Crossing the penalty area? The dynamics of Chinese/Taiwanese football

Tzu-hsuan Chen (National Sport University)

Alan Bairner (Loughborough University)

Abstract

Despite being the global game, football has never been a popular sport in Taiwan

(Republic of ). Instead, baseball, a legacy of Japanese colonization between 1895 and 1945, has fulfilled the role of the nation’s most popular sport. After the Chinese

Civil War and the retreat of the Kuomintang to the island, Martial Law was in place for

37 years and civil society was severely suppressed during the period. Despite its marginal status, however, football was appropriated as an extension of the military apparatus. Furthermore, with the assistance of Hong Kong football players, the

Republic of China team won gold medals in men’s football at both the 1954 and 1958

Asian Games. Yet, football still failed to take root in Taiwan. From the 1990s onwards, however, there have been football-related interaction between Taiwan and mainland

China (PRC). Po-liang Chen, the captain of the Taiwanese national football team and four other national team players, currently play in the PRC with the employment of these Taiwanese players being impacted by the Chinese government’s fluctuating policy towards Taiwan. In such circumstances, the migration of these football players

1 has triggered a bifurcated sense of identity towards China. On the one hand, the

Taiwanese people recognize the economic prowess of China and want to seize the opportunities this offers. On the other hand, football fans in Taiwan continue to develop a unique political and cultural identity distinct from their rival. This chapter examines the complex relationship between Taiwan and China through football in different eras to shed light on China’s ambition in relation to the development of football, with particular reference to the implications for Taiwan.

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Introduction

The split the Chinese into two politically-conflicted countries from 1949. Both claimed to be the legitimate representative of China in the international community. However, following decades of struggle, the People’s Republic of China

(PRC hereafter) has become not only the undisputed sole representative of China and but also a seemingly unstoppable global superpower. Across Taiwan Strait, 23 million people dwell on the island of Taiwan which continues to bear the fading name of the

Republic of China, even though it has official diplomatic relationships with only 18 countries in the world. Yet, the PRC has still sought to accelerate its efforts to annihilate

Taiwan/ROC from international spheres on numerous occasions.

Sport, like many other aspects of these two political entities, provides a lens through which to observe the different stages of cross-strait relations. It also highlights the differences between the two sides. While table tennis is regarded as the national game for the PRC, baseball reigns supreme in Taiwan. However, football, the world’s most popular sport, has been a constant reminder, embodied in different ways, of both countries’ lack of ability when competing with the major football playing countries of the world. With China’s rapid rise in the global stage, President Xi Jinping’s emphasis on the development of football and the growing influence of the Chinese , ironically, further expose the impotence of the Chinese national team which has not

3 qualified for the FIFA World Cup since 2002. “Guo zu(國足)”, short for national football team, has been a laughing stock even among loyal Chinese football fans.

In contrast, football has never been in the spotlight in Taiwan. Even though the national team’s performances have been even worse than those of its Chinese counterpart, it has not suffered the humiliation in the eyes of its fans, even when

Taiwan’s FIFA ranking plummeted as low as the 191st in the world in 2016. Despite moving away the bottom in the past two years, Taiwan is still referred as a “football desert” by its own media and fans. Although the quadrennial World Cup probably offers an exception, it is perceived more as an entertaining global consumer capitalist spectacle than as a matter of nationalistic sentiment. While Taiwan continues to struggle with China in the international political arena, its athletes often operate under the radar and become an awkward embodiment of their country’s predicament in relation to their rapidly rising rival.

This chapter aims to examine cross-strait dynamics through the lens of football at different stages of the China-Taiwan relationship. In the first three decades after the end of the Chinese Civil War, football, among other sports, became a battleground for the antagonism between Taiwan/ROC and China/PRC. The rivalry did not necessarily unfold on the playing field, as Chinese and Taiwanese men’s teams never played against each other. However, the game away from the stadium, that is, the quest for the right to

4 represent China, persisted. More recently, the migration of Taiwanese footballers to

China embodies a new breed of Taiwanese nationalism, whereby the Taiwanese compromise by admitting the prowess of Chinese politics and economy, while simultaneously managing to maintain or even develop a distinct cultural identity. To dissect this seemingly paradoxical condition, literature on relevant issues, especially

Taiwan/Chinese nationalism, must be considered first.

Am I Chinese?

Putting together pieces of the history of Taiwan from a national identity perspective is a daunting mission, especially in relation to China. Scholars from various fields including history, political science, cultural studies, sociology, etc. have sought understand this issue from various angles, with primordialism and constructivism being the two main opposing perspectives. From the perspective of primordial nationalism, bloodline is the most natural and basic human characteristic. As China’s President Xi

Jinping said during his meeting with Taiwan’s then-President Ma Yin-jeou in their historic encounter in Singapore in 2015, “No force can pull us apart because we are brothers who are still connected by our flesh even if our bones are broken, we are a family in which blood is thicker than water” (J. R. Wu & Shen, November 7, 2015).

This statement encapsulated the unwavering claim for a primordial connection between

5 the people of the two sides of strait regardless of their political and ideological differences. From this perspective, Tang‐shan (唐山，or Southeast China) has become the common root and origin of blood even for the ben-sheng-rens, or original-province people, whose ancestors have migrated from the mainland to Taiwan for economic reasons since the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). These ancestors from Southeast China who crossed Taiwan Strait, commonly called the “black ditch” at that time and settled on Formosa, as Taiwan was formerly known, captured the collective imagination of the ben-sheng-rens, who compose about 70 percent of Taiwanese population. The interrelationship between two sides of strait is even more convincing for wai-sheng- rens, or external-province people, comprising around 10% of the Taiwanese population, who, having been exiled to Taiwan after the Chinese Civil War in 1949 along with

Chiang Kai-shek’s KMT administration, have a stronger pan-Chinese identity. To sum up, the ancestors of ben-shen-ren could be summarized as economic immigrants and wai-sheng-ren as political immigrants.

In general, there are five major ethnic groups in Taiwan’s ethnic imagination. They are Aborigine, Hakka, Holo and wai-sheng-ren, and new immigrants, mostly referred to as southeast Asians. For the aboriginal peoples, the other three ethnic groups are all

“Han Chinese”. For most wai-sheng-ren, both Holo and Hakka are ben-sheng-ren, who have different historical memories and cultures from them.

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Collective memories and the sense of common destiny are two pillars of nationalism (Weber, 1994). However, each group in Taiwan has a special characterization of its history. As is suggested by George Orwell’s (1949) famous quote from 1984, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past”, without common historical ground, seeking a monolithic Taiwanese identity and future is a difficult challenge. That is why Taiwanese nationalism has to be explained through a different discourse of nationalism.

More complex and flexible schools of thought regarding nationalism prefer a constructivist view. For them, even the concept of primordialism can be a consequence of social construction. The idea of so-called blood-relatives does not necessarily mean objectively verifiable kinship ties. A nation can be a socially constructed imagined community, “a deep, horizontal comradeship”, “regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail” (Anderson, 1991, p. 7). In addition, identity can be an empty shell viewed from a more radical post-structural view. The meanings of identity here are twofold. First, the discussion of subject is based on freedom. However, real freedom cannot contain any substantial content. Second, emptiness does not mean annihilation. The empty subject constructs itself by digesting objects to alter its interior and exterior relations. In other words, the emptiness is not a vacuum but a receiving and meaning‐creating space (C.-y. Liao, 1995). Consistent with this perspective,

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Brown (2004) stresses that even the Chineseness that Taiwan possesses, or once possessed, is no longer synonymous with China’s official claim of Chineseness. Horng-

Luen Wang (2010, p. 530) echoes this perspective and further describes the condition of Taiwanese nationalism: it “looks like a country without recognition; ‘Republic of

China’ cannot represent China; claiming to be Taiwanese causes suspicion on independence; there is neither domestic consensus nor international recognitions; even

‘who we are’ is a sensitive question; everything articulated with nationalism is paradoxical and ambiguous.” Chineseness should no longer be viewed, therefore, as the default cultural departure point by Taiwanese. Wang (ibid: 526) asserts that because of their blurred and complex character, narratives of Taiwanese nationalism are the very characteristic of postmodern identity. Taiwan has constructed a hybrid, yet distinct, identity that runs parallel to Chinese nationalism (Dirlik, 2018).

Therefore, there might be a dynamic, albeit idiosyncratic, way to construct contemporary Taiwanese identity. On the one hand, blood still matters, as an old

Chinese saying goes, “fallen leaves return to the roots”. While a post-structural view offers an opportunity for a new type of Taiwanese identity to fill the “emptiness”, it is difficult to ignore the primordial calling completely. Even ben-sheng-rens, seemingly more distant from their mainland connection, are still affected by the biological traits, not to mention the fact that the KMT administration under the Chiangs stressed Chinese

8 ideology for generations through the school system and their propaganda machine.

The complexity is highlighted in the annual “Changes in the Taiwanese/Chinese

Identity” poll conducted since 1992 by the Election Study Center of National Chengchi

University. According to the latest poll, only 3.8% of the respondents identified themselves as solely Chinese whereas 55.3% identified themselves as solely Taiwanese.

In all, 37.3% identified themselves as both Taiwanese and Chinese.1 This dynamic situation fluctuates over time and is often affected by the PRC and Taiwan’s cross-strait relationships and policies. It is worth noting that the ‘solely Taiwanese’ group declined unprecedentedly three years in a row and fell 5.3 percentage points from the all-time- high of 60.6% reached in 2014, when anti-Chinese Sunflower Movement took place.

The numbers suggest a warning sign, or, at least a speedbump, for those who proclaim a distinct Taiwaneseness. Wu(2016) argues that the rise of China since the latter part of

1990s, created a gigantic magnet pulling Taiwan into a pan-Chinese nationalistic vortex and thus activated the process of the re-marginalization and re-vassalization of Taiwan.

The strategy proves the successful collusion of neo-liberal economics and the

“expanding nationalism” of powerful nations such as China. However, according to

Liao, Liu and Chen (2018), the Taiwanese can still be nationalistic while still advocating economic interaction and integration across Taiwan Strait. They argue that

1 Source: https://esc.nccu.edu.tw/course/news.php?Sn=166# 9

Taiwanese nationalism vis-à-vis China is three-fold. That is, whilst economic dependence on China is undeniable, the Taiwanese could still negotiate a buffer zone to preserve and further develop a distinct Taiwanese political and cultural identity. The cross-strait economic interaction cannot benefit every Taiwanese person; the younger generation, the lower-middle class, and those in central and southern Taiwan actually feel deprived of the economic exchanges (Qi, 2013). Thus, traditional Marxist arguments concerning the relationship between base and superstructure do not necessarily hold true in this particular context. In this chapter, therefore, Taiwanese footballers’ migration to China and fans’ reactions to this helps to crystallize for the bifurcated Taiwanese identity vis-à-vis China.

9-inning but not 90-minute patriots?

As Jim Sillars made the term “90-minute patriots” famous after the Scottish

National Party’s disappointing results in the 1992 United Kingdom general election, it might seem odd to paraphrase it to Taiwan and China in relation to football since the men’s national teams have never officially met on the field of play. In addition, unlike baseball which has carried the nationalistic sporting burden for Taiwan for over four decades, football has had little relevance.

Ever since the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895, according to which

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Taiwan was ceded by Qing Dynasty China after the defeat in the Sino-Japanese War, the histories of Taiwan and Mainland China have followed separate, parallel, yet also intersected, paths. These sides eventually converged in 1945 after the Second World

War when surrendered to the Allies and Taiwan was “returned” to the ROC administration under Cairo Declaration reached in 1943 by Chiang Kai-shek, Winston

Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt. However, the roots of football, like those of many other modern sports in Taiwan, can be traced back to the Japanese Colonial Era (1895-

1945).

After the establishment of a Sport Department in 1903, football started to leave its footprints on Taiwan. However, rugby and football were closely related, sometimes misunderstood, in the beginning and it was baseball which gained the most popularity on the island. The first official football tournament did not take place until 1930 with nineteen teams participating (Takemura, 1933) whereas the first baseball competition took place in 1923. With war against China looming later in the 1930s, sport in Taiwan did not receive resources from the colonial government nor was civil society mature enough to bear the load. Above all, when the Pacific War broke out in 1941, Taiwanese males were drafted by the Japanese military and sport, like other leisure activities, was no longer a priority in the islanders’ daily lives.

On the other side of Taiwan Strait, was the city where modern Chinese

11 football was born. Since the defeat in the First Opium War and the signing of the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, Shanghai together with other four ports were opened to foreign trade. As Western influence began to be felt in the Middle Kingdom, Saint John’s

College in Shanghai became the Garden of Eden of Chinese football. The college regularly played friendlies against Nanyang College for over two decades. When a

National Education Meeting was called upon by the Education Ministry in 1931, a standard curriculum for physical education in middle and elementary schools was enacted and football officially became an element of the Chinese physical education system (C.-h. Chen, 1978). China assembled a team composed of mostly and players, including the legendary Lee Wai Tong, to compete in the 1936

Berlin Olympics but suffered a 0:2 loss to the United Kingdom. Football then suffered greatly after World War II and the subsequent Chinese Civil War. However, the ROC still managed to send a representative team, managed by former player Lee Wai Tong, to compete in the 1948 London Olympics. The team lost to Turkey 0 to 4 in the first round of the single-elimination tournament.

After the Civil War, Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT fled to Taiwan but continued to rule the island under the self-proclaimed legitimate name of the ROC. Martial Law was imposed on 19th May 1949 to cope with the governance in dire circumstances; It was not lifted until 15th July 1987. This thirty-eight-year period of Martial Law was one

12 of the longest in history. Freedom of speech and public gatherings were severely restricted. Civil society and folk sport were virtually non-existent until the end of

Martial Law. Under these circumstances, sport in Taiwan could only develop in a highly opportunist fashion, namely, when it was required to serve nationalistic purposes. While the appropriation of Little League Baseball by the KMT Troika machine, which comprised the state, the political party and the military, was well-documented (T.-h.

Chen, 2012, 2016; Morris, 2011), football, despite being a more marginal sport in

Taiwan, was also given a nationalistic role by way of a complicated alliance with Hong

Kong over the years (T.-h. Chen, 2017).

Between 1949 and 1966, when Hongkongers were recruited to represent their democratic ally bearing the name ROC, Taiwan enjoyed its most glorious period of international football. Managed by legendary Lee Wai Tong, who migrated with the

KMT administration after the Civil War, the ROC national team won gold medals at both the 1954 and 1958 . However, with hostility increasing towards the

ROC/Taiwan in the 1960s and the growing awareness of Hong Kong localists who were gaining the upper hand in the Hong Kong Football Association, the football alliance between Hong Kong and Taiwan started to crumble (T.-h. Chen, 2017).

As early as 1954, ROC/Taiwan’s membership of FIFA sbegan to be challenged.

While the then FIFA President, Jules Rimet, acknowledged that the “All China Athletic

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Federation, Peking” was the only “Chinese” association affiliated to FIFA, he also invited “The National Amateur Athletic Federation” of ROC/Taiwan to apply for membership (Homburg, 2006). Despite this welcoming gesture to both Chinas by FIFA, neither side of Taiwan Strait was willing to accept the offer, as both claimed sovereignty over all of China. After two consecutive failed propositions to exclude ROC/Taiwan from the 1956 and 1958 FIFA Congresses, China notified FIFA of its withdrawal from the federation. However, FIFA did not recognize the effecacyof the letter and the three sides continued to be locked in a stalemate (ibid). Even though the PRC had not been an (active) FIFA member since 1958, its refusal of a “Two Chinas” policy and the demand for the expulsion of Taiwan has been voiced by its allies. After a series of struggles for over a decade, the FIFA Executive Committee decided to readmit the PRC in 1978, while asking Taiwan to change its name to Chinese Taipei In 1979, the Nagoya

Resolution was proposed by the PRC to designate that the Republic of China would be identified as Chinese Taipei and any identifying flag, anthem, or emblem used in

Olympic activities would be without symbolic representation of the existence of the

ROC and its sovereign nation status (Brownell, 2008).

Two years later, this decision was approved by the Congress, but it took another year for Taiwan to finally accept it and modify its official name. The development coincided with similar controversy taking place in the IOC. The “Lausanne Agreement”,

14 in which the bizarre and compromised combination became the official name for

Taiwan in the international sporting events sanctioned by the IOC and has largely applied to other non-governmental international activities ever since, was signed between the IOC and the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee in March 1981. With the

Agreement in place, ROC/Taiwan’s national anthem and flag were banned from international events. Instead, the National Flag Anthem is played during flag raising ceremonies. The flag with Blue Sky and a White Sun (the emblem of the ROC and the

KMT) and the Olympic rings, encircled by a five-petaled Prunus mei (the ROC's national flower) drawn in red, white, and blue (the colours of the real national flag) replaced the "Blue Sky, White Sun, and a Wholly Red Earth" national flag. Ever since this decision, the factual flag has largely been expunged from the international arenas.

Other than the IOC and FIFA, the AFC proved to be another battleground of political struggle between China and Taiwan. During the period from 1970 to 1974, when Malaysian Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman was President of the AFC, his explicit pro-China stance made the relationship between the AFC and FIFA tense. FIFA even threatened to suspend the AFC and imposed drastic sanctions. Along with Israel,

Taiwan, was expelled from the AFC in 1970, one year before they were officially replaced by the PRC in the United Nations. Even though ROC/Taiwan had been in an increasingly dire situation since the Civil War, this removal from a sport confederation

15 even before the world’s main diplomatic organization underlined the hostility they now faced in international sport circles. Although FIFA supported Taiwan being reinstated into the AFC, the latter refused not give in and its congress reaffirmed the original decision in 1977 (Weinberg, 2015). Taiwan/ROC was thus ‘exiled’ from the AFC to the

Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) from 1976 to 1989 and even their entry into the

OFC was by no means a smooth process. Australia protested on the basis of the One

China Policy and insisted that the ROC should only be accepted as a temporary member.

However, the ROC was eventually awarded official membership, with a vote of seven to two in favour, eventually given the name Chinese Taipei. After Taiwan/ROC was finally settled in the OFC, controversies about the name and about kits continued to dog the team at every stop in the qualifying stage of the 1978 World Cup. Attempts to

“smuggle” the name and insignia of China or ROC on to the team kits failed in Fiji,

Australia and New Zealand ( T.-h Chen, 2017).

Despite the tussle with AFC, the more marginal Taiwanese women’s national team was able to compete in the Asian Women’s Championship during this time, the biennial competition having been established by the Asian Ladies Football Confederation

(ALFC), which was initially a separate organization until it was absorbed into the AFC in 1986. The Taiwanese women’s national team was a powerhouse during this period and won three consecutive championships in the competition from 1977 to 1981,

16 thereby earning the nickname ‘Mulan’, the mythical heroine of the Northern and

Southern Dynasties from 420-589 AD. In the 1977 edition of the tournament, which

Taiwan hosted, the team was even able to use the name Republic of China. Subsequently, however, like their male compatriots, they would have to compete in the OFC’s tournament.

Unlike other (in)famous international football rivalries, the men’s national teams of China and Taiwan have somehow avoided each other even after Taiwan was readmitted to the AFC. It was their women’s teams which played each other numerous times. Even though the Taiwanese women had dominated Asian football for a decade in the 1970s, the team has been in decline ever since. This is in particularly stark contrast with China’s rise. According to the official FIFA website, China and Taiwan have played fourteen times in official international “A” matches. To say that China has dominated would be a vast understatement, as they have won all the matches by the accumulated score of 45 goals to 0, with the result that the Taiwan mass media and football fans have chosen to ignore the results as if they never happened.

Crossing Paths

The frozen cross-strait relationship started to thaw in 1987 when, following then end of Martial law, the then president of Taiwan, Chiang Ching-kuo, son of Chiang Kai-

17 shek, announced the lifting of the cross-strait travel ban. Initially, Civil War veterans were allowed to visit their original spouses, families–in-law and three generations of family members.

Since then, cross-strait interactions have intensified. In 1988, he State Council of the PRC announced the implementation on the “Protection of Investments of Taiwan

Compatriots”. Prior to that, there were only “under the table” investments in China.

Bribery, scams and other non-business costs were necessary risks facing Taiwanese businessmen. Even after the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989, after which foreign capital hemorrhaged from China, Taiwanese capital still entered the flourishing market. With the implementation of the new policy, Taiwanese enterprises began to enjoy a better and safer environment for their investments. In the meantime, Taiwanese people started to migrate to China for job opportunities.

However, the traditional “han zei bu liang ” （漢賊不兩立）or “the righteous and thieves do not coexist” approach still meant that the Taiwan Strait was a natural barrier to any substantial contact and exchange. In this respect, sport was no exception.

Indeed, there was no formal sport exchange of any sort between the two sides before the Lausanne Agreement was reached.

For Taiwanese athletes, China was a forbidden place, not only ideologically but also geographically. For them, sport is an inherently nationalistic vehicle (T.-h. Chen,

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2016). Therefore, playing in China, even as a career enhancing opportunity, was not a practical or rational option, even after the travel ban was lifted. It was not until 1999 when Taiwan’s professional league, Chinese Basketball Alliance (CBA, confusingly coinciding with the acronym of China’s own Chinese Basketball

Association) collapsed, that opportunities to play in a land without cultural or language barriers emerged. When beloved superstar Chi-lung Cheng, nicknamed Dr. Basketball by Taiwanese fans, decided to play for Shanghai Sharks, the option became a reality.

When he announced his decision, he emphasized that this was a career move and he did not wish to get political:

Taiwan is my home If the country needs me in the future, I am always willing to

serve. Although many people do not appreciate my decision to go west-bound,

especially from a political perspective, I beg you to see this as a “cross-strait

basketball exchange” and allow me to contribute to cross-strait exchange.(Chang,

October 18, 1999, p. 32)

Subsequently, one of the Taiwan’s CBA teams Hung-kuo Elephants, later registered as

Sina Lions, crossed the strait to compete in China’s CBA between 2001 and 2003.

Since the demise of Taiwan’s CBA, professional basketball never re-emerged. In

2003, A semi-professional Super Basketball League (SBL) composed of seven teams

19 became its successor as the top-tier basketball league. However, team owners do not invest enough capital to develop an attractive league for local basketball fans. Thus, for talented local basketball players, the most realistic career prospect is China. In fact, 29

Taiwanese basketball players have played in China’s CBA (Hu & Chen, 2018) since

Chi-lung Cheng blazed the trail across the Taiwan Strait. Moreover, since the controversy caused by Cheng’s departure, political and nationalistic perspectives have disappeared from the mainstream Taiwanese press. Instead, economic considerations and personal motivations for greater challenges are the main focus when reporting these emigrant players (ibid).

Like basketball, Taiwanese football does not possess a fully-fledged professional league. After much reorganization, the eight-team semi-professional Taiwan Football

Premier League has been the top-tier football league in Taiwan since 2017. Unlike basketball, Taiwan’s football, especially in the “dark age” from the 1980s to the 2000s, did not get the same recognition as basketball from the Chinese authorities. Therefore, homegrown players did not reach across the strait until late 2011 when a new generation came to the fore. Hao-wei Chen was signed by Baxy (now Beijing Enterprises

Group F.C.) of China League One. Later Ruby FC (now Shenzhen F.C.) of

China League One signed Po-liang Chen. Two years later, Chen signed with Shanghai

Shenhua and became the first Taiwan-born player in the . As of

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June 2018, there are five Taiwanese players playing in China. In total, more than ten players have played in China. However, since, according to the latest figures published by the Directorate-General of Budget, there are 407,000 Taiwanese working in China

(including Hong Kong and Macau)2, the number of footballers seems inconsequential.

However, the fluctuation of China’s policy in relation to recruiting Taiwanese football players could be a mirror reflecting the PRC’s current attitude towards Taiwan more generally.

Beginning from the 2009 season, Taiwanese, Hongkonger and Macanese players were considered “ne-yuan”(internal reinforcements), instead of “wai-yuan”(external reinforcements) in Chinese football. According to this policy, each team has been allowed to register one ne-yuan in addition to four non-Asian international players and one Asian player (The 4+1 Rule).

However, prior to the 2016 season, the Chinese FA modified the policy so that the Taiwanese, Hongkonger and Macanese would be regarded as the Asian wai- yuan (the +1). Players still under contract, however, were allowed to run down their current contracts. Although the new rule has been in place for only two years, it could potentially jeopardize Taiwanese players’ chances of playing in China.

The President of the Taiwanese FA Yong-chen Lin visited the Chinese FA in July,

2 Source: https://www.dgbas.gov.tw/public/Attachment/813018211L3E53FL6.pdf 21

2017, having expressed the expectation of Taiwanese players being restored as ne-yuan, he received positive feedback from the Vice President of the Chinese FA, Chien Zhang

(818Sport, 2017). While the long-term impact of Lin’s visit is as yet unknown, at a meeting of Chinese football clubs in Wuhan on 22 December 2017, the Chinese FA did announce that beginning from the 2018 season, each affiliated club would be allowed to register one non-naturalized Taiwanese, Hongkonger or Macanese player. That means that Taiwanese players are again considered ne-yuan, instead of wai-yuan, a change that has paved the way for more Taiwanese players to play in China.

As a result of this change, Taiwanese players might be exempt from the fierce competition from other more talented and polished foreign players and more easily signed by Chinese clubs, since they only have to compete with the players from Hong

Kong or Macau. From the perspective of football, this was a friendly and welcome policy, as it allows Taiwanese players to develop in a more mature and competitive environment. As a result, under the leadership of Taiwan national team manager

Englishman Gary White, those players playing in China, along with other naturalized overseas players, have become the backbone of the team. The result is an encouraging one as the team moved its ranking up to an unprecedented 121st place in 2018.

In relation to politics, the resumption of the ne-yuan policy echoed the PRC’s One

China policy as it essentially treated Taiwan as identical to the PRC’s two Special

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Administrative Regions. Indeed, the players from Taiwan are registered as being from

Taiwan, China, rather than Chinese Taipei. By contrast, the 2016 and 2017 versions of the policy had virtually regarded Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau as separate entities from the PRC which could have sent the wrong political message in terms of China’s re-unification ambitions.

Nevertheless, contrary to their political beliefs, even the members of independence-leaning Taiwanese ultras Raffiche Azzure (see T.-h. Chen, 2017) applauded the Taiwan-friendly policy as they think it can “make our national team stronger” 3 . The struggle between national identity and economic and personal incentives further crossed paths on New Year’s Day, 2018.

The National Anthem Incident That Did Not Take Place

Despite being out of the limelight, Taiwan football has started to attract more exposure and achieve positive results. When Gary White took charge in September

2017, the national team was in a crisis mode, having been heavily defeated by Bahrain

0 to 5. The team was ranked 157th by FIFA. However, White and the Taiwanese FA have both consistently claimed that being in the top 100 is their prime objective and they hope to achieve before White’s two-year contract expires. The team has responded

3 Interviewed on 13 May, 2015 23 well under his management and is currently ranked at its all-time high position of 121.

During a remarkable run, Taiwan defeated the same Bahrain team 2 -1 with a dramatic comeback, scoring two goals in the final five minutes of the game played on

Taiwan/ROC’s National Day in front of over 8000 ecstatic fans in Taipei Stadium.

After the victory, President Tsai Ing-wen invited the team to lead the chorus of

National Anthem at the New Year’s Day flag-raising ceremony at the Plaza of

Presidential Office Building. However, that presented a difficult for those players who play in China.

In the initial CTFA press release, eleven players accepted the invitation to appear at the ceremony; these included team captain, Po-liang Chen, and winger, Hao-wei

Chen. However, there was much speculation about the potential political ramifications if these two key players, currently still playing in China, sung National Anthem at such a high-profile event. As anticipated, in the end they did not show up.

Even more intriguing is that few major news outlets covered the reasons for their absence as if there was a tacit agreement amongst the reporters. According to Wang

(2018), the only source that suggested a reason claimed that it was because their

Chinese clubs had asked these players to “prepare for the new season”.

The sensitive nature of the National Anthem in Taiwan can be traced back to 2000 when pop diva Hui-mei Chang (known as A-mei) performed it at the Presidential

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Inauguration for newly elected, pro-independence President Chen Shui-bian. She was subsequently banned from performing in China for four years. Since then, singing the

National Anthem publicly has become taboo for performing artists and public figures who have any sort of interests in China and self-censorship is usually enacted. Both

Hao-wei Chen and Po-liang Chen were too young to remember the aftermath of the A- mei incident. However, after their initial knee-jerk acceptance of the invitation to take part in the ceremony, they reconsidered and eventually backed out. To football fans in

Taiwan, their decision to absent themselves was predictable and understandable:

js2937: by China’s standard, won’t they be banned? 12/19 18:35

sue5566: possible 12/19 18:42

johnson14: just say no! if you go, you’ll lose your job 12/19 19:00

isaa: thought of A-mei’s incident. they (China) just love this move.12/19 19:05

panadols: what about their future? 12/19 19:31

pf775: you can only choose either national dignity or money 12/19 20:44

isaa: does your own country provide them professional league? Are you going to feed them? 12/19 20:46

BleedKAGA: Tsai administration continues to appropriate reflected glory 12/19

20:46

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leoturkey: if you sing then don’t even bother go back to China to play football

12/19 20:55

sue5566: I suggested not going. Ending your career with a party’s anthem 12/19

20:58

hopeandl: how about those playing in China? 12/20 00:09

kolor: Somebody tell them to think about their belly. Go sing and get banned.

12/20 01:43

Lemur: Can they just show up? It’s dangerous. Even singing anthem before the football game is sensitive. 12/20 03:36

wtgcarot: that’ exactly what China wants. We started self-censorship. 12/20 10:26

s10b0566: I think that they should not go, too. A singer was banned for a year[sic]

12/20 21:20

isaa: I believe all those who follow Team Taiwan would understand. After all, the

football environment is still nascent.12/21 20:16

et10tw: Those playing in China better not going. It's not worth for a party’s anthem.

12/25 11:21

Based on the reactions on Taiwan’s biggest online football forum PTT Soccer, it is obvious that most of the users understood Taiwan’s situation. With so much pressure

26 from China to obscure Taiwan’s visibility in the world, Taiwanese people have started to develop strategies to cope with their national predicament. These fans could take the advantages for Taiwan football that has been granted by China, even though political autonomy might the steep price that Taiwan has to pay.

Such is Taiwan’s current predicament that not only has China has compromised

Taiwan’s official diplomatic connections with Burkina Faso, the Dominican Republic,

Panama and São Tomé and Príncipe all switching sides after pro-independence Tsai

Ing-wen and her DPP took over the presidency in 2016, it has also impacted Taiwan’s access to international organizations as a way of intimidating Taiwan. The World Health

Assembly and the International Civil Aviation Organization have both banned Taiwan from taking part in their meetings in the past few years.

Not even the most ardent pro-independence supporters can deny China’s political influence and Taiwan’s economic dependence on China. However, that does not stop them from being creative and flexible in constructing their own cultural position vis-à- vis China. This chapter by no means argues that Taiwan can escape the omnipresent

Chinese influence. However, it suggests that a politically and economically bifurcated identity has emerged and the traditional Marxist base-structure relationship may not be as applicable as was once thought.

27

Concluding thoughts

Football has never been a major sport in Taiwan. Even in China, it acts more as a form of mediatized spectacle than as a participatory sport. From struggling for recognition amidst the fallout of the Chinese Civil War to current footballers playing in

China, the cross-strait relationship is crystallized in football’s development. In the early years, the ROC and KMT still clung to the slim hope of returning to the mainland and/or restoring its legitimacy. Their refusal to accept Taiwan as the official name in the international organizations was proof of this. However, with objective circumstances changing and the chances of restoring the ROC on the mainland becoming next to impossible, they had to accept the bizarre name of Chinese Taipei. Meanwhile, the islanders had also begun to develop their own distinct identity that differs from the

Chinese ideology instilled by the KMT ideological machine.

With Taiwanese consciousness established amongst the younger generation, the footballers and their fans discussed in this chapter learned to appropriate a strategy that separates the economic from the political and cultural factors in structuring their

Taiwanese nationalism in relation to China. On the one hand, they realize the inevitable dependence on their powerful neighbour not least in terms of potential career development. This, Taiwanese footballers have seized China’s Taiwan-friendly ne-yuan policy to prolong their careers and develop their skills to help gain better results for the

28

Taiwanese national team. On the other hand, they also recognize their roots are in

Taiwan. Team captain Po-liang Chen started a football fund which he described as a gesture of gratitude to his home country (Lee, 2018). Football fans in Taiwan, even pro- independence fans, approve of the players’ career moves. If China aims to deploy football as part of its strategy to win over Taiwanese hearts, this may not be as quickly achieved as it might expect.

Primordial perspectives centred on bloodline nationalism may still have a role in constructing Taiwanese nationalism because the ancestors of most people on the island have their origins on the mainland, be they ben-sheng-ren or wai-sheng-ren. However,

Taiwanese nationalism is an ongoing project. It fluctuates over time, especially rippling out from policies initiated on either side of the Taiwan Strait. The decline in identifying as solely Taiwanese certainly raises a red flag in relation to proclaiming a radical

Taiwaneseness that excludes any elements of Chineseness. However, football, among other cultural forms, will continue to be an embodiment of the complicated and dynamic cross-strait relationship.

29

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