No, the US did not create, fund or support "Taiwanese separatism"

Past support for these jerks is not the same as support for "Taiwan independence"

More often than seems reasonable, in political discussions I see some variation of this take far too frequently. Recently, a version of it came from someone who claims to teach “East Asian History” — that is, someone who should know what they’re talking about. To paraphrase: 

Taiwan is a part of China. The idea of Taiwanese identity or nationalism is a farce created by the United States in order to drive a wedge between themselves and China, for their own interests in keeping tensions high. They backed the KMT, who were corrupt narco-running gangsters at best, and set up that whole “Nationalist” idea on Taiwan as a thorn in China’s side. 

Maybe there was some blah blah forever war blah blah Raytheon stuff in there, or perhaps some junk about the US funding Taiwan’s “color revolution” splittists; I don’t care to remember. Most of this subtype seems to think the US "gives" Taiwan weapons (it doesn't -- Taiwan buys them) or that the US sends aid to Taiwan (wrong again -- the aid ended in the 1960s). 

Crucially, both of these strains of thought assume that “Taiwanese independence” or “Taiwanese [ethno] nationalism” was either created, supported or funded by the United States of America. 

Although regular readers will already know why this view of Taiwanese national identity is wrong, someone needs to talk about it in English in a clear way and historical perspective, as these takes love to reference history: usually something about how the horrible Nationalists were backed by the US and that’s the seat of everything. 

So, let’s go backward in time, stopping at scenic historical overlooks to discuss why this view is simply, plainly, clearly not true. 

I'm not going to go chronologically here; let's start with the era such people reference most frequently: the KMT occupation of Taiwan and subsequent rivalry with the CCP.

The 1949 Question

A shallow reading of history might lead a dilettante type to think that both the KMT and CCP wanted Taiwan, that they'd both historically believed Taiwan was an inalienable part of China, and that with US assistance the KMT was able to retreat to Taiwan where the US-led Western order supported them simply because they hated and feared communism and wanted to keep Taiwan out of the hands of the CCP for their own selfish reasons.

After all, the Allies said yes to Chiang Kai-shek's desire to take Taiwan in Cairo, and allowed the KMT to occupy Taiwan in 1945. In the early 1950s, they agreed to financial and military support of Taiwan (or at least, to Taiwan as a site for US military bases). If you just ignore a few years in the middle (say,  approximately 1947 to 1952) and assume that support was unwavering, it might look a bit damning, and certainly the US has historically acted in its own self-interest, as all nations do. 

But it's just not true that the US unequivocally supported the KMT. That period of history is complex and can't be covered in one section of a blog post -- entire books have been written about it. It's well-known that Truman didn't care for Chiang Kai-shek, and while he disliked Mao and the CCP, he wasn't much of a fan of the KMT, either. Some of his advisors advocated for defending Taiwan, but plenty also said that the KMT were not worth funding. For several years, the US seemed just as willing to let the PRC take Taiwan as help the KMT hold it. Talk of some sort of international trusteeship for Taiwan was probably destined to go nowhere, but there was indeed talk. The US knew of at least one coup plotted against Chiang and did nothing.

Yes, the US stance eventually changed, but that it had to change means there had been a different stance to change from; they had not always been strong supporters of the Nationalists on Taiwan. 

I can hear my own readers screaming, so here's the bigger problem with this line of thinking: support for the KMT is not the same as support for Taiwan independence.

I honestly can't believe I have to clarify that, but it seems necessary. 

It's easy for someone who has spent zero time actually watching Taiwanese politics think the KMT opposes the CCP, Taiwan opposes China, and the KMT founded the government on Taiwan. The US helped them, and therefore "Taiwan independence" must be the same as that KMT-CCP rivalry in which the US clearly supports the KMT "independence" side. 

Let me tell you, from inside Taiwan, that sounds absolutely bonkers. 

The KMT has believed since around 1943 that Taiwan is a part of China; on this, the KMT and CCP actually agree. The KMT rejiggered an entire educational system to drive home this point and push Chinese identity on Taiwanese people. Not Taiwanese identity, Chinese. They refused to compete in the Olympics as Taiwan (rather than the Republic of China). Although the US tried to propose a seat for Taiwan as Taiwan -- not the ROC -- at the United Nations, Chiang Kai-shek would not have accepted it. (This is a shame, as the UN resolution that allowed the PRC to join as "China" did not explicitly block Taiwan; theoretically, there is nothing save China's recalcitrance barring Taiwan from joining as itself.) 

The KMT attempted to render the Taiwanese language extinct, banned just about any media that might cause Taiwanese to think their cultural homeland might be Taiwan, not China, and continues to push One China narratives on Taiwan regardless of how outdated they are. Their vision is consistent only in the respect that they are oriented towards China, not Taiwan.

Time and time again, when given the opportunity for formal recognition as Taiwan, the KMT rejected it under the belief that they were the sole legitimate government of China.

Even when they talk about fighting for democracy, they point to events that happened in China, not Taiwan: 

Today we commemorate our hard-earned democracy on #YouthDay! We are honored to carry on the legacy of the young revolutionary, who sacrificed their lives to establish a democratic #RepublicOfChina🇹🇼111 years ago. pic.twitter.com/SWinjawKQO

— 中國國民黨 KMT (@kuomintang) March 29, 2022

Decades of KMT dictatorship saw Taiwanese independence activists surveilled, jailed, tortured and murdered. Anyone who so much as called for a recognition of Taiwanese identity or pushed for democratization on Taiwan was subjected to this; for two generations, the biggest opposition to Taiwanese self-rule was the KMT. From 1947 until the early 1990s (when the imprisonment of political dissidents ended), the KMT systematically hunted and brutalized anyone who even breathed the idea of Taiwanese independence. 

You know, that party the US supported during many of those same decades. 

How does it make any sense at all that the US "support of the KMT" had anything to do with them creating a "Taiwan independence" movement? They quite literally supported the oppressors of that same movement! They bankrolled the guys who murdered pro-Taiwan activists! 

And yet, I still hear it. Occasionally, the person spouting this nonsense seems to think ardent supporters of Taiwanese sovereignty -- myself included -- must therefore support the KMT. Some think it's imperative to tell us how awful the KMT actually are. 

Do they not think we already know? Insulting those corrupt gangster colonizers isn't a searing indictment of the Taiwan independence movement. It's quite literally the opposite. 

This dynamic hasn't changed much since democratization.

The US and Democratic Taiwan

Remember in the early 2000s, when an unabashedly pro-Taiwan president was elected, the first from the "opposition" DPP, and the US political establishment didn't seem especially enthused? Then, do you remember when they seemed to be more generally supportive of the election of pro-China KMT candidate Ma Ying-jeou eight years later? 

Does a distant relationship with pro-Taiwan Chen and tacit endorsement of pro-China Ma sound like the tactic of a country trying to foment a 'color revolution' of furious 'splittists'? (No.) 

I'd like to take a little side road here: it's unclear exactly how much balking Chen actually engendered. It was once a widely-spread rumor (in some circles) that US officials had labeled him a 'troublemaker', but I can't find much evidence that this actually happened. President Bush was said to have used the term, but apparently that's wholly apocryphal. Those who say it did point to 'some' officials, but never state who those officials are or the circumstances of it happening. No details, just 'some people said'. That's hardly concrete.

China sure seemed invested in touting Chen as a 'troublemaker' and seemed all too happy to get the US in on this, but it doesn't seem to me that they took the bait. Ma Ying-jeou himself said he wouldn't be a 'troublemaker' like Chen, but then Ma was always influenced by whatever the CCP wanted from him -- of course he'd repeat a rumor like that. So, I have some ideas about the origins and truthfulness of this "Chen is a troublemaker" story.

It's true that the US seemed to warm up to Tsai quite a bit -- the spate of pro-Taiwan legislation and visits to Taiwan by high-level US officials during the Tsai administration at least indicate as much. 

That said, the shiny new AIT complex in Neihu broke ground under the Ma administration in 2009, meaning it was probably planned in the waning Chen years, and opened under Tsai. To me, that shows a US commitment not to any given vision of Taiwan's future -- independence included -- but to the US-Taiwan relationship.

Now that we're back on the main highway, let's kick it forward a bit. It's true that there's been an uptick in supportive rhetoric on Taiwan by the US, with President Biden calling the US's commitment to Taiwan "rock solid" (among other things). 

However, as with the Bush debacle in the early 2000s, these kind words for Taiwan always seem to come with a chaser: "the US doesn't support Taiwan independence". 

What they mean by this is that they don't support Taiwan unilaterally declaring independence, as the Taiwan Relations Act (and the bevy of assurances and communiqués accompanying it) clearly state US support for a peaceful, bilateral resolution. It does not mean that Taiwan independence can never happen, or that the US believes Taiwan is not currently autonomous (they clearly do, if they're selling Taiwan weapons, upgrading unofficial relations and calling their commitment "rock solid"). 

I may not personally be the biggest fan of this particular bilateralism -- I think Taiwan has every right to tell the CCP to eat dirt -- but that's what the policy says, and the US has been consistent in that regard. Even when it sounds like Joe Biden is going "off-script", everything he says can indeed be interpreted within that framework. 

Again, does this sound like a country that is arming rebel militias in Taiwan with the purpose of stoking separatist sentiment? (No.) 

Frankly, it sounds like a country that is warm toward the current administration and Taiwan in general, but historically has supported stances oriented towards Taiwan being part of China, not separate from it.

I've even heard the absurd claim that the US is "funding" Taiwan independence through all the weapons they "give" and foreign aid they "send" to Taiwan. 

Let me repeat: the US does not give Taiwan offensive weapons. They sell defensive weapons meant for the military of the Republic of China, not roving bands of guerillas. I don't buy into the idea that the Republic of China still claims "all of China" (it doesn't), but the ROC government is simply not the same as Taiwan independence activists, or "color revolutionists", or "separatists", or whatever you want to call them. 

And once again, Taiwan does not receive foreign aid from the US, and has not done so since 1965. The US isn't funding "Taiwan independence" because it's not funding anything in Taiwan. I am sure plenty of people will insist it must all be very covert, but if that's the case I know a lot of activists who'd love more information about all this money they're supposedly making, because if that's happening, nobody on the Taiwan side has heard about it! 

The origins of Taiwanese Identity

A lot of people also make the fundamental mistake of believing that the Taiwan independence movement is only as old as the Republic of China on Taiwan. Therefore, the two must be linked somehow. Memorably, I've even seen reference to 228 as the "birth" of Taiwanese identity. 

Certainly, the 228 Massacre was a pivotal moment. In terms of the modern movement, it could be seen as a birthday of sorts -- perhaps a milestone one rather than an origin point, however. 

And if we're talking about US creation or support of Taiwanese independence, those origins matter.

In Transitions to Modernity in Taiwan, Niki Alsford points out that not much research has been done on the generation preceding the pro-Taiwan generation of the 1920s. Kerr’s Licensed Revolution and the Home Rule Movement speaks in broad strokes about Taiwanese identity and the lack of desire for either Qing or Japanese rule from afar, especially among Indigenous Taiwanese. (And why shouldn’t they have been uninterested in the claims of these colonial powers? By all rights, they were in Taiwan first.)  However, he crucially notes that the average person -- of Chinese descent or not -- preferred both empires to just leave Taiwan alone. The main thing they seemed to want was good governance. 

Consider the Qing-era epithet that Taiwan “has a rebellion every three years and a revolt every five” — restive even by Chinese standards. Reflect as well that the Qing themselves viewed Taiwan as something ‘other’, an ‘Island of Women’, a defensive barrier to the ‘real’ China but otherwise a “ball of mud beyond civilization”, not any intrinsic part of China worth caring about. Emma Jinhua Teng lays this out beautifully in Taiwan’s Imagined Geography. Given those conditions, it makes sense that after a few generations, the families settling in Taiwan from China — who tended to be poor and seeking a better life — would cultivate a sense of distinct identity tied to the island. 

But to what extent? I don’t know. It was enough that when the Qing ceded Taiwan to Japan, those who fought back, and declared a (short-lived) Republic of Formosa, included language in their plans that referenced government coming from the people, not issued from far-away officials. Yes, that republic claimed fealty to the Qing, and the leaders mostly fled to China when defeat seemed inevitable (and sometimes before). The way they talked about it though? It’s not so simple to say they just wanted to be returned to the Qing. They were after some sort of home rule, too. 

Why am I telling you all this? Think about it: if this is an origin point of Taiwanese identity and the fight for Taiwanese sovereignty — unclear, problematic and fraught as it is — how on earth do you think the US funded it, let alone “created” it? 

And frankly, why would they care to? They were still dealing with the Qing and Taiwan was about to be handed to Japan. What would the rationale have been to stoke 'separatism' as a weapon against China? Notably, while a former US Secretary of State got involved in the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which handed Taiwan to Japan in 1895, notably the Tripartite Intervention that sought to influence the treaty in Western powers’ favor were Russia, France and Germany. 

If this era indeed provided the seeds that later blossomed into the pro-Taiwan, local identity, nativist, independence and democratization movements, it's simply inconceivable that the whole thing is simply a fever dream of the United States, not a real and long-lasting movement that has always been intrinsically Taiwanese.

In fact, to deny this history in favor of a jejune "everything I don't like is funded by the CIA" is to westsplain the hell out of Taiwanese history. Do these people think Taiwanese have no agency? Do they think only Westerners do? Do they think Taiwanese people are stupid, or easily manipulated, or incapable of forming their own ideas about history and identity without some evil Big Brother from across the sea tempting them with poison candy?

Come on. "It's the evil CIA! The US is funding Taiwan separatism to destabilize China!" may seem on the surface like a social-justice oriented take in which the West is bad and China can do no wrong, but at the end of the day it's just racism.


The Home Rule Movement in Japanese-Era Taiwan

Skip ahead to the 1920s, with Taiwan now an established colony of Japan. A complex web of cultural and home rule associations sprung up, many of them started by Taiwanese students in Japan inspired by modern political ideas they were exposed to there (in fact, some circumvented the Taiwanese colonial government completely and went straight to the Japanese national government). 

I could write an entire blog post just on the New Culture Association (inspired by China’s May Fourth Movement but promoting Taiwanese cultural and identity-related arts and literature), the annual petition to the parliament, the Home Rule Association, the Taiwan People’s Party, Formosa Youth Magazine, and thinkers like Lin Hsieh-tang, Chiang Wei-shui, Tsai Pei-huo and (noted communist) Hsieh Hsueh-hung. 

But the short of it is that, within the strictures of the colonial government — which tolerated their activities at times, but surveilled and arrested them at others — these early thinkers promoted not just home rule (see Kerr again for a firsthand account of their work) but Taiwanese culture through the arts. Lien Heng — interestingly enough, the grandfather of Chinese ultranationalist Lien Chan — wrote the General History of Taiwan and was also involved in promoting Taiwan as a unique cultural entity with a distinctive history worth understanding in its own right, separate from China. 

We can argue about 1895 all day, but these Japanese-era movements for greater home rule and recognition of local culture are essentially indisputable. Sometimes their supporters got tangled up in KMT politics (often to their regret), but at the end, it’s clear what they stood for. 

This link is made explicit in the music and literary history: the magazines these groups produced are held up as a historical reminder that Taiwanese were talking about Taiwaneseness when Japan was trying to make Taiwan more Japanese — well before the KMT came to town. The music, too. A lot of that era’s music was banned under Martial Law, sometimes just because it was in Taiwanese even if the lyrics were not remotely subversive. 

What’s the best way to turn something into a symbolic anthem for pro-democracy fighters? Get the authoritarian regime they’re fighting to ban it! 

Now, dig deep. Do you really, honestly think that when Japan ruled Taiwan, the US was skulking nefariously behind the scenes, training and paying the prominent figures of the era to promote “Taiwanese nationalism”...to stoke a rivalry with China? In an era when China didn’t even consider Taiwan to be Chinese, and it was assumed it would be Japanese in perpetuity? (And they did -- Sun Yat-sen visited Taiwan twice and at no point mentioned any sort of belief that it was part of China. The early CCP, as well, considered Taiwan a separate entity.)

How does that make even a lick of sense? Even if the US were capable of hurting China in this way in the 1920s -- which they were not, because Taiwan was part of Japan! -- why would they want to?

I'm skipping the Indigenous uprisings against the Japanese here because frankly, I think events like the Musha incident do tend to get swiped and used for every narrative other than the ones Indigenous people want to tell. The independence activists want to paint it as Indigenous solidarity. The KMTers want to make it look like they had similar sentiments to brave ROC soldiers. I don't love that, and don't want to join the grabby-grabs, so I'll just point out that Taiwanese of all kinds fought for home rule as they saw fit, and these causes have origins that far pre-date any KMT or US presence on Taiwan. 

In Conclusion, You Don't Make Sense

I mean, I get it. I get the desire to blame everything on the US. It kinda, sorta, if you look at it through a kaleidoscope, seems like you're standing up for the rest of the world by doing so. I get the hatred of the Nationalists -- I hate them too. What I don't understand is the distorted interpretation of history in which all Taiwanese would want to be Chinese if not for the Big Bad United States. 

It just doesn't make sense. There wasn't that much enthusiasm for the Qing, uprisings continued well into the Japanese era, and the KMT were absolutely not supporters of "Taiwan independence", to the point that it's offensive to imply they were. If the US funded or aided anyone in all these centuries of Taiwanese history, it was the KMT -- the brutalizers of those who fought for Taiwan in the 20th century and continue to crap on Taiwanese independence.

Regardless, the idea of a distinct Taiwanese identity and the notion of 'home rule' all pre-date any era in which US involvement in stoking Taiwan "independence sentiment" or some sort of invented rivalry with China would have made a lick of sense. 

Today, this belief that "everything I don't like is the CIA's fault" just looks bad. If you assume that this is a sort of splittist/color revolution thing, you have to assume as well that it's a view held by bands of violent, passionate "separatists" willing to, I dunno, Molotov their own government to get what they want.

But that's not the case. Most Taiwanese identify as solely Taiwanese, most don't want Taiwan to be a part of China in any sense, and most view the current status quo as sufficient qualification to consider Taiwan independent. I don't think there's enough money in the world to control public opinion that tightly, after decades of KMT-dictated schooling in which Taiwanese were instructed to accept that they were Chinese.

Even if it were possible, it's simply a racist take to assume it's true. People have agency. Not just the US or China, or the groups you do like, but even the ones you don't support. Taiwanese people are not jarheads just walking around with their thumbs up their asses waiting for someone else to tell them who they are. Quite the opposite, a point which has been proven over and over and over again with every iteration of the long battle for identity and recognition.

So maybe, just maybe, all you "it's the CIA!" folks could sit down, shut up, and examine how unrelentingly racist your take sounds. 

The Republic of Tayovan

From Jerome Keating's book, The Mapping of Taiwan. p. 76-77.
I have seen (reprints of) maps that spell it as "Tayovan" but I don't have access to them right now. 

Let's say you have a beautiful island. It's so beautiful that some random Europeans sailing by one day named it "The Beautiful Island".

Let's say that since that time, your island has never quite been free of colonialism.

First, the Dutch came. They called your island Formosa, just as the Portuguese named it. They imported immigrants from China to work for them, who called it "Tai'ouan", a Hokkien rejiggering of the indigenous - Siraya - name for bit of land near present-day Tainan, which was established as the capital. This can also be written as 臺員, and I've seen it written as 代員. This is the foundation for the modern name "Taiwan". That name was "Tayovan", and it can be seen on maps from that era.

Taiwan has been known by a number of names. There's Tungning (東寧), Tungtu (東都), Taiwan, The Republic of Taiwan (also sometimes called the Republic of Formosa), Ryukyu, Takasago (高砂), Taiwan Prefecture, Taiwan Province, The Republic of China - not in that order. In all cases, Taiwan was treated as a colony: Koxinga, the Qing, the Japanese, the ROC. Every last one is a colonizing power, in that they came from a foreign land and claimed ownership of Taiwan, without the consent of the locals. It's not common to call the Qing or the ROC colonizers, at least not in English - some sort of deference to ethnic chauvinism there maybe - but they most certainly are.

Now, there is an ongoing social discussion of what to call Taiwan. Die-hard blues with roots in China cling to "the Republic of China", but nobody who is even nominally forward-thinking takes this idea seriously. One of the main points of this discussion is that Taiwan is not a part of China, and deserves its own name.

Taiwan? I know someone who refuses to use the word, and insists on being referred to as "Formosan", because "Taiwan" is a "Chinese" name and he is not Chinese. (Of course, the name is an indigenous borrowing, it's not originally Chinese...but, that's cool.) In any case, he's not wrong that China would love for everyone to call this island "Taiwan", as in "Taiwan, Province of China".

He is not young, but a lot of young politically-minded Taiwanese have also landed on "Formosa" as the ideal name for Taiwan. It seems like a nice choice - it was a name given by Portuguese explorers, and Portugal never colonized Taiwan. It's a compliment, a reminder that while Taiwanese cities are not particularly attractive, the island as a whole is very beautiful indeed.

But I'd like to make the case for "Tayovan" (or "Taivan", but "Tayovan" makes it clearer that this is a departure from "Taiwan"). The Republic of Tayovan. Has a nice ring to it, no?

First, although it was originally a name for only a small bit of land around Tainan, it was the basis for which "Taiwan" came to be.

Second, this idea is not unheard-of in Mandarin and Taiwanese language discourse. I searched and can't find any links, but I know I've heard it discussed. I don't hear anyone talking about it in English, though.

Next, it has indigenous roots. No colonization involved. No other name has that pedigree - the Portuguese never colonized Taiwan, but they did brutally colonize other parts of the world. They were not Taiwanese - it's still a name bestowed on this island by Europeans (just as 'Taiwan' was bestowed on this island by Chinese).

There are a number of indigenous tribes in Taiwan (don't let the 'officially recognized' number fool you), all with their unique history, language and culture. All might wish to be the group honored in the hypothetical choosing of a new name for the country in recognition of its first inhabitants. However, because this is the specific name that came to be used for the whole island, it makes the most sense. It also comes from a language that is no longer spoken natively, so it's harder to accuse the government of giving preferential treatment to a currently-used language.

Finally, wouldn't be a big change - just switch your pronunciation, a little adjustment to spelling, maybe change the characters - and honors a deeper history that is uniquely Taiwanese. The waves of colonizers - the Dutch, the Zhengs, the Qing, the Japanese, the ROC - cannot lay claim to this. It doesn't speak to their history, it speaks to the history of this island. It recalls an Austronesian history that is so often overlooked.

And, y'know, it just sounds super cool.

Somehow I doubt I'm going to convince the entire nation to get on board. But, if I'm ever allowed to cast a vote on this, count me in for Republic of Tayovan.

Come on guys - Tayovan!

I have massive flag angst

From Wikimedia Commons

Who would have thought a simple question about a flag could bring up so many emotions about a country I'm not even a citizen of?

But that's exactly what's happened.

A friend pointed this out on Facebook, and he's not wrong:

I think younger people have actually subverted the image and robbed the KMT of the intended meaning....

Now, it seems, the people who have grown up with the ROC flag as a symbol of Taiwan...only see it as representing Taiwan. The China part has been totally lost no matter how hard the KMT tries to push it. The KMT has had their dear symbol stolen from under their noses and they can't do a single thing about it. 
This is true (and is also not the first time the point has been made). The current generation of Taiwanese have taken that symbol and turned it into their national flag, stripping it of its previous association with the KMT one-party state and its inherent Chinese/Han chauvinism and unificationism.

Stores sell it, people wear shirts decorated with it and get in trouble if they try to wave it at international sporting events. Some may feel a wave of pride when they see it abroad, as its image is suppressed anywhere Chinese 'soft' power (there is nothing soft about it).

Try as I might to be okay with this, I'm just not. To me, this isn't a victory, although it has positives. This is an accident of history in which a flag that stands for authoritarianism, annexationism and ethnic chauvinism, by being subverted, has made it harder to create something better, something uniquely Taiwanese, something that doesn't create deep feelings of discomfort among some people. Although I'll probably be criticized for this, on some level it feels like that flag, with its KMT sun in the upper left feels like it sort of Stockholm Syndromed itself into the national consciousness (I await your hate mail). With no other clearly superior options forthcoming it became the de facto choice, perhaps making its own subversion necessary. What else do you do without other clear options?

Before you get on my back about those other options, a quick re-tread of a road we've already been down: the green-and-white independence flag is too similar to the DPP flag and the hearts flag and moon flags are a bit boring, and for most don't stir much association with Taiwan. The tiger flag has its own issues - although it is my favorite design by far, I have been told by someone who should know that the tiger was chosen because in Chinese symbolism, tigers are subordinate to dragons, and the stated fealty of the 1895 Republic that flew that flag was to the Qing Empire, whose symbol was a dragon. Also, there have never been tigers in Taiwan. With all of these other choices wanting, what other choice is there but to take the national symbol shoved down your throat and turn it into an actual national symbol of the nation you always envisioned rather than the nation it was meant to represent?

But let me be clear: that KMT sun makes me want to barf. There it sits, as though that party has some sort of special privilege or sacred place in Taiwanese politics more so than any other party; as though their brutal, dictatorial and murderous past could be so easily whitewashed. As though any party deserves a place of privilege in a free democracy, with their party symbol on the national flag. If adopting/subverting the ROC flag as the Taiwanese flag settled the question, to me, that question was settled with the wrong answer.

I'm not entirely sure why I care so much - I didn't grow up here. The KMT didn't torture, murder, imprison, force into exile or 'disappear' any of my family members. I'm an English speaking white girl from New York and not a citizen of Taiwan - why on Earth should I care what the flag is?

And yet here I am, going against the mainstream and being open about not liking it one bit.

This brings up all sorts of difficult questions.

On most issues of Taiwanese civil discourse, I have in the last few years found myself agreeing with a pretty substantial majority, or at least a strong plurality, of locals. I don't hide my pro-marriage equality, pro (eventual, de jure) independence views, my general gravitation towards the views of the Third Force parties, and my support of Taiwanese identity not as a problematic ethnocentric belief but as one of shared history (even recent history) and values.

There was a time when this was not the case - the early Ma years, for example - but back then I didn't have such a strong 'Taiwan identity'. I still don't feel fully comfortable claiming to be anything other than a foreigner, but I don't feel remotely the same way as I did in 2008. Back then I still assumed I'd go 'home' someday, or travel and live elsewhere, and that 'home' was in the United States. It was easy to say that my personal opinions didn't really matter because I was not Taiwanese, I could not vote, and ultimately what I thought wasn't important. This was a good thing for the time, because many of my views, while now mainstream, were absolutely not the majority view then.

At some point, something changed; something inside cracked open (if you were wondering if this happened around 2014 - yes, yes it did). I went from "I'll probably go home someday" to "I want dual nationality because this is my home." Not everyone understands this, though, so when I talk to such people, I still tend to frame my opinions this way: yes, I believe in certain things, but so do many, if not a strong majority, of Taiwanese. So I'm not trying to force my opinions on anyone - I more or less support what most people do.

This is the easiest way to buffer the criticism that being a foreigner living in and writing about Taiwan inherently courts, because honestly, there will always be people who just don't get it. Some might incorrectly think that my considering Taiwan home is a weird racial fetish thing (it's not - the desire to change one's race strikes me as deeply odd and problematic). Some might think I want to be just another whitey hoping to climb to the top of the dogheap in some kinder foreign country where being white confers extra privilege simply due to standing out, because I couldn't make it where I came from (also not true: my ambitions don't include wanting to be at the top of anything.) Some will think a foreigner in Taiwan - or a Westerner in any non-Western country - is always an invader, leech or both. Some will think any opinion I have that diverges from the mainstream is simply that of yet another whitey who thinks their 'superior' view can 'enlighten' the 'locals'.

Very few understand that I simply have an opinion on my home because I live here too. What happens here affects me, and it is natural to have opinions about issues concerning one's home. American politics, at this point, feels like 'foreign affairs' to me even though that is the country in which I vote. What happens in Taiwan affects me on a granular level. Why wouldn't I care about that?

Even fewer understand that I'm not necessarily out to change local minds on this or almost any issue, and in fact I rarely write in Chinese because I don't necessarily like the idea of a foreign resident trying to affect local discourse in that way (one exception can be found here, regarding convicted sex offenders being allowed to hire domestic workers).

I might say I support self-determination - the right of the Taiwanese to decide how to run their country. And I do. At the same time, I just don't agree with the way society has chosen to accept that flag, so saying "well I just support self-determination" comes across as insincere if not hollow. I just don't like it, and although the people I hang around tend to agree with me, most people don't.

Of course, these two things are not the same, which is easy to digest when the discussion is centered on one's native country. I don't like the way the latest American election turned out, but that doesn't mean I think democracy is a load of crap (I do think the electoral college is, but that's another issue). I can likewise support the right of Taiwanese citizens to decide for themselves what the ROC flag symbolizes, without liking the outcome.

However, it's so common for critics of expat political commentary in any country to not draw that distinction - assuming that foreign nationals must agree with local decisions otherwise they're just White Savior Western Cultural Imperialist Jerks - that it must be clarified.

So, to what extent do I get to have and express my own opinions on Taiwan, especially when they diverge from the mainstream? At what point does doing so make me someone trying to push a foreigner's view on the rest of the country? How long do I have to live here, and what sort of assimilation is necessary, before my views are as legitimate as those of any Taiwanese? I can't say it enough: this is my home. Am I still obligated to subordinate my personal views to that of the majority in a way a dissenting local would not? What right do I have to have a minority opinion about a country I'm not from?

At what point is this an opinion I hold about my home, rather than an opinion a foreigner holds about a country she does not hold citizenship in?

I could ignore all of this, knowing that haters are, as the adage goes, gonna hate. If someone has decided to believe that foreigners' dissenting views are never welcome, that's just what they're going to believe. On a molecular level I don't really care what they think. If you're reading this now and you hate me - well, first, you're probably not alone, but secondly, I sincerely and truly don't care. My opinion isn't going to change just because you don't like it.

On the other hand, if I am going to advocate for Taiwan more generally, I have to engage with these questions. It keeps me honest - if I ever tread too close to 'enlightened white lady wants to make the benighted locals' I want to know about it so I can stop. It also helps me remember that I'm not writing about these issues because I think I know better than Taiwanese society, but because this is my home too, so I get to have and express an opinion. It helps me remember when it's worth taking that expression beyond the expat and English-speaking bubble and into the realm of local discourse (answer: almost never). It also helps me work on framing what I have to say in a way that can't be as easily dismissed.

It also helps me remember what privilege I do have. I lack the ability to be activist in certain ways here - I'm too easily identified, too easily made a target, too easily criticized for being "not Taiwanese" or "making it all about me" (Taiwanese Americans might be similarly criticized as not 'Taiwanese' enough, but it's not quite the same as having an obviously foreign face). I do think it's important to seek out Taiwanese voices on Taiwanese issues and to actually listen to them. That might get me down, but I have to remember that, for all of the things I can't do, standing out (that is, making it easier to draw attention to what I have to say) and being a native-level English user from a background of comparative advantage - how many Taiwanese can up and move to the US the way I moved to Taiwan? - are privileges I should neither forget I have nor take for granted.

I don't have answers - I'm still not sure where that line is. All I can say for sure is that this is my home, so I do get to have an opinion as what happens here affects me too. Everything else is still kind of up in the air.

My politics are open: I'm not a fan of the flag of the Republic of China, nor of the Republic of China generally. I view it as a foreign entity that unfortunately governs, but is philosophically and historically distinct from, Taiwan. Taiwan is my home; the Republic of China is not. I feel nothing when I see the flag of the Republic of China flying. I feel quite a bit when I see images I more closely associate with Taiwan.

It's easy to get involved when one agrees with the zeigeist. It's not so easy when one opposes it, but is very obviously foreign. I know there are locals who agree - it's not just Lao Ren Cha against the rest of Taiwan. The question going forward is how to best support those locals and work with them without making it all about me.

Taiwan: A History of Agonies - a review

A History of Agonies alongside symbols of some Taiwanese social movements I have been here to witness
and participate in. It all ties together. 

Anyone who truly loves reading has become so emotionally engaged with a book that it makes them cry, often at the most inconvenient times. It stays with them and affects how they feel, think and interact with the world for some time after the reader has finished with it. Occasionally, this effect is permanent.

This happened with Green Island, a book I highly recommend to everyone and which made me Ugly Cry in my favorite coffee shop, and would say is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand 20th century Taiwan. I expected it would happen with Taiwan: A History of Agonies as well - I mean, the agony is right there in the title. Taiwanese history certainly contains enough tragedy to make anyone with a heart sob for hours.

So, I was surprised when that ended up not being the case.

Please don't misunderstand - it's not that it left me cold, or I found it uninteresting. I certainly had an emotional reaction to reading the words of a Taiwanese person describing what to him was not always "history": Ong Iok-tek lived through much of the events of the later chapters of the book. I was also intellectually engaged in reading history from a decidedly Taiwanese Hoklo nationalist perspective, especially in a book written in the mid-to-late 20th century. A lot has changed vis-a-vis Taiwanese identity since then, and comparing the two was an illuminating exercise. 

I will say that I learned quite a bit. Ong was especially interested in providing as much detail as possible about the various rebellions during the Qing and Japanese eras, because they proved his point that the Taiwanese never took being colonized lying down. I learned a few interesting details about the Zheng era, and quite a few famous names from history whose contributions I hadn't been clear on were discussed. Ong also spends a fair amount of time on every home-rule movement of note, which makes this a good source of knowledge for anyone hoping to refute the ridiculous yet oddly common notion that "Taiwanese identity" did not exist before the 1970s.

It was also interesting to read from that mid-century nationalist perspective. I'm aware of its existence and the general worldview of that generation of pro-Taiwan activists, as well as the generation after them which pushed through to democratization. I am aware of some of the problematic beliefs they often held, from thinking indigenous people were inferior to believing that nobody who came over from China in the 1940s could ever really be Taiwanese (and extending to views on women and homosexuality as well, although these aren't issues that come to the fore in this book - the only thing I remember being striking in that regard was Ong's reference to the "men" who fought and died for Taiwan.) It was quite another thing, however, to read from that perspective in the words of someone who was one of them.

It's not that Ong said much in this vein that I found new or surprising - for example, along with his focus on rebellions and home-rule movements above, he was dismissive of indigenous (mentioned above and to be mentioned again), focused almost exclusively on male luminaries (with a few exceptions), was critical of the Qing but not so much of the Japanese, and wrote from a clearly - but I think entirely deserved - anti-KMT perspective.  I don't recall Taiwanese Hakka being mentioned at all - if they were, it was too brief a reference for me to catch.

I was surprised, however, at his criticism of the 1895 republic, a blip in history that is interesting to me for no particular reason - I think it may be because I just like the flag. It's not that I think the Republic of Formosa deserves effusive praise, but I would have expected a Hoklo nationalist to give it just that. I recall reading that there was a concerted effort to bring back the symbols of that time - particularly the tiger flag - as symbols of the Taiwanese independence movement later. But, instead, he said that the republic's foundation day declaration "lacks style and refinement for a declaration of independence", was pointedly critical of their kowtowing to the Qing emperor, and of the scrambling of many of its leaders to evacuate to China when the whole thing fell apart later that year.

I did enjoy comparing Ong's views to the views of the young "naturally independent" pro-Taiwan generation of today. They have people like him to thank for giving them shoulders to stand on, and they are aware that they are connected to the luminaries of the pro-Taiwan social movements of history, but it is clear they'd find a lot to criticize in his words, especially in his love for Japan and derision of indigenous people.

I really love this tiger flag, it's the best flag

And, finally, I have to admit that this is the first comprehensive history of Taiwan book I've ever read. I've devoured others such as Taiwan's Imagined Geography and Accidental State, but they focus on certain periods. Reading one author bringing it all together was a positive experience.

I didn't cry, however. There is no single reason why. In some places, the writing was a little wooden, which I blame on the translation (I got the distinct feeling that it flowed better in Chinese). How does one start sobbing at lines like this?

Thus, China's relationship with the Kuomintang transfigured itself from a hostile contradiction to a non-hostile contradiction.

Areas where Ong editorialized, even when I agreed, didn't make me stand up and cheer as I thought they might - perhaps because I like my history as un-editorialized as possible. "We Taiwanese are seeking the helping hands from the free camp to rid ourselves of the oppressive rule of the Kuomintang" and similar wording, while I agree with it as an accurate sentiment stemming from the state of affairs when this book was written in the 1970s and to some extent of more modern eras as well, doesn't do anything for the nerdy historian in me. It would have been more powerful to simply present history as it was and let it make the oppression of the KMT very clear.

It could be that the translation was clearly not copyedited by a native-like user of English, as small grammatical mistakes, as well as issues with register and collocation, abounded. A personal favorite:

"The Tai-kang fallen, the fortress was totally isolated. Cheng Ch'eng-kung summoned the Dutch to surrender: 
'My Dad opened up this island, Taiwan. Now that I need it, kindly get out!'

That was rather an odd message."
Gee, ya think? 

And, the all-time most amazing phrasing in the world:

"Everything began when the Cairo Declaration made Taiwan a booty for the Kuomintang to claim."

That sort of thing tends to jolt one's mind out of the narrative and back into the real world. 

My lack of emotional outburst might also have been because, although I have sympathy for any person who lived through that period of history in Taiwan, I lost some sympathy for Ong after his derogatory marks about indigenous people (which the editors acknowledged in a preface, but ultimately left in the work so as to preserve it as authentically as possible). To wit:

"When the Taiwanese say that Taiwan belongs to the Taiwanese, some Chinese quibble that Taiwan belongs to the indigenous people and they alone have the right to their land. Behind this line of argument by the Chinese are seen glimpses of their scheming design to label the Taiwanese "aggressors" and shamelessly enjoy their share of the spoils..."

Yo, Ong, I know you're dead and Imma let you finish, but...I think this, or at least I think the country belongs to the "Taiwanese" who are of all different backgrounds including indigenous, and indigenous people have earned certain rights and reparations due to the historical wrongs done to them. And I absolutely detest the Chinese government and see Taiwan as fully independent.

Also, insisting that Taiwan's history is a Hoklo history rather than an indigenous one into which others later entered is actually closer to China's current rhetoric that you are "all Chinese". 

"The indigenes in Taiwan made their living mainly by fishing and hunting and occasionally engaged in farming, though of a rather primitive style." (Ong goes on to quote Georgius Candidius' super racist take on indigenous people, calling the women "complete drudges" and the men "idle by nature"). 

So, no mention of the complex trade networks that the indigenous took part in?  No mention that women often enjoyed higher status in indigenous societies? None of that? Just drudges and idlers?

And worst of all - it makes me want to puke in my mouth a little bit even typing this out:

Those of us who are used to the scenes of American Indians shot and killed in Western movies are liable to wrongly assume that primitive (ed: UGH) aborigines are doomed to fall in number at gunpoint. In reality, however, massacre is not necessarily the main cause of population decline (ed: yes, it was, along with other forms of overt oppression) A decadent sex life may be one of the causes; unsanitary lifestyle another (ed: **** you). Unpreparedness against hunger and contagious diseases also triggered population decline (ed: hunger and contagious diseases wrought by the way in which indigenous were treated by every colonial wave to enter Taiwan, perhaps?

In short, I have nothing good to say about Ong's view of indigenous people, and it was certainly a big part of what hardened me to the rest of the book a bit.

It is telling that he begins the book not with a brief recap of what we know of indigenous life before colonization, but with the Chinese knowledge of the island and then, the Dutch. 

The editors included an explanatory note to essentially apologize for this, and I understand keeping it for reasons of portraying Ong's voice historically accurately, but...this is not the sort of book that is going to deliver an emotional gut-punch, with nonsense like that.

Finally, I found A History of Agonies hard to follow, because names popped up and disappeared regularly, sometimes with scant biographical info, other times just dropped into the narrative. I did not necessarily know who every person was (although to my credit, I had heard of quite a few). It was also difficult to figure out what Ong was talking about sometimes: he spent quite a bit of time talking about the "Ch'ao-chou", "Chu'an-chou" and "Chang-chou" "gangs", and it took me some time to realize that he was talking about people who themselves or whose ancestors had immigrated to Taiwan from Quanzhou or Chaozhou in Fujian (he also mentions "Chang-chou" (Zhangzhou). Perhaps he needn't have used Pinyin, I know that system has its detractors, but the Wade-Giles - as it usually does - makes it difficult for me to figure out how to pronounce certain things and makes a lot of words, to be honest, all look kind of the same. I know my opinion is not universally accepted, but we can all agree that including characters after any words rendered in Chinese or Taiwanese would have been a good, and helpful, idea.

Of course, I knew this because I know a fair bit about Taiwan. Can you imagine how someone reading this as a beginning text on Taiwanese history would even begin to decipher what Ong meant by the "Ch'ao-chou and Chu'an-chou gangs"? Such a reader might think these are gang names rather than the cities of origin of rival groups of Taiwanese immigrants.

This really cemented my overall impression of the book: this is not something to read as a primer or basic history of Taiwan. There must be better options - it will be confusing for neophytes, and overly simplistic for those with background knowledge.

Instead, I would say, by all means read this book, but do so knowing what you're getting into. Read it as a personal perspective, as a specific take on the events of Taiwanese history from the point of view of a certain kind of Taiwanese nationalist of a certain era. In that sense, it is illuminating, but a clear and readable history, I am sorry to say, it is not.