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THE TAIWANESE/CHINESE IDENTITY OF THE TAIWAN PEOPLE IN THE 1990S*
Abstract
This article describes change in the distribution of Taiwan people's Taiwanese/Chinese identity in the 1990s, a time when the cross-Taiwan Strait relationship under-went a great deal of transition. This identity issue is often considered a key variable in explaining how Taiwanese think about politics, in general, and cross-Strait politics, in particular. Survey data collected by the Election Study Center of National Chengchi University are used for the analysis. The results indicate that, regardless of ethnic background, age, educational level, gender, and partisanship, the 1990s saw a secular decline in Chinese identity and a steady rise in Taiwanese identity among people on Taiwan.
The term "Taiwanese/Chinese identity" refers to whether individuals in Taiwan identify themselves as
Taiwanese or Chinese. The authors seek to demonstrate how the distribution of Taiwanese/Chinese identity changed in the 1990s and explore why.
Back in mid-1999 when relations between Taiwan and mainland China gradually congealed into a "cold peace" after the missile crisis during the 1996 Taiwan's presidential election, we wrote a research piece on the Taiwan/Chinese identity of the Taiwan people.1 Based on four face-to-face interview survey datesets, conducted between 1994 and 1998 by the Election Study Center at National Chengchi University, we documented a secular decline in the Chinese identity ratio and a concomitant rise of the Taiwanese identity ratio of the Taiwan people. The pattern had been rather consistent across demographic groups defined by ethnic background, age, educational level, gender, and partisan identity. As more data are available, we want to revisit the identity issue, in the hope to shed additional light upon the identity of the people on Taiwan. The issue is important because many consider it a crucial factor in the uneasy development of the cross-Strait relationship.
In the Nick of Time
Much has changed in Taiwan since 1998, though these changes do not seem to have brought much impact on the "cold peace" across the Strait. First and foremost was the dethroning in the 2000 presidential election of the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, or the KMT) which had governed Taiwan since 1.949. The Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) Chen Shui-bien soundly defeated the KMT's uncharismatic Lien Chan to become the President of the...