF: TAIPEI 2118 
 
Classified By:  AIT Director Douglas H. Paal, Reason 1.4 b 
 
1.  (C) Summary.  The growing "Taiwanese" identity has 
important implications for cross-Strait relations and for the 
future of Taiwan's political system.  Over the past fifteen 
years, the number of people identifying themselves as 
&Taiwanese8 has nearly tripled to around 45 percent, while 
those who consider themselves "Chinese" has plummeted to 
around 6 percent.  This emerging Taiwanese identity has 
affected domestic politics, notably enabling the Democratic 
Progressive Party (DPP) to rally support as the &Taiwanese 
party8 and elect Chen Shui-bian as its first President in 
2000, and re-elect him in 2004 with a much higher vote.  The 
growing Taiwanese identity has not, however, translated into 
greater support for independence; on the contrary, support 
for the status quo has remained consistently high.  While the 
people of Taiwan increasingly recognize they are different 
from the people of Mainland China and articulate this by 
proclaiming they are "Taiwanese," this identity does not 
trump more practical considerations, including quality of 
life issues, Taiwan's increasingly close economic ties with 
China, and the threat of a cross-strait war.  End Summary. 
 
Identity Transformed 
-------------------- 
 
2.  (C) The shift in identity among the people of Taiwan over 
the past fifteen years has created an identity increasingly 
separate and distinct from Mainland China.  A series of 
Chengchih University polls over the past thirteen years shows 
that the proportion of people in Taiwan who identify 
themselves as &taiwanren8, or Taiwanese, rose steadily from 
17 percent in 1992 to over 44 percent in 2004, mirroring in 
reverse the decline in those who consider themselves 
"zhongguoren," or Chinese (26 to 6 percent). (Comment: Since 
the term "zhongguoren" for "Chinese" stresses more directly 
identity with the country of China it is likely to receive a 
stronger negative reaction in Taiwan.  It is likely that a 
question about Chinese identity using the alternate term for 
Chinese, "zhonghuaren," would have elicited a more positive 
response since that term stresses more cultural identity. 
End comment.) 
 
3. (C) The proportion considering themselves both Taiwanese 
and Chinese has remained nearly constant at around 45 
percent.  These findings were corroborated by a TVBS poll in 
September 2004 that found 45 percent of respondents 
considered themselves Taiwanese compared to 41 percent both 
Chinese and Taiwanese and 9 percent as Chinese.  This 
identity shift has been reflected in the Taiwan political 
system.  DPP President Chen Shui-bian won just over 50 
percent of the vote in 2004, a substantial increase over the 
30 percent he received in the 2000 presidential election. 
Dark Green Professor Chen Yi-shen of the Academia Sinica told 
AIT that this increase was a product of the growing 
proportion of Taiwan people developing a Taiwanese identity 
and, in turn, identifying with the DPP. 
 
Interaction, Education, Hostility Fuel Changing Identity 
--------------------------------------------- ----------- 
 
4.  (C) While the evolving Taiwanese identity is in part a 
natural product of the island's century-long separation from 
Mainland China, other forces have been at work encouraging 
this identity shift.  First, Taiwan's democratization itself 
has been one of the drivers behind the growing Taiwanese 
identity.  The lifting of martial law in 1987, according to 
Academia Sinica's pro-Green Prof. Hsu Yung-Ming, gave the 
people of Taiwan freedom to think and speak, and allowed the 
newly created DPP leeway to promote its notion of a unique 
Taiwanese identity.  Prof. Chen Yi-Shen told AIT that the 
people of Taiwan are aware of the sharp contrast between 
Taiwan's democratic political system and Mainland China's 
autocratic government.  In Taiwan, he explained, &democracy 
and the nation-state have become connected,8 and the people 
of Taiwan see stark differences between the systems of Taiwan 
and Mainland China and increasingly differentiate themselves 
from China.  The growing contact and interaction between 
Taiwan and Mainland China has reinforced this sense of 
difference and encouraged the people of Taiwan to develop 
their own separate identity.   Once Taiwan people were able 
to travel to China after Martial law was lifted, Hsu 
continued, they realized how differently China and Taiwan had 
developed )- economically, culturally, and even everyday 
mannerisms and customs -- to the extent that many people in 
Taiwan now hold very negative views of Mainland Chinese, 
often viewing them as backwards, crude, and ill-mannered.  In 
turn, people in Taiwan increasingly identify themselves as 
"Taiwanese" in part to separate themselves from Mainland 
Chinese.  National Taiwan University's pro-Blue Prof. Lin 
Huo-Wang argued that as long as Mainland China remains an 
autocratic state, Taiwan identity will continue to develop. 
 
5.  (C) Second, after the DPP came to power in 2000, 
Taiwan-centered education began to replace the China-centered 
education of the Kuomintang era.  The prohibition on speaking 
Taiwanese dialect in schools, for example, was reversed and 
elementary school students were required to study a &native 
language8 an hour each week.  Public opinion polling experts 
have told AIT that their survey cross tabulations indicate 
younger people view Mainland China significantly more 
negatively than do older people.  TVBS Poll Chief Wang 
Yeh-ding, for example, pulled out an April 2005 poll that 
showed a stable 19-20 percent of all age groups viewed Lien 
Chan's trip to Mainland China as a "sell-out," with the 
exception of the 20-29 year age bracket in which 34 percent 
held this view. 
 
6.  (C) A third reason the people of Taiwan increasingly 
identify with Taiwan as distinct from Mainland China has been 
Beijing's hostile actions towards Taiwan.  The PRC,s 
heavy-handed attempts in 1996 and 2000 to influence Taiwan's 
presidential elections with missiles and threats, according 
to Prof. Hsu, shocked and angered the people of Taiwan, 
&turning them away from China.8  The March 2005 
Anti-Secession Law is only the most recent example of this 
harsh treatment of Taiwan by Beijing.  The resulting 
resentment has, in turn, encouraged the people of Taiwan to 
differentiate Taiwan from Mainland China and to see 
themselves as Taiwanese rather than Chinese. 
 
Identity and Ethnicity 
---------------------- 
 
7.  (C) Geographically defined Taiwan identity relates 
directly to "ethnicity," as defined by "provincial origin" 
(shengji).  The mass migration of Chinese from Fujian and 
Guangdong provinces -- Hoklos (or Fujianese) and Hakkas -- 
beginning in the seventeenth century overwhelmed the 
aborigines (yuanzhumin) of Taiwan, who had come to the island 
several thousand years earlier from Southeast Asia. 
Generally called "Taiwanese" or "locals" (bendiren), the 
migrants speak Taiwanese dialect (Taiyu or Minnanhua from 
southern Fujian) and constitute 84 percent of the island's 
population.  The "Mainlanders" (waishengren) who accompanied 
the Nationalists and Chiang Kai-Shek to Taiwan in 1949, and 
their descendants, constitute 14 percent. 
 
8.  (C) The DPP rose to power by playing up this 
identity-ethnicity linkage and emphasizing the difference 
between Taiwanese and Mainlanders, a distinction that remains 
central to political discussion today.  The linkage between 
identity and ethnicity, however, is blurring, as more and 
more Mainlanders, particularly second and third generations, 
lacking direct Mainland China experience, identify themselves 
as "Taiwanese" or "Taiwanese-Chinese."  With this change, 
Prof. Hsu argued, ethnocentric identity is in the process of 
breaking down, making ethnic-based national identity largely 
a tool for political mobilization.  The DPP 's Tseng 
Wen-Sheng stressed that the connection between ethnicity and 
identity in politics will continue to decline as the younger 
generation comes into political power.  While 
first-generation Mainlanders may still consider themselves 
more Chinese than Taiwanese, Tseng said, second-plus 
generation Mainlanders born and raised on the island 
increasingly consider themselves Taiwanese.  Identity crosses 
ethnic lines as people, whether Hakka, Hoklo, Mainland 
Chinese, or Austronesian, increasingly see their destiny tied 
to the island where they have spent their lives. 
 
Importance of Identity in Domestic Politics Declining 
--------------------------------------------- -------- 
 
9.  (C) Politically, the growing Taiwanese identity has 
benefited the DPP over the KMT.  National identity -- 
Taiwanese vs. Mainlander -- has been the defining difference 
between DPP and KMT.  By 2000, identity had become so 
important in Taiwan politics, Prof. Hsu argued, that it was 
largely responsible for the KMT-to-DPP regime change.  Four 
years later, despite the lackluster economic performance of 
the DPP government, President Chen was reelected with an 
additional 1.5 million votes.  Hsu attributed this to 
Taiwanese identification that associated with the DPP rather 
than with the KMT. 
 
10.  (C) Identity politics has even entered the KMT, Prof. 
Hsu explained, with some members urging the party be renamed 
"Taiwan KMT" to align with the emerging Taiwanese national 
identity.  Other KMT leaders, however, rejoin that no matter 
how hard it tries, the KMT will never appear as Taiwanese as 
the DPP and push a strategy of aligning with China and 
portraying the KMT as the party that can open communication 
between China and Taiwan and promote economic ties with 
China.  National Taiwan University's pro-Blue Prof. Philip 
Yang, however, argued that both parties now have a 
Taiwanese-centered identity and that the difference between 
KMT and DPP is no longer Mainland Chinese vs. Taiwanese 
identity but &status quo Taiwanese8 vs. &native 
Taiwanese.8  All of the above analysts expect identity to 
decline in the future as a factor in domestic politics. 
 
&Identity8 Does Not Equal &Independence8 
---------------------------------------- 
 
11.  (C) Growing Taiwan identity has not translated into 
growing support for Taiwan independence, however.  Rather, 
there has been a consistent and very high level of support 
for continuing the cross-Strait status quo.  A recent 
Chengchih University poll commissioned by the Mainland 
Affairs Council (MAC) showed 86 percent of respondents 
support the status quo compared to 5 percent for &immediate 
independence8 and 1 percent for &immediate unification." 
Even on the question of an ultimate resolution -- eventual 
unification or eventual independence -- the island is not 
deeply split.  Of the 60 percent  who support continuation of 
the status quo in a TVBS poll, 37 percent support "status quo 
now/decision later8 and 23 percent support "status quo 
indefinitely,8 only 14 percent support "status quo 
now/independence later8 and 12 percent support &status quo 
now/unification later.8  DPP Youth Affairs Director Tseng 
Wen-Sheng told AIT that young people are particularly 
concerned with the possibility of war because they will be 
the ones who have to fight it.  A March 2005 Chinese Culture 
University poll of university students found only 35 percent 
of university students willing to defend the island if the 
Mainland China attacked, compared to 65 percent who would not 
be willing to defend Taiwan. 
 
12.  (C) Taiwan identity has been effectively decoupled from 
the question of unification vs. independence.  Identifying 
with Taiwan &is a different issue8 from supporting Taiwan 
independence," Prof. Hsu explained, because the people of 
Taiwan fully realize that declaring independence would have 
an exorbitant cost.  A recent "Business Weekly" opinion poll 
found 58 percent of respondents believe a declaration of 
Taiwan independence probably or definitely would cause war 
with China compared with 21 percent who believed it probably 
or definitely would not. 
 
13.  (C) Both Hsu and Chen stressed that Taiwan views on 
cross-Strait relations are directly affected by the U.S. 
position on Taiwan independence.  Since the U.S. has made it 
clear that it does not support Taiwan independence, many 
Taiwanese realize that a declaration of independence would 
probably cause a cross-Strait war without U.S. support that 
would be catastrophic for Taiwan because 59 percent of Taiwan 
people believe Taiwan does not have the capability to resist 
compared to 27 percent who believe it does.  The cost-of-war 
realization is one reason that most of those who consider 
themselves &only Taiwanese8 do not support independence. 
The DPP's Tseng Wen-Sheng, however, argues that, while Taiwan 
people increasingly identify with Taiwan over Mainland China, 
this does not necessarily mean they will never support 
unification.  If Mainland China,s political situation 
changes, he said, it is quite possible that a large number of 
Taiwanese would support reunification. 
 
Comment:  Time Will Tell 
------------------------ 
 
14.  (C) Taiwan society and politics have been in such a 
state of flux over the past fifteen years that "time" itself 
has become a point of controversy in Taiwan.  If Taiwan can 
maintain the status quo supported by the overwhelming 
majority of Taiwan people, the question goes, will time be on 
the side of Taiwan or on the side of Mainland China? 
Pro-independence "Greens" fear time will gradually and 
inevitably pull Taiwan into the PRC economic vortex, 
gradually ending its separateness.  Pro-unification "Blues," 
on the other hand, see time on Taiwan's side, for time is 
irrevocably changing and will eventually democratize Mainland 
China, which will, in turn, completely alter the cross-Strait 
equation.  Either way, Taiwan identity will likely continue 
growing among the island's population, but this will probably 
continue to be an identity not tied to the more pragmatic 
issue of independence. 
 
(Prepared by POL Intern Angela S. Wu.) 
 
PAAL