Rethinking the Global and the National Reﬂections on National Imaginations in Taiwan

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Horng-luen Wang

As I have suggested, ‘nation’ and ‘nationalism’ are no longer adequate terms to describe, let alone to analyse, the political entities described as such, or even the sentiments once described by these words. It is not impossible that nationalism will decline with the decline of the nation-state . . . the phenomenon is past its peak. The owl of Minerva which brings wisdom, said Hegel, ﬂies out at dusk. It is a good sign that it is now circling round nations and nationalism. (Hobsbawm, 1990: 182–3) Introduction: The Tension Between Globalization and Nation/Nation-State N THE concluding chapter of his now classic Nations and Nationalism Since 1780, Eric J. Hobsbawm made a rather bold prediction about the Idecline of nation-states, as he argued that nations and nationalism are becoming irrelevant to ‘the new supranational restructuring of the globe’ (Hobsbawm, 1990: 182). Indeed, Hobsbawm is not alone in making such a prediction. Scholars and analysts across a wide spectrum of disciplines have been quick to cast doubt upon the future of nations and nation-states. While some posit that the nation-state is ‘losing control’ of its territoriality (Sassen, 1996) and is limping ‘on its last legs’ (Appadurai, 1996: 19), others go even further to argue that globalization may eventually lead to the hollowing-out (Jessop, 1994), the decline (Held, 1990) or even the end (Ohmae, 1995), of nations and/or nation-states. In that light, this article explores the interplay between globalization and national imaginations in contemporary Taiwan. If nations are indeed

Theory, Culture & Society 2000 (SAGE, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi), Vol. 17(4): 93–117 [0263-2764(200008)17:4;93–117;013704] 06 Wang (jr/d) 28/7/00 1:02 pm Page 94

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‘imagined communities’, as Benedict Anderson (1983) has famously put it, then the nation in Taiwan is perhaps more ‘imagined’ than others in the world. There are two reasons for this. On the one hand, the official ‘Republic of China’ (ROC) nation on Taiwan, maintained by its ruling KMT state (Kuo- mintang, literally ‘Nationalist Party’), is rarely recognized by other nations and hence can be said to be fictitious.1 On the other hand, the contending ‘Republic of Taiwan’ advocated by nationalists of the Taiwan Independence (TI hereafter) movement has not yet come into existence. Even for pro-unification fundamentalists who are so ready to side with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Taiwan is not yet a part of their imagined unified China.2 In this sense, the ‘nation’ in Taiwan remains primarily a matter of ‘imagination’, regardless of which ‘nation’ is being envisioned.3 The aim of this article is to investigate how different factors of globalization have affected the way cultural and political elites in Taiwan imagine their nation, and how, in turn, their national imaginations affect Taiwan’s involvement in globalization. While the tension between globalization and nation/nation-state is an ongoing phenomenon and remains an unsettled issue,4 this article presents Taiwan as a counter-example that contradicts the speculation that nation- states and nationalism are in general losing their significance due to the impacts of globalization. Indeed, recent changes in Taiwan have made it an intriguing case where the tension between globalization and nation/nation- state can be critically examined. Ever since the lifting of Martial Law in 1987, two major forces have been shaping subsequent development of Taiwanese society. First, there is the escalation of the politics of national identity surrounding the question as to whether Taiwan should become (or remain) an independent (nation-)state, or should be ‘unified’ with China in the future. Second, the 1990s have witnessed simultaneous waves of internationalization (guojihua) and globalization (quanqiuhua) in the social, cultural and economic spheres. The general argument of the article main- tains that globalization in this case has promoted rather than impeded the craving for nationhood and nation-stateness. What is more, globalization in certain contexts has been strategically incorporated into the nation-building process. ‘The global’ and ‘the national’ need not be two dichotomous, conflicting categories; instead, their relationships have to be reconceptualized. Before analyzing such a case, however, some qualifications have to be made regarding the two messy concepts, ‘nationalism’ and ‘globalization’. Nationalism itself has been conceptualized in a variety of ways. Rogers Brubaker (1996) has usefully distinguished between polity-seeking and polity-based nationalisms that are usually at odds with each other. My discussions in the following cover both kinds of nationalisms – namely, the polity-seeking TI nationalism and the polity-based Chinese nationalism of the KMT state. However, since the state of Taiwan is virtually de-recognized by other nation-states, the two supposedly conflicting nationalisms converge from time to time in their pursuit of Taiwan’s nationhood. Under these circumstances, national imaginations have become inseparable from sovereignty of Taiwan’s state.5 06 Wang (jr/d) 28/7/00 1:02 pm Page 95

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Meanwhile, globalization also comes in different flavors with different implications. To avoid conceiving of globalization as a homogeneous, all-in- one package of world-historical development, we need to unpack some of the different aspects of the globalization concept. Arjun Appadurai (1996) has proposed five ‘scapes’ to conceive of global cultural flows, namely, ethnoscapes, technoscapes, finanscapes, mediascapes and ideoscapes. Simi- larly, in analyzing the impacts of globalization upon nation-states, David Held (1990) has also brought up four ‘disjunctures’ between the power of the nation-state and global structures: the world economy, hegemonic powers and power blocs, international organizations, and international law. Synthesizing their frameworks, among others, I will examine Taiwan along the following four dimensions: (1) flows of people, (2) flows of culture, (3) flows of capital and economic globalization, and (4) international organizations and institutions. The following discussions will address each of these four dimensions. Flows of People Flows of people, characterized by Lash and Urry (1994) as ‘mobile subjects’ of the postmodern era, include large-scale movements of migrants, refugees/exiles, tourists, overseas students and transnational elites (such as professional/managerial strata and intelligentsia who travel across national borders regularly and frequently). It is often held that transnational flows of people have diversified the ethnic and cultural composition of society, ‘thus shattering the illusion of homogeneity and closure on which the modern nation, as imagined community, was founded’ (Comaroff, 1994, not pagi- nated). However, if we consider the people flows of ‘export countries’ such as Taiwan, the story may develop quite differently. In Taiwan, flows of people are a newly emerging phenomenon of particular significance. According to the Ministry of the Interior, from 1990 to 1996 the number of emigrants from Taiwan has increased more than four- fold, from 25,500 to 119,100 , of which the majority consists of middle-class businesspersons, investors and professionals. These emigrants, however, do not leave their homeland for good. On the contrary, no matter where they settle, a majority of them continue to be integral members of the society from which they originated.6 Although the absolute number of migrants is not exceptionally large, previous studies have pointed out that Taiwan is becoming one of the major exporters of emigrants in the world, while emigration has become a public concern in Taiwanese society (see Tseng, 1998). The same holds true for overseas students and, above all, tourists. In 1991, the total of outbound travelers from Taiwan reached 3.36 million, equal to one- sixth of the entire population. This ratio, exceeding that of Japan for the first time, was then ranked number one in the world. The following year, the ratio jumped to one-fifth, hailed by Taiwanese journalism as another title of ‘World’s No. 1’. As these statistics indicate, Taiwan’s population is traveling across national boundaries regularly and frequently, and this proportion is still 06 Wang (jr/d) 28/7/00 1:02 pm Page 96

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growing rapidly. More importantly, most of the political and cultural elites – the social stratum that is most likely to participate in the construction/contestation of national identity – has had transnational experiences (e.g. having lived or studied abroad for a considerable length of time, or having dealt with transnational institutions on a regular basis, etc.). These transnational experiences, in turn, are of particular importance in shaping and trans- forming one’s national identity. As the ‘cultural contents’ of transnational experiences will be examined in the next section, my discussion here will focus on three points: the question pertaining to citizenship and nationality, the national imagination based on the hyper-mobility of the people, and the role of diasporic communities in the nationalist movement. First, as Taiwanese people interact with people from other parts of the world more intensely, citizenship and nationality are becoming more and more problematized, but only to the extent that a new quest for an emerging national identity is growing and spreading. In the public sphere, more and more people complain about discrimination in foreign countries due to having an unrecognized passport, or due to being misidentiﬁed as PRC citizens. Troubles concerning visas and travel documents are most often ridiculed when people talk about Taiwan’s awkward international status and dubious national identiﬁcations. For instance, a popular writer, Kuling, wrote a sarcastic comment in the newspaper:

If you have a chance to go abroad, you will know that Taiwan’s [national] status has never been ‘gradually established.’ Most nations do not even issue visas to us [directly]. Some visas have to be acquired through the agency of Hong Kong, and some European nations even issue ‘political refugee’s visa’ to Taiwanese travelers – we are even inferior to Hong Kong, which is ‘utterly not a nation!’ (Kuling, 1991)

An outspoken supporter of TI, Kuling has been known for his anti-government position, so it is no surprise that he frequently makes fun of the fictitious ROC nation and ridicules the Chinese identity constantly in his writings. In contrast, we find another popular writer Long Ying-tai, a second- generation mainlander7 who is not known for her involvement in any nationalist movement. But even to her, nationality is nonetheless a dubious category, constantly contested and problematized. In a newspaper article entitled ‘From Taiwan’ (Taiwan laide), Long vividly illustrates a number of episodes in which she was frustrated by traveling with a Taiwan passport. At one time she was rejected for a visa by the French Consulate in Zurich due to the lack of diplomatic ties between Taiwan and France; at another she was misidentified as a national of the People’s Republic of China, because her Taiwan passport, with the official title ‘the Republic of China’, indicated that her nationality was ‘Chinese’. On yet another occasion, she felt like ‘a national of a third-class country’ being publicly humiliated on a ship in the Mediterranean when the Greek authorities refused to admit her into the country due to her unrecognized Taiwan passport. Furious and desperate, 06 Wang (jr/d) 28/7/00 1:02 pm Page 97

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she cannot help but make a sarcastic analogy: ‘Using the Taiwan passport is like a beggar soliciting from one door to another’ (Long, 1996 [1988]: 60). At first Long thought she was discriminated against because Taiwan was ‘a small nation’, but she soon realized that people from other ‘less important’, ‘smaller’ nations enjoyed better treatment than did those from Taiwan. Reflecting upon the situation of her homeland, Long states indignantly: Who says Taiwan is a ‘small’ nation? In terms of population, Switzerland is only one-third of Taiwan; in terms of territory, Taiwan is about of the same size as Holland and Switzerland; and in terms of wealth . . . we are much richer than most nations in the world. [All in all,] Taiwan is a rather ‘big’ nation – but why is my passport a disrespectable, unwelcome mark? (1996 [1988]: 61; emphasis added) Interestingly enough, throughout her writings Long keeps using ‘Taiwan’ instead of the official ‘Republic of China’ to refer to her nationality, while speaking of herself and fellow Taiwanese as ‘Chinese’. Nonetheless, Taiwan’s status as a nation is taken for granted and has never been questioned by Long. To her, Taiwan is not just a nation, but a ‘big’ nation indeed. While incidents and examples of this sort abound in the mass media, these seemingly ‘personal’ experiences undergone by individual travelers have finally culminated in a few ‘public’ events that have called for a collective concern. Among them, the ‘Schengen Agreement’ was a typical, highly publicized case. As one of the measures to actualize the unified Euro- pean community, the Schengen Agreement was originally signed by seven European Union countries to facilitate easy cross-border travel for the nationals of the signatories. When the agreement was first fully implemented in July 1995, harmonized visa arrangements for third-country nationals were coordinated, covering most countries in the world with only a few excep- tions.8 Initially, Taiwan was listed for exclusion, along with another unwelcome nation, the PRC. When the news was released, Taiwanese journalists registered their deep dissatisfaction. To them, it is simply ironic that ‘the World’s No.1 Traveler’s Nation’ should be discriminated against, rather than favored, by such a travel-facilitating measure. Due to the widespread media coverage of this incident, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was pressed to negotiate with the countries in question to settle the issue. To people from other nations, a passport perhaps means little more than an official document, indispensable for international travel but bearing no broader significance. However, to many Taiwanese people, a passport contains such rich symbolic meaning that it is worthy of serious discussion. One can simply think about the symbolic ‘passport’ issued by the Taiwan Independence Party (TAIP). The passport, which indicates the imagined (or yet-to-be-established) ‘Republic of Taiwan’ as the bearer’s nationality, is not officially recognized by any government. Its issuance is primarily meant to contest the official ROC nation and its unrecognized passport. As such, the passport has become a site where national identity is contested, and its importance is underscored in Long Ying-tai’s statement: 06 Wang (jr/d) 28/7/00 1:02 pm Page 98

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The passport has a symbolic meaning: it represents the object with which one identiﬁes. If a national has never given up this identiﬁed subject during ten years of insults and humiliations, then shouldn’t the government make some feedback in order not to let its nationals continue to undergo insults and humiliations? (Long, 1996 [1988]: 62)

The passport as site of contestation gains its significance only after cross-border travel has become a prevalent practice in society.9 The grandiose idea of the nation may remain abstract and remote, but the humil- iating experience of bearing an unrecognized ROC passport has made the nation a very ‘personal’ matter for individual citizens. In cases such as Long’s, the passport forces people to question their citizenship and nationality; in yet other cases, it has even become a kind of catalyst that triggers the transformation of national identity. I shall deal with this later when we discuss the case of a Taiwanese writer, Chen Fang-ming. Second, the hyper-mobility of the Taiwanese people has also laid new ground for imagining the nation. The mass media have documented the rising awareness of Taiwan’s highly mobile population, and this mobility has been incorporated into a public discourse in which the nation is imagined or constructed.10 One of the most significant examples comes from The Rising People, the agenda-setting book by the former opposition party DPP’s chairman Hsu Hsin-liang (1995). In an attempt to lay down a new theoretical foundation of Taiwanese nationalism, Hsu juxtaposes Taiwanese with other ‘rising peoples’, to put it in his own terms, who have successfully ascended in world history – for example, the Mongolians, the Manchurians, the Dutch, the British, the Americans and the Japanese. He states in a rather confident tone:

On the eve of the twenty-ﬁrst century, the Taiwanese people, most knowledgeable and most active [in the world], have most signiﬁcantly demonstrated the epochal character of a rising people. . . . That our activity is the strongest is by no means a boasting exaggeration. There are perhaps no other nations that have such a high ratio of population moving abroad frequently. (Hsu, 1995: 28–9, emphasis added)

Here, ‘global/transnational mobility’ is viewed by Hsu as a deﬁning characteristic of the newly risen ‘Taiwanese People’. Throughout the book, Hsu stresses time and again that the Taiwanese people are ‘more active and more knowledgeable than others’ due to their geographical dispersal and mobility, and that for this reason they will be playing an increasingly important role on the global stage at the turn of the century. Such a way of character- izing the Taiwanese people (by which Hsu actually implies the ‘Taiwan nation’) is novel, as it is rarely seen in previous Taiwanese nationalist discourses. As we can see, transnational ﬂows of people during globalization have profoundly changed the way Taiwanese nationalists envision their nation. In fact, recent ideological shifts of Taiwanese nationalism have been characterized by their deliberate attempts to stage Taiwan against a global 06 Wang (jr/d) 28/7/00 1:02 pm Page 99

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backdrop and to incorporate elements of ‘internationalization/globalization’ into the new Taiwanese identity. I shall address this point in a later section. Third, Taiwanese communities abroad have been playing an important part in the development of the TI movement, a fact that has been overlooked in current discussions of Taiwan’s nationalist politics. In the past, the TI movement had to be developed overseas by Taiwanese exiles due to the KMT’s authoritarian rule. As the polity became democratized in the 1990s, many leaders and activists of the TI movement returned to the island to continue their campaign, while overseas Taiwanese communities, which have been growing significantly due to the rapid increase of emigrants and students abroad, continue to contribute to the defense of Taiwan’s autonomy and to the promotion of Taiwanese identity. One of the most notable examples is the ‘global campaign’ of the candlelight vigil. In March 1996, Taiwanese students and migrants across the world simultaneously held a candlelight vigil to protest against China’s missile tests that were meant to intimidate Taiwan during its first direct presidential election. Moreover, with the aid of electronically mediated communication, there gradually emerged a public forum – what Appadurai has called the ‘diasporic public sphere’ – in which new forms and contents of national identities are constructed and contested. The Internet, for instance, is one of the forums where diasporic Taiwanese people around the globe passionately debate the independence/unification question. To be sure, participants in these debates as to ‘whether Taiwan is part of China’ include not only Taiwanese people of different national identities, but also PRC nationals and foreigners from other countries. Arguably, a global campaign for Taiwan’s nation-building is emerging, an example of what Benedict Anderson (1994) called ‘long-distance nationalism’. Such a long-distance nationalism highlights the global interconnectedness of Taiwan’s ‘national question’, which is par excellence of international nature. I shall deal with this in a later section on international organizations. Flows of Culture In the cultural sphere, symbolic elements (information, images, ideas, etc.) flow transnationally through global media and other forms of telecommunication. The resultant ‘global culture’, or what Featherstone (1990) has called ‘the third culture’, bears the potential of homogenizing the cultural scene on a global scale. Although not necessarily leading to cosmopolitanism or cultural homogeneity, these cultural flows may have had a profound impact upon political-territorial arrangements of the contemporary world, inasmuch as nationalism involves construction and contestation of cultural heritage, lifestyle and value-commitment. To investigate the impact of these cultural flows on national imaginations in Taiwan, first of all we need to understand recent changes in the cultural sphere of Taiwanese society. In the past, the KMT state was able to maintain the imagination of the ROC partially through censorship and control over the cultural sphere. Free flows of culture were only made possible after 1987 when the KMT state lifted Martial Law and the 40-year 06 Wang (jr/d) 28/7/00 1:02 pm Page 100

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authoritarian rule on the island started to collapse. Before that, cultural flows from the outside world, particularly those pertaining to the PRC and com- munism at large, were strictly censored. By preventing people from learning about ‘the other China’, the KMT state had been able to maintain the ideology within Taiwan that the ROC is an ‘authentic’ Chinese nation both politically and culturally. Under such circumstances, the exposure of people to outside cultures can carry the potential to subvert the ROC nation constructed by the KMT state. And since there used to be strict cultural censorship until the late 1980s, ‘going abroad’ once played a key role in exposing people to outside cultures.11 Here we can take two notable pro-TI writers Chen Fang-ming and Lin Heng-zhe (Chen, 1988 [1989]; Lin, 1989) as examples. As both Chen and Lin acknowledge, before leaving Taiwan, they had whole-heartedly embraced the dream of ‘Great China’ and Chinese identity. Chen Fang-ming recalls that when he first arrived in the USA in 1974, he was still a ‘Great Chinese chauvinist from inside out’. Then a student majoring in Chinese history at the University of Washington in Seattle, Chen was able to satisfy his thirst for knowledge of modern China through the abundant resources and information in the USA that had not been previously available to him in Taiwan. However, the more he learned about contemporary China, the more he felt that ‘China is a strange country to me’ (Chen, 1988 [1989]: 10–11). The newly acquired knowledge made Chen become disenchanted with his dream of ‘Great China’, and finally he concludes that ‘China has become my disaster’ (Chen, 1989a: 397). On the other hand, Chen began to read about the history of Taiwan’s silenced past, such as the tragic 2–28 Incident,12 about which he had had very little knowledge, even though, ironically, his major was history! Shocked and shamed by his lack of knowledge about the history of his own motherland, Chen started to reflect on his Taiwanese origin, and his ‘Taiwanese personality’ emerged when his nationality (guoge) was severely challenged (Chen, 1989b: 317). Here, the passport has played a dramatic role in triggering Chen’s eventual transformation of national identity. As he reflects:

Taiwanese overseas can best perceive Taiwan’s international isolation and humiliations. In the winter of 1974, when driving northbound from Seattle to Vancouver in Canada for the ﬁrst time, I keenly suffered from being a citizen without international personality.13 Witnessing many foreigners holding different passports enter the [Canadian] territory without any difﬁculties, I was the only one being held at the entry point, simply because my passport was not recognized.

I was finally admitted into Canada, not because of my passport, but because of my student’s status. . . . I profoundly realized that a [US] student certificate is much more useful than an official passport [of Taiwan]. This kind of nationality is in fact part of my personality. I am obstructed at a remote border; doesn’t it mean the same thing that Taiwan is being humiliated and dispar- aged? I can imagine that, on this planet, wherever there is a [cross-border] 06 Wang (jr/d) 28/7/00 1:02 pm Page 101

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entry point, there must frequently be some obstructed, questioned, and scorned fellow Taiwanese. . . . Deep in my heart, there was a severe battle regarding the national identity. (Chen, 1989b: 313)

The case of Lin Heng-zhe takes a similar trajectory. Before leaving Taiwan, he was the editor of a series of books known as ‘New Tide Books’, which had a long-standing reputation of introducing Western thought and literature to the young generation in Taiwan. Himself a translator of the British philosopher Bertrand Russell, Lin Heng-zhe held a typical cosmo- politan world-view and had aspired to become ‘a world citizen’. Reﬂecting on his path of identity transformation, Lin acknowledges:

Before going abroad, I knew only Western Culture and Chinese Culture. At that time, it could be said that I was illiterate about of Taiwanese Culture, knowing absolutely nothing about the existence of colorful varieties of Taiwanese Culture. (Lin, 1989: 15)

Lin Heng-zhe recalls that after he left the homeland and arrived in the USA, he began to realize that ‘only those “mentally retarded” can become world citizens’, since ‘we ordinary people cannot live without our own nation and cultural tradition’ (Lin, 1989: 15). By his own account, his Taiwanese identity was enlightened through his contact with the Overseas Taiwanese Association, and his political conviction of TI nationalism was further enhanced after a visit to mainland China (Lin, 1989: 16). After his identity conversion, Lin Heng-zhe aspired to become a ‘cultural doctor’ (his occu- pation being a pediatrician), devoting himself to the construction and introduction of Taiwanese culture into world society. In these cases, we find that only when they were abroad did these travelers get to learn the buried memories and silenced history of Taiwan (which in turn gave rise to their Taiwanese identity), and that only when they went overseas to acquire more information about the PRC, the ‘real’ China, did they began to realize that they were not, and did not want to be, Chinese. The cases of Chen and Lin should not be seen as isolated incidents; instead, they reflect a general experience of many people from Taiwan. In the discourses of TI nationalism, we can find numerous illustrations of how TI supporters convert their identities from ‘Chinese’ to ‘Taiwanese’ after going abroad. Two implications can be further inferred. First, the cultural content of transnational experiences may have had a profound influence upon people’s identity formation and transformation. Given that a rising portion of Taiwan’s population is traveling abroad, we may continue to see a transnational effect on people’s identity. Moreover, nowadays going abroad is no longer the only means for acquiring transnational experiences. Thanks to electronic media that facilitate global cultural flows, people no longer need to travel across national borders to acquire such experiences. In other words, people can be ‘armchair travelers’ to a high degree. Second, it also implies that, as the state’s control over culture has relaxed, and, as outside information and ideas can travel more freely, the official Chinese identity is more 06 Wang (jr/d) 28/7/00 1:02 pm Page 102

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likely to be questioned by those who are exposed to these idea/information flows. However, unlike what most globalization authors may assume, the threat to the established national identity results not so much from what has been characterized as ‘global culture’, but from images and information concerning another nation-state, the PRC.14 We can take the satellite TV station, Chinese Television Network (CTN), as an example. CTN is an embodiment of two of our interests: first, it is a typical transnational medium that transmits cultural flows on a global scale; moreover, its explicit aim is to articulate information, images and ideas pertaining to contemporary China. Aspiring to become ‘the CNN of the Chinese World’, CTN intends to broadcast to Chinese people around the globe. At the early stage, the Hong Kong-based executives set their primary targets as Taiwan, Hong Kong and diasporic Chinese communities in South- East Asia and North America. The ultimate market, however, is considered to lie in the vast land of the PRC. The executives believed that once the Communist Party loosens up the control of mass media, they would be able to profit enormously in this most-populated market in the world. Although nationalism may not be of central concern to CTN, the executives have nonetheless made explicit their pro-unification position and ‘one China policy’, reflected clearly in their news reports. As a global medium, they also intended to promote the idea (and ideal) of a unified world of Chinese culture.15 When CTN started broadcasting at the end of 1993, there were concerns in Taiwanese society that their pro-PRC programs would gradually harm Taiwan’s collective identity and solidarity. However, the opposite occurred. Promoting the PRC at the expense of Taiwan has displeased the majority of Taiwan’s audience, and antipathy to the idea of a unified China has grown stronger. Still, CTN’s news broadcasts have even heightened the distinction between Taiwan and China by making their difference ‘natural’. According to CTN’s news policy, Taiwan’s official title, the ROC (zhonghua minguo), should not be used in its broadcasts (except when quoted in the footage). Consequently, whenever the very term ‘China’ (zhongguo) is employed, it is meant to refer only to the PRC, not Taiwan or the ROC.16 In such a case, the transnational flows of culture have helped to distinguish Taiwan from China, which, in turn, may have helped to debunk the Chinese identity and foster a new identification for Taiwan. Furthermore, cosmopolitanism and global culture have also played an important role in the making of a Taiwanese identity, as ‘globalization’ or ‘internationalization’ is now regarded by TI nationalists as constitutive of Taiwanese culture. TI supporters have consciously employed globalization as a strategy to differentiate Taiwanese culture from Chinese culture. In the long tradition of nationalism, ‘culture’ is often a category intertwined and conflated with ‘nation’. This is how the KMT state has been able to implant and maintain a Chinese identity in Taiwanese society, by stressing that Taiwan and mainland China share the same cultural roots even though the ROC no longer represents China politically. Rejecting this as myth, the leading TI nationalist Peng Ming-min (1994) accused the KMT state of 06 Wang (jr/d) 28/7/00 1:02 pm Page 103

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intentionally confusing Taiwanese people by mixing up the ethno-cultural identity with a political-legal identity. Some TI supporters went a step further, arguing that Taiwanese culture is now distinctively different from Chinese culture. For instance, Lin Heng-zhe, who is so eager to usher Taiwanese culture on to the global stage, has maintained that Taiwanese culture is characterized by a rich variety of ‘international colors’, a spectrum including Chinese, Japanese, American, Spanish and Dutch cultures, intertwined through complicated historical legacies (Lin, 1989: 39–41). Such a view of Taiwanese culture is shared by many supporters of TI. In other words, ‘cultural heterogeneity and hybridity’, rather than ‘cultural homogeneity and authenticity’, are currently recognized as another defining characteristic of Taiwanese culture. The penetration of global cultural flows has given such an argument a stronger hold, and it is through the deliberate articulation (of the global and the national) that TI nationalists intend to construct a new identity that can be distinguished from China not only politically but also culturally. Flows of Capital and Economic Globalization Globalization in the economic realm is often considered of central importance in undermining the foundations of nation-states. It is found to be at odds with the sovereignty and autonomy of nation-states in at least two senses. First, cross-border flows of capital, circulating through transnational monetary systems and multinational companies, have undermined the state’s control over the wealth of its nation. Second, the international division of labor and the global circulation of commodities have gradually rendered irrelevant the conventional concept of the ‘national economy’, as the process of production, exchange and consumption is no longer confined to a geo- graphically bounded territory. Thus, the consequences of economic globalization have been characterized as the ‘de-territorialization’ (Appadurai, 1996) or ‘denationalization’ (Sassen, 1996) of nation-states. In Taiwan, the impacts of economic globalization have taken another turn. Taiwan has gained its international reputation as a successful NIC (Newly Industrialized Country), and globalization in the economic realm, far from remaining a ‘purely economic matter’, has always been vested with moral values under nationalist veils. Here, we encounter what Mayall (1990) has called ‘economic nationalism’, yet its meaning needs to be expanded to include two aspects. On the one hand, economic nationalism can refer to those nationalist doctrines that serve as the guideline for economic activities (e.g. mercantilism and protectionism that aim to promote the wealth and interests of the nation). On the other hand, economic activities themselves can provide a ‘base’ – in a nearly Marxist sense – upon which nationalist sentiments are fostered, or nationalist ideology can be constructed. Flows of capital have been heavily vested with symbolic meanings related to Taiwan’s national imagery. Isolated in international society due to the lack of diplomatic ties, Taiwan has gained its international visibility mostly through its economic success, while official nationalist discourses 06 Wang (jr/d) 28/7/00 1:02 pm Page 104

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have long been constructed upon the imagery of the so-called ‘Taiwan Miracle’. Capital is one of the key factors in economic development: in the past, Taiwan received a great deal of foreign investment to build up its economic muscles; at present it tries to maintain its vitality in the global economy by playing the role of the ‘exporter of capital’. In the early 1990s, the state actively encouraged Taiwanese businesspersons to invest in South-East Asia, a policy referred to as ‘Marching Southward’. The policy was meant to divert Taiwan’s rocketing cross-strait investments in the PRC, which were considered potentially harmful to Taiwan’s national security. The situation is clear: Taiwan has become a significant exporter of capital in the region, and its future prosperity and security as a (quasi) nation hinges, to a large extent, upon where these streams of capital flow.17 It is important to recall that the genealogy of the KMT’s Chinese nationalism can be traced back to the late 19th century, when imperial China was in crisis due to the Western imperialist invasions. ‘Becoming modernized’ (xiandaihua) or ‘becoming rich and powerful’ (fuqiang) has always been the central concern of Chinese nationalism. Taiwan’s current rising position in the world trading system has enabled the KMT state to construct nationalist ideology, as Taiwan’s economic success and vitality in global economy have been presented as a showcase of ‘prosperity and freedom for all Chinese people’. With the rapid expansion of economic globalization in recent decades, Taiwan has no choice but to join this trend in order to maintain its vitality in the world economy. In such a context, globalization is somehow parallel to the imperative of ‘modernization’ of the 1960s – ‘becoming globalized (or internationalized)’, just like ‘becoming modernized’, has been turned into a teleological goal to be achieved by the whole society. Here, we are brought back to the old theme of the affinity between modernity and nationalism (Anderson, 1983; Gellner, 1983). Let us not forget that ‘nation-building’ has been part of the modernization project, a primary pursuit of those ‘late- comers’ to industrial capitalism. In its current form, nation-building remains an important, if implicit, assumption of the global era. The primary goal of economic nationalism is to promote national com- petitiveness in the world economy. To achieve this goal, the state has recently launched a project, the ‘Asian-Pacific Regional Operational Center’ (APROC), as a means of maintaining economic vitality and perpetuating the national imagery of the ‘Taiwan Miracle’. One may argue that APROC is not necessarily relevant to nationalist ideologies in general. However, nationalist imaginations are always implicit in such an economic project. For instance, in a public address, preaching his idea of ‘the community of destiny’ (shengming gongtongti), President Lee Teng-hui (1995: 103–8) links the APROC project to the ‘community consciousness’ by stressing that keeping Taiwan’s ongoing development and vitality in the world economy is a necessary foundation upon which to cultivate the consciousness of a common destiny. Political rhetoric and ideological propaganda notwithstanding, such 06 Wang (jr/d) 28/7/00 1:02 pm Page 105

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programs have substantive consequences as well. According to the official blueprint drawn up by the Executive Yuan (head of the central government in Taiwan), the goals of the APROC plan are to build Taiwan into the following six ‘centers’ for the Asia-Pacific region: a manufacturing center, a sea transportation center, an airport transportation center, a financial center, a telecommunication center and a media center. These goals have been pursued through policy- and law-making, infrastructure construction and institutional adjustments. In addition, to compensate for its diplomatic frus- trations, the KMT state has deliberately sought to engage with international society, mostly through economic exchange, where interlocking trade relationships with other countries – sometimes via the agency of Multi- national Corporations (MNCs) – act as a proxy for formal diplomatic relationships (see Simons, 1992). All these efforts, in turn, have facilitated the penetration and circulation of transnational flows of commodities, people, capital and symbolic goods. As a result, Taiwan has accelerated the pace of its engagement in globalization, while this acceleration has been accom- plished, to a certain extent, through the active agency of the state. Ironically, in addition to the state-centric Chinese nationalism discussed above, economic success has also laid the ground for the rival anti-state Taiwanese nationalism. The advanced economic development, accompanied with a better living standard and lifestyle, has long been a major reason that TI advocates draw upon to oppose unification. Here, Taiwan’s economic success is attributed more to the colonial legacy of modernization, a highly qualified and dedicated workforce or Taiwan’s integration into the global economy, rather than to the leadership role of the state. Moreover, it is believed that Taiwan’s future well-being as a nation hinges to a great extent upon its embeddedness in the world economy, and hence ‘globalization’ and ‘internationalization’ have become part of a con- sensus shared by both the ruling and the opposition parties. With the per- sistent and growing military threat from the PRC, Taiwan has become even more invested in an international agenda. Learning a lesson from Hong Kong, political leaders, scholars and elites of different nationalist stances converge to agree that Taiwan’s security can be enhanced as long as it is internationalized and plays an integral or pivotal role in the world economy. It is believed that, if anything wrong happens to Taiwan, Western powers will intervene, at least in an attempt to protect their own interests, to neutralize any threat from China. Paradoxical as it may seem, globalization or internationalization is now regarded as one of the best strategies to build Taiwan into a nation (see DPP, 1993: 37–9), or at least to maintain its nation-like status quo as a sovereign political community. International Organizations and Transnational Institutions The era of globalization has witnessed the growing significance of international/transnational organizations, institutions and movements that operate independently of individual nation-states. These institutions and organizations have formed a new decision-making structure that both 06 Wang (jr/d) 28/7/00 1:02 pm Page 106

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constrains and enables the activities of nation-states. Generally put, these institutions fit into two categories: international organizations such as the United Nations, GATT/WTO and the Olympic Games, or international regimes such as international law and commercial arbitration systems. By mobilizing resources across national boundaries and forming supranational regulation mechanisms, these institutions and movements have decentral- ized state powers and have gradually constrained the autonomy of nation- states (Held, 1990; Sassen, 1996). Anthony Giddens (1985), however, holds a different view. As he argues, international organizations themselves are more likely to be the embodiments of the transnational rules of the game that have accompanied and enforced competing national sovereignties. Transnational institutions such as multinational companies, international monetary systems or GATT/WTO have not led to the decline of nation-states, but rather reinforce the prerogatives of such states. Moreover, as long as these prerogatives are reiterated, it can be expected that the aspiration to achieve full nationhood and nation-stateness will remain. This appears to be what has happened in the case of Taiwan. I shall explore this from the state and non-state sides. To the state of Taiwan, international organizations and transnational institutions are of particular importance. Ever since 1971 when the ROC lost its seat in the United Nations to the PRC, Taiwan has been enduring a peculiar international isolation. The number of countries with which the ROC has formal diplomatic ties dropped dramatically, reaching a low of 22 countries from 1978 to 1980, climbing back to barely 30 in the 1990s. Most of these are small nations in Africa and Latin America. In addition, Taiwan has either lost its membership or been barred from participation in most UN- related international organizations such as Unesco, the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Bank, etc. In other formal international or regional associations, Taiwan has also been denied participation, or been forced to use awkward titles such as ‘Chinese Taipei’ or ‘Taipei, China’, due to political pressure from the PRC. Although the PRC seeks to bar Taiwan from most such international organizations, there are simply too many (well over 20,000 in total), and Taiwan has been able to participate in some of them. The KMT state recog- nizes these organizations as an opportunity to recover its losses in the diplomatic battlefield. Therefore, it has desperately sought to participate in all kinds of international/transnational institutions, especially those of a non- governmental nature, in order to ‘claim sovereignty’ symbolically. This strategy is made explicit in an official report published by the central government:

Although other nations generally have paid relatively less attention to international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), our difﬁcult diplomatic situation represents a special condition . . . we have to expand our participation in NGOs with more practical, more aggressive, active, innovative ideas and measures in order to win over friendships and to contribute to the 06 Wang (jr/d) 28/7/00 1:02 pm Page 107

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breakthrough of our diplomatic predicament. (Council on Research, Develop- ment and Evaluation, 1993: 2)

However, the state’s endeavor to expand its participation in international organizations – be they of governmental or non-governmental nature – has led to an apparent paradox. As the interactions between Taiwan and the global community intensify, there is a rising awareness of Taiwan’s awkward international position, reflected in a collective anxiety concerning Taiwan’s status in those international organizations such as United Nations, GATT/WTO, the Olympic Games, and many other international/transnational institutions. On the non-state side, therefore, it is observed that ‘the international orphan’ has long been part of Taiwanese nationalist discourses. The non- representation or misrepresentation of Taiwan in international settings has led to a rising anxiety that ‘Taiwan will gradually disappear on the world map’.18 Even on non-governmental occasions, where politics is supposed to be of little concern (such as academic conferences and professional associations), people from Taiwan tend to find themselves frustrated with the problem of representation and reception. At most of these international occasions, nationality still serves as the most convenient and habitual way of classifying people from different places and/or of different origins, while nationhood remains a primary principle of classification and representation. Taiwan’s tangled relationship with China simply makes its awkward international status even worse. We can take International PEN as example. As suggested by the acronym, International PEN was founded as an international association for Poets, Playwrights, Essayists, Editors and Novelists. In spirit, it is meant to promote universal humanitarian values and to protect writers around the world from political prosecution. As such, the institution is supposed to exclude any interference from political authorities. However, after returning from the annual meeting of International PEN, Taiwanese writers Li Ang and Zheng Chou-yu ask bitterly in a popular maga- zine: ‘Why cannot Taiwanese literature receive fair treatment internationally?’ (Global View, 1 November 1986). Li and Zheng complain that during the meeting, Taiwanese writers were not properly introduced and have never been granted a chance to present their papers. In sharp contrast, Chinese writers from the PRC were highly regarded and treated as guests of honor. Echoing their agony, another writer Long Ying-tai responds:

To the westerners, China [sic],19 is that eastern country populated with one billion people; contemporary Chinese literature, is the literature about those Chinese people who struggle with natural disasters and human foes by the Yellow River and on the Yangtze River; and Chinese writers, are of course those who come from that piece of land. . . . Now that Taiwan does not repre- sent China in terms of political status, its literature is naturally not regarded as Chinese literature. (1996 [1988]: 115)

Again, Long points out that when the Westerners are looking for ‘Chinese 06 Wang (jr/d) 28/7/00 1:02 pm Page 108

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literature’, they look for what they consider ‘genuine’ or ‘authentic’ representations. Taiwanese literature under the sign of ‘Chinese literature’ is just ‘a counterfeit’. In fact, what Long describes in the field of literature is merely the tip of the iceberg. In other professional and academic fields, the same scenario is constantly repeated. Long’s rhetoric of ‘counterfeit’ has quite vividly cap- tured the predicament in which Taiwan has been caught in recent decades. The predicament identifies two related problems. On the one hand, the official national title of Taiwan (namely, ‘the Republic of China’) is prohib- ited on most international occasions. The reasons are not necessarily political, but simply to avoid confusion with the People’s Republic of China (PRC).20 On the other hand, ‘Taiwan’ has rarely been used as the formal name for official representations. The reason for this is far more complicated. For one thing, ‘China’ as a collective totem is a historical legacy that the ROC government can hardly eschew. Originally a regime in exile from China, the ruling KMT state has legitimized its rule over Taiwan by claim- ing the island to be ‘part of China’. From the perspective of the PRC, it is against their interests, too, to let Taiwan simply use ‘Taiwan’ as the official title, because doing so would imply the recognition of Taiwan as a nation, which contradicts the PRC’s wishful claim that Taiwan is also part of their territory. As a result, Taiwan is either excluded from international organizations, or being misrepresented under a wrong title. As globalization picks up its pace, Taiwan’s anxiety about being excluded from the global village is growing. The concern itself may not necessarily be political, but how these issues can be handled is always politically charged. For example, there has been an increase in ‘global problems’ or universal humanitarian issues that call for international cooperation or sanctions – basic human rights and humanitarian relief, environ- mental/wildlife protection and epidemic control are but a few instances. Taiwan is not a member of most international institutions, but is nonetheless obliged to follow their rules or to make contributions. In 1992, the British environmentalist group the Environment Investigation Association (EIA) accused Taiwan of consuming rhino horns and tiger bones. The EIA broadcast a TV commercial worldwide, in which Taiwan was portrayed as ‘the bar- barian in the global village’. Long concerned with its ‘international image’ (guoji xingxiang) due to international isolation, Taiwanese society considered the commercial to have inflicted serious damage. Yet when various governmental and non-governmental agencies in Taiwan tried to respond to this accusation, they found themselves unable to find appropriate channels to express themselves, since Taiwan was excluded from membership of the international wildlife protection organization. Another example is the World Health Organization. Taiwan was excluded from the WHO in 1972, just after losing its seat in the United Nations. In 1997, Taiwan applied for observer status in the WHO but was denied. Under pressure from the PRC, the WHO insisted that membership must be based on sovereign states; and since Taiwan is regarded as merely 06 Wang (jr/d) 28/7/00 1:02 pm Page 109

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a province of China, it was not qualified to join. The WHO’s decision has upset not only the ROC government, but also the medical profession. As the leader of the Taiwan medical association argued, health is now considered a basic human right worldwide, and the prevention, treatment and control of epidemic diseases is a global/universal issue that calls for international cooperation. He contended that Taiwan’s exclusion from the WHO due to its unrecognized nationhood is not only unreasonable, but unfair to the people of Taiwan (Deng, 1998). This appeal seems to have won some sympathy overseas and was later echoed in the Washington Post, when it published an article asserting that ‘the denial of WHO membership to Taiwan is an unjus- tifiable violation of its people’s fundamental human rights’ (Brown, 1998). The exclusion of Taiwan from international organizations has fostered a sense of injustice. That has focused the problem around two issues. First, people have started to criticize the ‘one China’ policy – the ‘ROC’ is no longer considered representative of China, and a distinctive nationhood in the name of ‘Taiwan’ is considered much needed and most appropriate. Second, people have begun to realize that it is the PRC that stands in the way of Taiwan’s participation and interaction with global communities. Antipathy towards China remains high, which has further fueled Taiwan’s pursuit of a place in international communities as an independent nation. Concluding Remarks: Re-conceptualizing the Global and the National Above, I have suggested that Taiwan’s nationalist politics, which is par excellence of international nature, has been intertwined with Taiwan’s involvement with the globalization process. The preceding analysis can be synthesized as follows. First, transnational experiences have had a profound impact upon identity formation and transformation for the people in Taiwan. Objectively, this experience has taken the form of the increasing transnational flows of people traveling and living abroad. ‘Transnational mobility’ is now regarded as one of the defining characteristics of the Taiwanese people and distin- guishes them from the Chinese. Moreover, as the interactions between Taiwan and other parts of the global village intensify, people start to question their citizenship and nationality. Far from leading people to reject such categories altogether, however, these circumstances have led them to a quest for a new identity. Second, transnational experiences have spread through transnational cultural flows facilitated by electronic media, creating the ultimate ‘armchair travelers’. These cultural flows have helped to debunk the existing Chinese identity, and opened new opportunities to foster a separate Taiwanese identity. Global culture is now incorporated as a component of Taiwanese culture, upon which a new identity has been constructed. Third, the nationalist agenda has become intertwined with economic globalization. Taiwan’s economic achievement, made possible by successful integration into the global economy, has provided a solid material base on 06 Wang (jr/d) 28/7/00 1:02 pm Page 110

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which two competing nationalist ideologies – namely, Chinese and Taiwanese nationalism – have been constructed. More recently, globalization has been recognized as the best strategy for building Taiwan into a nation, or at least for maintaining its current nation-like or quasi-nation status quo. This, in turn, has deepened Taiwan’s embeddedness in globalization by facilitating the penetration of transnational flows of all sorts. And finally, the increasing importance of international organizations and transnational institutions has given Taiwanese people stronger aspirations to pursue a recognized nationhood or nation-stateness, as Taiwan’s exclusion from these organizations and institutions in global communities has fostered a sense of injustice and collective anxiety about being an ‘international orphan’. Being an anomaly in terms of its ambiguous international status, Taiwan is perhaps too idiosyncratic a case to generalize from. However, by virtue of being a rare anomaly, it carries the potential to shed new light on our theoretical interpretation. Taiwan seems to contradict speculations that globalization will eventually lead to the waning significance of nation-states and/or nationalism. In this case, we have seen that certain forms of globalization can strengthen aspirations for the pursuit of nationhood and nation- stateness. Yet, as well as this simple dichotomy, the Taiwanese case can help us further reconceptualize the two analytical categories, ‘the global’ and ‘the national’, with three theoretical implications. The first implication concerns the nature of ‘the national question’. As scholars have pointed out, nation, nationalism and nation-states are all globalized and globalizing phenomena (Duara, 1995; Giddens, 1985; Lash and Urry, 1994). That is to say, ‘the national question’ can be best under- stood if, and only if, it is looked at against the proper global/international backdrop. In explaining recent identity politics in Taiwan, the argument that the Chinese identity is a ‘false consciousness’ constructed by the KMT cannot sufficiently explain why such an identity should have collapsed when people left their homeland, or were confronted with outside information through cultural flows. As a social classification system of grouping people, nationalism is usually defined in relation to the exogenous ‘Other’. More importantly, as Löfgren (1989: 11) has put it, national identity is ‘totally dependent upon the imagined or real approval of this identity as a national otherness by others, i.e. other nations’. The case of Taiwan gives strong support to such a view. As many have acknowledged, Taiwan’s status as a nation hinges not so much on ‘whether Taiwanese people think of themselves in terms of a nation or not’, but more on ‘whether others around the globe consider it a nation or not’. By providing institutional support for a certain nation in a proper milieu, ‘the global’ can be crucial for the constitution of ‘the national’. Second, the relationship between globalization and nations/nation- states contains not only tensions and contradictions, but also affinities and mutual reinforcements. In the Taiwanese case, we have found in four dimensions changing configurations of national imaginations that, in turn, give 06 Wang (jr/d) 28/7/00 1:02 pm Page 111

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Taiwan a stronger hold over its nationhood. And, more interestingly, the nation in Taiwan is now being imagined with heavy international tints and global flavors, as globalization itself has become a strategy for nation-building. What is emerging is a new strategic alliance between the global and the national, where globalization has provided new ground upon which the nation can be (re)formulated. As shown in this case, ‘transnational mobility’ is now regarded as a defining characteristic of the Taiwanese people, ‘global culture’ is viewed as a component of Taiwanese culture (as differentiated from Chinese culture), and the magic term ‘globalization’ is employed, both as rhetoric and as policy, to build the nation. Finally, the last theoretical implication concerns the possible waning significance of nations and nation-states. Nation-states may eventually decline, and in the future there may exist a nation-less world where nationality and nationhood hold no significance at all. But this time is by no means upon us. Like it or not, people still need a nationality to live with, while the nation is likely to remain an indispensable, institutionalized category of the social classification system even in this global era. In a case such as Taiwan, since nationhood has never been fully achieved internationally, ‘the nation’ remains more something to be achieved (or preserved) rather than something to be eschewed. To conclude, let me once again quote a passage from a classic scholar of nations and nationalism, Ernest Gellner:

A man without a nation deﬁes recognized categories and provokes revulsion. . . . A man must have a nationality as he must have a nose and two ears; a deﬁciency in any of these particulars is not inconceivable and does from time to time occur, but only as a result of some disaster, and it is itself a disaster of a kind. (Gellner, 1983: 6; emphasis added)

Gellner initially made this analogy in an attempt to debunk – or rather, to ridicule – the essentialist view of nations put forward by most nationalist ideologies, as he immediately went on to contend that ‘Having a nation is not an inherent attribute of humanity, but it has come to appear as such’ (Gellner, 1983: 6). However, Gellner’s analogy, taking yet another ironic twist, vividly illustrates the predicament that people in Taiwan currently endure. To put it in Gellner’s terms, the people of Taiwan tend to find themselves ‘men and women without a nation’ who ‘defy recognized categories and provoke revulsion’ when they are internationally situated. Being un- categorizable, they find themselves in ‘a disaster of a kind’ that afflicts the entire society as globalization proceeds: having no nation or nationhood is perceived as a shame, an embarrassment, or a defect that leads to collective humiliations. The rise of Taiwanese identity, and the increasing appeal of Taiwanese nationalism to the public, perhaps cannot be solely attributed to the awakening of primordial ties or ethnic consciousness, as is usually argued by earlier studies, nor can it be explained away merely by invoking domestic politics. Rather, in order to fully understand ‘why the nation 06 Wang (jr/d) 28/7/00 1:02 pm Page 112

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matters at this point of time’, we need to look for some ‘exogenous’ factors to present a more complete picture. Here, I am not arguing for the importance of global factors at the expense of the significance of domestic politics, nor do I consider globalization alone the prime mover of nationalist politics in Taiwan. Instead, the central argument of the article is that, ethnic cleav- ages and geo-political conditions being given, globalization may work for rather than against the cravings for nationhood and nation-stateness. As this study has tried to suggest, the escalation of nationalist politics may also be a reflection, to a certain extent, of Taiwan’s accelerated engagement with the complexities of globalizaion. Just as Chatterjee (1986) has argued that nationalism outside Europe is necessarily a ‘derivative discourse’, so we find Taiwan’s recent cry for the re-identification/redefinition of the nation a ‘derivative consciousness’ or a ‘derivative identity’ – that is, an ‘imperative’ derived from its involvement in the globalization process. Transnational flows of people, culture and capital during globalization may have ignored, subverted and devalued national boundaries and their associated states, but this does not necessarily imply the decline of nations and/or nation-states. By intensifying the interactions among different constituents of the global village, globalization may also assert and reinforce the institutional prerogatives of nations and nation-states, thereby re-emphasizing the significance – or even the necessity, as it were – of nationhood and nation-stateness. Taiwan provides compelling evidence for the need to reconceptualize the relationship between globalization and the nation/nation-state. Notes An earlier version of this article was presented at the Fourth Annual North America Taiwan Studies Conference on ‘Putting Taiwan in Global Perspective’, University of Texas at Austin, 29 May–1 June 1998. I am grateful to Prasenjit Duara, Yun Fan, A-chin Hsiao, Chia-lung Lin, Tak-chuen Luk, Andrew Morris, Martin Riesebrodt and Joseph Wong for their comments on the earlier draft. I would like to thank three anonymous reviewers, whose comments have been helpful in improving the original manuscript. I particularly appreciate one of the reviewers who has patiently made several detailed stylistic suggestions. My thanks also go to Elizabeth McSweeney for her valuable help in revision. Any weaknesses are mine, of course. All Chinese names and characters are romanized in the pinyin system, unless there is a common usage that has been widely accepted (e.g. Taipei, Lee Teng-hui). To follow the convention in Taiwan, however, a dash is inserted between the second and the third characters of the given name where applicable, although it is acknowledged that this practice does not conform to the pinyin rule originally designed by the People’s Republic of China. 1. The ROC nation is fictitious, not only in that it is not recognized internationally, but also in that its claim of sovereignty is, to a large extent, imagined. Once insisting that it is the only legitimate government of China, the KMT state claims that the ROC’s territories include the vast lands of the People’s Republic of China and of the Mongolian Republic – though it has no control over either of them. 2. For those who are not familiar with Taiwanese history, a brief historical outline may be helpful. Before being made a province by the Qing Dynasty of China in 1885, 06 Wang (jr/d) 28/7/00 1:02 pm Page 113

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the island of Taiwan had been in part occupied by the Dutch, Spanish, American and Japanese, some of whom established administrative offices for short-term rule. In 1895 Taiwan was ceded to Japan by the Qing Dynasty and was colonized by the Japanese government for 50 years. After Japan’s defeat in the Second World War in 1945, Taiwan was once again turned over to the then Chinese government, namely, the KMT regime. Four years later, in 1949, the ruling KMT lost the civil war to the Chinese Communist Part (CCP) and took refuge in Taiwan. The CCP founded the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and subsequently became the recognized state of China, whereas the exiled KMT regime, insisting its national title remain the ‘Republic of China’ (ROC), has effectively continued as the state on Taiwan to date. While both the PRC and the ROC are competing to claim sovereignty over Taiwan by drawing on legacies of Chinese history, a third claim is made by Taiwanese nationalists, who insist that Taiwan should become an independent nation-state that has nothing to do with China. 3. On the issue of ‘imagination’ and ‘fictiveness’, Taiwan adds a new flavor that complicates previous discussions. True, all social communities larger than those constituted through direct, face-to-face interactions can only be imagined, and only imaginary communities are ‘real’ (Anderson, 1983: 6; Balibar, 1991: 93). However, for an ‘imagined community’ to become ‘real’, it requires not only self-identification but also identification by others as a community (as a nation). Taiwan’s lack of identification by others has made this ‘imagined community’ more ‘imagined’ and hence less ‘real’. For further discussion of identification/recognition by others in identity formation and group making, see Bourdieu (1991: 117–26, 220–8). I thank the third reviewer whose comments helped me to clarify this issue. 4. There have been quite a few debates as to whether globalization will lead to the decline of the nation-state. Anthony Smith (1995), for instance, has argued fervently against the globalization thesis in defense of the nation. 5. Elsewhere, I discuss more fully the conflation between nation and state to explain why state sovereignty is inseparable from national imaginations in Taiwan (Wang, 1999). I shall not go into details here. 6. This is what Linda Basch and her colleagues have found in their study on migrants from Caribbean nations and Philippines (Basch et al., 1993). They define these migrants as ‘transnationals’, as these people live lives stretched across national borders, forging and sustaining multi-stranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement. Although a thorough investigation of Taiwanese emigrants has yet to be done, a related study on the overseas Taiwanese community in Los Angeles has confirmed that the same situation holds true for Taiwanese migrants in North America (Tseng, 1995). 7. ‘Mainlander’ is one of the four major (although problematic) ethnic groups that constitute the population in Taiwan (the other three being Holo, Hakka and aborig- ines). It refers to those people, including their descendants, who came from mainland China to Taiwan after the Second World War, mostly with the exiled KMT regime in 1949. Generally speaking, this ethnic group is considered strongly inclined to maintain a Chinese identity and hence opposes the idea of Taiwan independence. 8. With this arrangement, a third-country national needs only to apply for a visa from one country to travel in all the signatory countries. 9. Two recent episodes further exemplify how the passport has become a battlefield for nationalism and national identification. First, the Japanese government has 06 Wang (jr/d) 28/7/00 1:02 pm Page 114

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recently decided to acknowledge the Taiwan passport. As usual, this announcement has caused ‘serious concerns’ for PRC diplomats. Second, the Guangdong Provincial Government of the PRC has also announced that they will issue PRC passports to Taiwanese businesspersons who do business in the province. This, in turn, has brought about disturbances in Taiwan, as it unavoidably raises the problem of sovereignty (of the state) and loyalty (of individuals). 10. For example, the leading newspaper, China Times, reported on 26 April 1993 that Taiwanese people are ‘number one’ in the world in traveling abroad, winning another title of ‘Taiwan No. 1’ (Taiwan diyi). A few months later, its affiliated paper, Commercial Times, reported on 4 September that ‘our nation has become a big nation of travel expenditure in the world’. As I shall discuss later, the notion of ‘Taiwan [is] No. 1’ (Taiwan diyi), accompanied with the imagery of the ‘Taiwan Miracle’, has become the building block for nationalist ideology, for both Chinese nationalism (of the KMT), and Taiwanese nationalism of the TI movement. The ‘miraculous achievement’ of Taiwan is always assumed whenever the nation is being imagined. This is why many Taiwanese people, especially those elites like Long Ying-tai quoted above, are so ready to envision Taiwan as a ‘big nation’. 11. One of the reviewers made a useful suggestion to distinguish ‘people who move’ from ‘people who do not move’, and to discuss the former in the previous section on ‘flows of people’. However, by clarifying this peculiarity, I consider the discussion of the cultural contents of transnational experiences in this section more appropriate and relevant. 12. The 2–28 Incident, named after the event on 28 February 1947, was an island- wide massive uprising against the Chinese KMT rulers. It is estimated that tens of thousands of native Taiwanese, including many political and cultural elites, were massacred during the subsequent suppression by Chinese troops, planting a deep- rooted antipathy and grievance against the mainlanders among native Taiwanese. It is considered an important divide that has stimulated the development of Taiwanese nationalism, and to mention the incident in public was considered taboo until the late 1980s. 13. ‘International personality’ is a literal translation of the Chinese term ‘guoji renge’, which is perhaps idiosyncratically used only in Taiwan. Depending on the context, it is usually used to mean ‘having internationally recognized nationhood’, or ‘being internationally recognized as a person by virtue of his/her nationality’. 14. The proliferation of Taiwanese local/indigenous culture is another important factor that has profoundly challenged the official Chinese identity (see Bosco, 1994; Gold, 1993), but that is another matter and will not be dealt with in my discussion here. 15. Interview with Cheung Kwai Yeung, former Vice President and Chief Editor of CTN. 16. A TI activist told me in confidence that he was not worried about the impact of CTN at all. On the contrary, it is believed that the more CTN broadcasts their news, the more people of Taiwan will become aware of or get used to the sheer fact that Taiwan is Taiwan in its own right, and that Taiwan is neither China nor part of China. 17. An interesting but controversial discussion of the affinity between national imaginations, the state and Taiwan’s rising role as an exporter of capital, can be found in Chen Kuang-hsing (1994), in which Chen goes so far as to assert that Taiwan has become a sub-empire of the region, and that Taiwan nationalism has been turned into an imperialism. 06 Wang (jr/d) 28/7/00 1:02 pm Page 115

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18. This is the rhetoric that Chen Wen-qian, the former head of the Propaganda Department of the opposition DPP party, frequently uses when reﬂecting on her support for TI (see China Times, 7 January 1998: 3). 19. The punctuation in this quotation follows the original text in Chinese. 20. For example, in order not to be confused with the PRC chapter, the local chapter of Junior Chamber International in Taiwan was forced to replace the word ‘China’ with ‘Taiwan’ in their ofﬁcial name, and to remove the word ‘China’ from their logo (see China Times, 23 February 1998).

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Horng-luen Wang received his PhD degree from the University of Chicago and is currently Assistant Professor of Sociology at National Taiwan Uni- versity. His research interests include social theory, historical sociology, sociology of culture and quantitative methods. He is currently conducting a study on state, nationalism and globalization in contemporary Taiwan.