Chapter 5 – Conclusion
5.2 Impact on future cross-strait policies brought by the Growing Taiwan Identity
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the past twenty years, the voters tend to vote for the DPP when they felt the sovereignty was challenged by the PRC’s warnings.
Identity influences behaviors, since the Taiwan identity has been highly internalized, we now have a strong sense of Taiwanese identity, a growing acceptance that the Republic of China (ROC) is the country's name, a continued preference for the status-quo, a shared commitment to Taiwan's democratic values, and a desire for Taiwan's dignity to be respected abroad. Moreover, the young people who are intensely pro-Taiwan appear more pragmatic than their elders while dealing the cross-strait issues.
Based on the previous elections, we can learn that for the public, especially the young generation, Taiwan is already an independent country, and maintaining the status-quo is more important than pursuing the de facto independence.
Today’s youngsters were unlike their predecessors who supported Taiwanese independence because of their political beliefs, the young generation simply see “Taiwan as their natural home country and China as just another state”.
5.2 Impact on future cross-strait policies brought by the Growing Taiwan Identity In past elections, national identity and cross-strait relations were major issues by which parties differentiated themselves from each other, yet the situation has changed in recent elections. The January 2016 Presidential and legislative elections represented a significant shift. In 2016, domestic economic, political reform and other social issues were more remarkable and were used by parties to differentiate themselves. National identity and cross-strait relations played relatively minor roles.
According to the interviewees, the identity issue is expected to be less influential in the future Presidential elections, by 2016, more than 50% of the total population on the island identified themselves as Taiwanese, and for people between age 20-39, the figure is more than 90%. It is clear that the concept of Taiwan is an independent sovereignty has already been highly internalized in both the society and political parties. Most politicians were
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born and raised in Taiwan, they all call themselves Taiwanese, in this situation, there would be no need to attack the opponents’ descent.
Wu, Nai-teh’s research released in 2015 showed that 11% of Taiwanese supported the idea of maintaining the cross-strait status-quo in 1992, and the figure reached 33.5% in 2013118. This group of people do not intend to pursue independence even under a peaceful cross-strait relation.
Figure 5. NCCU survey of changes in the Unification-Independence stances of Taiwanese (1994~2016) ↓
Moreover, the survey regarding changes in the Unification-Independence stances of Taiwanese conducted by Election Study Center, National Cheng Chi University showed
118 Wu, Naiteh, Political Competition Framed by the China Factor? –Looking beyond the 2012 Presidential election”, Taiwan and The ‘China Impact’: Challenges and Opportunities, New York:
Routledge, 2015
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that for the past twenty years, maintaining status-quo (for now or for indefinitely) has always been the mainstream even Taiwan identity has been rising.
Based on these statistics, we can tell people with Taiwan identity do not necessarily support Taiwan independence.
This has been the reason why both KMT and DPP embraced status-quo mindset for years even maintaining the status-quo was never the parties’ purposes. The KMT believes Taiwan identity does not guarantee the safety for Taiwan, and it has been trying to lead the people moving toward to the direction for unification which is rejected by the mainstream.
The DPP has been promoting different level of Taiwan independence in accordance with the reality in different moment, however, many Taiwanese are worried about the consequence after Taiwan declaring de facto independence.
In order to win in this contradictory social atmosphere, both major parties have moved toward to the center of the spectrum of the independence/unification issues. In 2008, President Ma Ying-jeou sought to re-orient the pro-unification KMT as a pro-status-quo party. In 2016, Tsai Ing-wen also led the pro-independence DPP to a more moderate direction by stating that the goal of her cross-strait policy was to maintain the status-quo.
Both the KMT and the DPP focused on their short-term status-quo goals and hardly spoke of their long-term preferences.
Only when status-quo supporting group switch their support to Taiwan independence, shall Taiwan identity has the chance to pose significant effects on the cross-strait policy.
Moreover, just like what the interviewees said, both parties would not make major changes regarding the cross-strait policies unless Beijing adopts a different Taiwan policies in the future.
This is exactly what Tsai Ing-wen government has been trying to do for the past year, telling the world that people should not accept Beijing's premise that it is Tsai’s fault for not accepting its preconditions and also sending Beijing a message that it should adopt a
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Figure 5. The PRC’s Taiwan policies from 1999 to 2004↓
more creative approach toward Taiwan since "one country, two systems," has no appeal to the Taiwanese public.
Since Beijing is unlikely to loosen its intention of unification, and unification is not accepted by most Taiwanese, it appears that the future cross-strait relations might reach a dead end so it is necessary for both sides to back out and reach a new consensus. It is expected that the strong Taiwan identity will keep influencing future Presidential elections, and that might encourage Beijing to be more balanced when engaging with different political powers in Taiwan, and remind the political parties in Taiwan to work together for the best interest of the people of Taiwan.