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In the increasingly volatile global political order, national economic structures and international relations, integrated as they are, are showing concerning signs of strain. Taiwan, whose world-leading semiconductor industry is indispensable in Global Supply Chains and whose economic prosperity and security are critical to a stable global economic system, has received much research interest since the late 1980s. Against the background of a slowing Taiwanese economy, starting in the 2000s, this paper seeks to investigate the causes of Taiwan's challenges and the linkages to the global economy vis-à-vis China. Based on previous research from different social science disciplines, this paper shows that Taiwan's economic performance has been undermined by the declining effectiveness of its industrial policy and the general state intervention in the country, which is in turn caused by deep socio-political divisions on issues of national identity and Taiwan-China relations. The paper reveals the dilemma, which results from this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the theory of social construction of reality deriving from the writings of Max Weber, Alfred Schutz, Thomas Luckmann and Peter Berger to explain the origin of national identity and hence the emergence of a nation. It argues that social construction of national reality originates from everyday life experience taken for granted during the process of socialization. Individuals make sense out of the external world. Experiences taken for granted become actor's stock of knowledge. A common scheme of knowledge shared by the community serves to differentiate in-group (nationals) and out-group (foreigners). Collective consciousness thus defines national identity and hence a nation. Unless people (both in-group and out-group) interact with and learn from each other, different stocks of knowledge taken for granted will create political tension. This theory will be applied to understand the tensions in Tibet and along the Taiwan Strait. The paper further argues that Taiwan can hardly separate from mainland China in the future, while strong Tibetan consciousness continues to defy against powerful Chineseness, resulting in endless upheavals in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a comparative study of extra-musical learning in the music classes of the schools of Hong Kong and Taiwan, where education is geared towards democracy and citizenship at a time of unstable national identity for both communities. Taiwan has been undergoing a process of indigenisation since 1945, whilst Hong Kong's sovereignty was returned to the People's Republic of China after 1 July 1997. This paper argues that the transmission of extra-musical learning is essentially a response to the particular needs of these two Chinese historical-social contexts, which require their music curricula to be securely grounded in the ideology of a culturally based education for 'citizenship'. Despite different approaches to western-based musical knowledge in schools, Hong Kong and Taiwan attempt to promote a sense of national identity and an essentially Confucian set of moral values as a central goal of school music education. The promotion of ethno-cultural nationalism in Taiwan's music education is regarded as a democratic goal for the Taiwanese state, though in practice, the educational systems of both Taiwan and Hong Kong are coloured by the global context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do people risk their lives fighting in wars? This article looks beyond group grievance and material benefits to add another psychological mechanism explaining why people choose to fight or not to fight – perceived collective action. An individual is much more likely to fight when they perceive that others will also fight. Contrary to the expectations of social identity theory and social pressure theory, the effect of perceived collective action is stronger among those who have a weaker national identity because they are more likely to rationally calculate the chance of winning by accounting for others' decisions. To mitigate the endogeneity in post-conflict cross-sectional surveys, we conduct a survey experiment (n = 1,001) in Taiwan manipulating perceptions of others' willingness to fight in a potential China–Taiwan military conflict. Experimental evidence supports the hypotheses that perceived collective action works only on weak Taiwanese identifiers. The result holds in robustness checks and in another nationally representative survey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses how population genetics has impacted on nationalist discourses across the Taiwan Straits and affected the relationship between Taiwan and China since the 1990s. In Taiwan this cutting-edge science has helped to construct a native-based and Taiwan-centred national identity through promoting indigenous peoples' rights, rejecting a blood-based, cross-Straits nationalism, and founding a pan-Pacific indigenous peoples' community through genetic links and cultural affinity. In China, after subverting the nationalist myth of Peking Man (a Homo erectus group believed to be the common ancestor of the Chinese) by analysing genetic data, the same group of Chinese genetic scientists have constructed another nationalist myth of a genetically homogenous nationhood. Such a discourse not only valorizes Chinese nationalism through claiming a DNA-based Chineseness across ethnic distinctions but also asserts genetic links between China and Taiwan, therefore providing a 'scientific' basis for China's nationalism in the new century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tests Gellner's theory that, once a closed society has been globalized and therefore has initiated contact with the outside world, relationship then becomes the distinction of "you" and "me." While this perspective is applied to analyze the national identity trend in Taiwan, one can assume that the contact frequency between Taiwan and China might have an impact on people's national identity preference in Taiwan. Accordingly, two variables, (1) the frequency of visiting in China and (2) investing in China, will be adopted to examine the above assumption. Although some results of the analysis in this paper reflect the theory assumption and some do not, an updated survey for further clarification of the relation between the dynamics of globalization and its impact on Taiwan's national identity preference is urgently needed for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is both academically and practically valuable to construct a multi-dimensional scale to assess the effectiveness of the Communist Party of China's (CPC) policy toward Taiwan. The author constructed a One China identity scale based on national identity theory and the CPC's political advocacy and actions toward Taiwan. Using panel data from 271 members of Taiwanese student delegations to Mainland China from 2016 to 2017, this study explored the changes in their sense of a One China identity. The results showed a significant increase (0.11, 5.19%) in the average ratings of the investigated students' One China identity. The regression equation constructed by the current study was able to explain 10.94% of the total variance of the One China identity scale, and all three hypotheses were supported. Following the exchange program, Taiwanese students appeared to have a greater sense of a One China identity. Their impression of Mainland China had improved, their acceptance of the CPC's regime had increased, and their preference for authoritarianism had increased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through in-depth interviews and the collection of related data, this study shows that hosting mega-sports events reflects the Taiwanese government's objectives to create diplomatic status and national identity as well as to maintain the government's hegemony. In short, by hosting the Baseball World Cup, the government seeks to resolve its current crisis, to transfer the people's disappointments about the economic recession and political chaos and to regain the people's enthusiasm for baseball. In addition, the event functions as a diplomatic resource and is used to rebuild the people's patriotism and national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses national identity in Taiwan as of September 2012, focusing on an analysis of the nation's identity politics and democratization process which reportedly began in 1987. The institution of general political elections in Taiwan is addressed, along with an examination of the cross-Strait relations between mainland China and Taiwan. The cultural origins of China are assessed, as well as the evolution of socio-political developments in both Taiwan and China. Former Chinese President Lee Teng-hui is also mentioned.

In the article, we analyze how names for China are used by five ROC presidents in National Day speeches over 58 years (1949–2007), including “communist bandits”; “Chinese communists”; “mainland” and “opposite shore/both shores”; “China”; and “People’s Republic of China.” Each name registers unique historicity and each displays associated expressions, reshuffling power structures and allowing negotiation of ideological positioning. Sometimes overlapping, sometimes joining at edges, these names cleave to inconsistent layers of meaning, helping presidents negotiate courses of action in Taiwan’s yet-to-be-resolved political identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author focuses on how China viewed Taiwan and the people of Taiwan between 1931, the year Japan invaded Manchuria, and 1941, the year the U.S. entered World War II. Some of the subjects considered include nationalism, Chinese identity, Chinese political thought, and the ideology of nation-building and cultural identity. An overview of the historiography of competing Chinese and Taiwanese national identity exemplified in the writings of historians Emma Jinhua Teng, Alan M. Wachman, and Steven E. Phillips, is presented.

In 1987 the ban on sporting exchanges between Taiwan and China was lifted. However, the subsequent growing power of China on the world's sports stage has had repercussions within Taiwan. Government and people now have an ambivalent attitude - a mixture of pride and suspicion - towards their aggressive neighbour and what they see as attempted Chinese sporting hegemony. Taiwan wants to promote good relations with China through sport but Taiwan also wants to preserve its national identity through sport. The Taiwanese view Beijing 2008 as a direct and indirect act of Chinese political hegemony involving overt and covert messages of the inevitability of 'reunification'. These messages are unacceptable and will be ignored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the representation of Chinese identity in museums in the People's Republic of China, comparing this briefly with the portrayal of local and national identities in Hong Kong and Taiwan. In particular, the article looks at the implications for museums of the shift in emphasis within state ideology from socialism to patriotism - a shift that has been particularly marked since the early 1990s. Museums in contemporary China are officially designated as 'bases for patriotic education', but the content of the 'patriotism' that they are meant to promote remains in many respects vague or problematic. One of the key tensions here is that between a deep-rooted assumption of equivalence between 'Chinese' and 'Han' culture and history, and the multicultural reality of the contemporary People's Republic - including as it does a range of non-Han groups such as Tibetans, Uighurs and Mongols. The progressive abandonment of socialism has in some ways exposed these contradictions more starkly in recent years. Meanwhile, the homogenous and totalising official vision of Chinese identity in general, and Han identity in particular, is contested either at the popular or the official level (or both) in the largely Han communities of Hong Kong and Taiwan. In a rapidly commercialising and modernising China, the promotion of a state-centred patriotism has become a key instrument for the regime in its efforts to preserve its legitimacy, and museums represent a key element in this strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An accurate and reliable measure of preferences on the independence-unification issue is indispensable to the study of Taiwanese politics. In the foreseeable future the study of Taiwanese politics and the cross-Strait relations will continue to focus on Taiwanese preferences on the independence-unification issue. These preferences, however, are neither readily identifiable nor easily defined. For many people, it might be a simple and a straightforward choice between for or against Taiwan's independence, but others are less decisive because their preferences are conditional on factors such as China's military threat, the USA security commitment to Taiwan, and China's prospects of becoming democratic and prosperous. In this article I devise a new measure of people's preferences regarding this issue. I show that a large percentage of the people in Taiwan can agree simultaneously to unite with China if China becomes modernized and democratic and to declare independence if China will not use force and peace can be maintained. Because independence and unification are not necessarily mutually exclusive alternatives, this empirical finding questions the appropriateness of the traditional six-point scale one- dimensional representation of Taiwanese preferences on the independence-unification issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taiwan is a mildly divided society--divided essentially along the lines of national identity. Indeed, there is no doubt that national identity is the dominant factor affecting Taiwan's mainland China policy. Other factors such as business interests and security concerns may enter the picture from time to time, but they often get bogged down in the national identity controversies. As a matter of fact, there is high correlation between people's attitudes toward business and security concerns and their positions on the national identity issue. The key to understanding Taiwan's mainland China policy is thus the distribution of voters on the national identity issue and how it is translated into the political fortunes of various political parties in the electoral game. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]