The island of Taiwan: geography, climate, vegetation, and population 8 (Kevan Berg)

Taiwan is a small and mountainous west Pacific Rim island, some 394 kilometers long and 142 kilometers wide, and with a land area of approximately 36,000 km2. The island is situated at 21°55’ and 25°20’ latitude north, and 119°35’ and 122° longitude east, with Japan located to the north, the Philippines to the south, and mainland China only 130-200 kilometers to the northwest (Hsieh and Shen 1994, Cauquelin 2004, Simon 2005) (see Figure 2.2). Topographically, Taiwan has a longitudinally trending backbone of steep volcanic mountains that run from the northeast corner to the southern-most tip of the island. This mountain chain, the Central Mountain Range, is the most important physiographic feature of Taiwan’s topography as it encompasses more than half of the island’s land area and consists of more than 200 peaks that exceed 3000 meters above sea level – some even topping 4000 meters (Hsieh and Shen 1994, Knapp 2007). Along its western slopes, the central mountains give way to coastal rolling hills, intermontane basins, and a broad border of lowland alluvial plains that run the length of Taiwan’s western coast. Together, these latter coastal regions make up only about 30 to 40 percent of the island’s total land area, but they

accommodate the vast majority of Taiwan’s cities, communities, farms, and industries. Taiwan’s indigenous people reside predominantly in the central mountains and the lowland valley in the east and southeast regions of the island, which make up the remaining 60 percent of Taiwan’s area (Cauquelin 2004).

Taiwan has a subtropical to tropical climate, reflecting its geographic position on the Tropic of Cancer and between two branches of the warm northward flow of the Pacific Kuroshio current. Frequent winds, rains, and typhoons, and high temperatures and humidity are common throughout the year, but due primarily to the island’s extreme mountain core, Taiwan’s different regions exhibit substantial climatic variability (Knapp 2007). In winter months, for example, the north-south trending central mountains intercept monsoon winds from the northeast, which leaves abundant rainfall in northern, northeastern, and eastern Taiwan, but generates little precipitation in southwest regions (Hsieh and Shen 1994). In summer and fall months, however, heavy typhoon rains sweep unimpeded across the entire island, and as a result, the southwest becomes marked by both a distinct dry and wet season. Annual precipitation for the whole country averages 3000 mm, but in general, the lowlands in the north and east receive more rainfall but less sunlight than those in the south and west, and the eastern coast enjoys a warmer winter and a wetter but more equitable climate overall than does northern and western Taiwan. The growing season across the island is nearly year-round, and annual temperatures of lowland valley and plains regions throughout Taiwan differ relatively little,

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averaging 22°C to 25°C, with temperatures peaking between June and August and dropping to lows in January (Wu et al. 2004). For the mountainous upland zones, altitude leads to significant decreases in temperature and conditions can range from subtropical to subarctic, with temperatures at middle elevations (e.g., Alishan, ca. 23°30’N, 2406 m alt.) hovering around an annual mean of 10.4°C (Hsieh and Shen 1994).

Relative humidity throughout Taiwan is high and ranges from 75 – 80 percent year round (Knapp 2007).

The subtropical climate and topographical gradient of Taiwan combine to generate a wide diversity of habitats, which historically supported a high diversity of flora and fauna. It has been estimated that prior to the influence of widespread human settlement and cultivation in the area, the island and its associated islets hosted more than 4000 species of vascular plants, assignable to about 1350 genera and 230 families (Hsieh et al. 1994). Unfortunately, biodiversity has been a principal victim of human occupation and the rapid industrialization and urbanization of Taiwan, and on the island’s coastal lowlands and various intermontane basins in particular, little natural vegetation now remains (Hsieh et al. 1994, Knapp 2007). By contrast, forests of inaccessible areas of the central mountain core have been left relatively intact, and for this reason, more than half of the island remains covered with forests (Wu et al. 2004). In general, vegetation of lowland zones consists of agricultural crops, waste grasslands, tree plantations, small patches of Ficus-Machilus forests, and other secondary forests on abandoned lands. The low montane generally exhibits

Machilus-Castanopsis and evergreen oak forests, which grade into a narrow range of deciduous beech forests at 1800 – 2000 m, mixed coniferous forests at 1600 – 2500 m, and Pinus taiwanensis stands at a variety of habitats between 1000 to 3200 m (Hsieh et al. 1994). Tsuga-Picea forests occur in the highest montane zones (i.e., 2400 – 3000 m) and border the subalpine forests of higher mountains where Abies kawakamii form almost pure stands. Alpine vegetation occurs above 3500 m.

Taiwan has a population of 23 million people and a corresponding average density of 640 persons per km2, putting it second to Bangladesh as the most densely populated place on earth (Knapp 2007). Four main ethnic groups characterize the population. The largest group is the Holo, which makes up 73 percent of Taiwan’s population and is comprised of descendants of Holo-speaking immigrants from Fujian Province in China. Descendants of Hakka-speaking settlers from Guangdong Province make up a second group and represent 12 percent of the population. Commonly, people of both Holo and Hakka descent are together recognized as ‘Native Taiwanese,’ an identity that differentiates them from a third and more recent group of newcomers from China, the Mainlanders. This third group totals 13 percent of Taiwan’s population, and represents the approximately two million Chinese (and their current descendants) that came to Taiwan as part of the ROC government’s relocation following the Communist Revolution in China in 1949 (Simon 2005, Knapp 2007). The smallest group of Taiwan’s four principal ethnicities encompasses the island’s indigenous people, or yuan-zhumin (literally, ‘original inhabitants’). This population belongs to the Austronesian language and population group, and they have strong genetic and linguistic ties to other Malayo-Polynesian ethnic groups that inhabit the Austronesian geographic area of the Asia-Pacific region, an area extending from Easter Island in the east to Madagascar Island in grade into a narrow range of deciduous beech forests at 1800 – 2000 m, mixed coniferous forests at 1600 – 2500 m, and Pinus

taiwanensis stands at a variety of habitats between 1000 to 3200 m (Hsieh et al. 1994). Tsuga-Picea forests occur in the highest montane zones (i.e., 2400 – 3000 m) and border the subalpine forests of higher

mountains where Abies kawakamii form almost pure stands. Alpine vegetation occurs above 3500 m.

Taiwan has a population of 23 million people and a corresponding average density of 640 persons per km2, putting it second to Bangladesh as the most densely populated place on earth (Knapp 2007). Four main ethnic groups characterize the population. The largest group is the Holo, which makes up 73 percent of Taiwan’s population and is comprised of descendants of Holo-speaking immigrants from Fujian Province in China. Descendants of Hakka-speaking settlers from Guangdong Province make up a second group and represent 12 percent of the population. Commonly, people of both Holo and Hakka descent are together recognized as ‘Native Taiwanese,’ an identity that differentiates them from a third and more recent group of newcomers from China, the Mainlanders. This third group totals 13 percent of Taiwan’s population, and represents the approximately two million Chinese (and their current descendants) that came to Taiwan as part of the ROC government’s relocation following the Communist Revolution in China in 1949 (Simon 2005, Knapp 2007). The smallest group of Taiwan’s four principal ethnicities encompasses the island’s indigenous people, or yuan-zhumin (literally, ‘original inhabitants’). This population belongs to the Austronesian language and population group, and they have strong genetic and linguistic ties to other Malayo-Polynesian ethnic groups that inhabit the Austronesian geographic area of the Asia-Pacific region, an area extending from Easter Island in the east to Madagascar Island in military conflict, and colonial government policies designed to cultivate acculturation and assimilation (Copper 2003, Eades 2003, Brown 2004, Cauquelin 2004). In some cases, indigenous people are known to have resisted colonizing influences, but because many individuals and groups also willingly yielded to, or were simply overrun by the incoming regimes, the language and culture of Taiwan’s Austronesian peoples suffered varying degrees of loss.

Indigenous inhabitants of the western plains, where the best agricultural lands were found, were impacted most severely by the influences of foreign occupation. Here, competition with migrant farmers from the mainland left indigenous groups with little choice but to remain and be assimilated by the colonizing regimes, or to flee to the mountains (Blust 1999, Brown 2004). As a result, little remains of the population and heritage of plains indigenous people, their presence now detectable only through traces in the physical characteristics and traditions of some elements of the Taiwanese population. Conversely, mountain

indigenous tribes have inhabited the most inaccessible and isolated regions of the island, and were not governed by foreign regimes until 1895 – the beginning Japan’s era of occupation (Lin et al. 2007, Simon 2007). Although the traditions and culture of these mountain groups have inevitably been modified as Taiwan has modernized over the centuries, many of the mountain tribes still maintain a distinct indigenous identity (Norbeck 1950, Eades 2003, Yoshimura 2007).

Modern times have brought little respite from the process of acculturation of indigenous people to the national Taiwanese culture. As Taiwan’s indigenous communities learn to interact with contemporary Taiwan and with the pressures of globalization, indigenous lifestyles undergo continual reinvention, with less and less traditional knowledge passed down to younger generations (Eades 2003, OIS 2012).

The islands are today home to a population of approximately 520,000 indigenous people (2 percent of the national population) (OIS 2012), comprising fourteen officially recognized tribes (CIP 2010), and representing over 26 known languages of which nearly a dozen are extinct, and a dozen are either moribund or to some degree endangered (Munsterhjelm 2002, Zeitoun and Yu 2005, Stainton 2007). The fourteen official tribes recognized in Taiwan include: Amis, Tayal, Bunun, Kavalan, Paiwan, Puyuma, Rukai, Saisiyat, Sakizaya, Seediq, Thao, Truku, Tsou, and Yami (OIS 2012, CIP 2010). These official designations bring

benefits of public recognition and government subsidies to Taiwan’s aboriginal peoples, but the process of designation has also been highly controversial as the tribal classification system is still based largely on simplistic characterizations established by the Japanese as part of colonization efforts in the 1920s

(Munsterhjelm 2002, Cauquelin 2004, Yoshimura 2007). Depending on the classification used, there are at least nine additional plains (pingpu) tribes that are yet officially unrecognized.

Regardless of their tribal designation and official status, Taiwan’s indigenous peoples have continued to encounter widespread marginalization and societal discrimination. They make up a distinct minority group in society, and have remained at the bottom of the country’s social and economic ladders, with higher unemployment and lower household income than national Taiwan averages (Munsterhjelm 2002).

Alcoholism, lack of educational opportunities, and the absence of health care remain persistent, and the migration of indigenous youth to the country’s urban areas has taxed many villages (U.S. Department of State 2002, Ericsson 2004). Those who leave their rural villages typically end up with low paying work in urban areas, particularly in the construction and manufacturing sectors. However, these labor markets have long continued to be saturated by a large population of foreign workers from the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia who compete with indigenous peoples for jobs (Chu 2000, Munsterhjelm 2002, Shih 2012). The situation in rural locations is equally as bleak, even for self-employed farmers. Indigenous farmers are generally small-scale and are thus negatively impacted by the openness of the Taiwan’s agricultural sector to foreign agribusiness imports, especially after the country joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 (Munsterhjelm 2002, Tao 2006, Hsiao 2008). The government has promoted the development of tourism in rural indigenous areas in response to these problems, though tourism often involves a-historic exaggerations of indigenous culture for curious tourists, little of which has much bearing on contemporary indigenous life (Munsterhjelm 2002).

Yet conditions have improved since the early 1980s, largely in conjunction with the rise of the country’s modern social and political indigenous rights movement. This movement had its formal

beginnings with the founding of the Mountain Greenery (Gaoshan Qing, 高山青) newspaper in 1983 and the Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines (ATA) in 1984 (Allio 1998, Simon 2007), and a surge of interest in indigenous rights issues followed, including increased attention toward traditional land rights, economic and political self-determination, and preservation and self-interpretation of indigenous culture and history (Eades 2003, Ericsson 2004, Lin et al. 2007). However, it was not until after the lifting of martial law in 1987 and the founding of the Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP) in 1996 that indigenous rights were finally

incorporated into the national constitution (Simon 2007). Gains that followed have included the 1999 “New Partnership Agreement” signed by then Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Chen Shui-Bian, which recognized the “natural rights” of indigenous peoples as the original owners of Taiwan (Lin et al. 2007), and the DPP “White Paper on Aboriginal Policy” in 2000, a document saluted for its discussion of indigenous sovereignty and self-determination in terms of land rights and economic

development, but also criticized for being politically motivated (Simon 2007). Indigenous rights have also gained some traction through the passage of several recent pieces of legislation, the most important of which is the Indigenous Peoples’ Basic Law (IPBL) passed in 2005 (Reid 2010).

Despite acquiring some recognition from the government, however, the struggle of Taiwan’s indigenous people to assert their autonomy and rights to traditional land and resources has continued. At government

and legislative levels, proposed amendments to land acts have threatened to weaken certain provisions that protect indigenous land rights (Loa 2012a), and indigenous leaders and government lawmakers have continued to disagree over the framework of a long delayed indigenous autonomy bill (Loa 2008, Chang 2011, Mo 2013). Furthermore, the CIP has been criticized for failing to fully defend indigenous rights from the proposed amendments, as well as for slow progress in fulfilling promises of autonomy (Loa 2012b).

Inevitably, this pattern of conflict between indigenous peoples and the state also plays out at the level of the community, and is reflected in numerous important cases over the last two decades. These include the battle of the Yami against the nuclear waste dump on Orchid Island (Arrigo 2002), the struggles of the Truku against Asia Cement (Tsai 2006) and Taroko National Park (Simon 2002), and the opposition of the Tsou and several other local groups to the Alishan Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) project (Tsai 2008). A review of these and a number of additional high profile cases involving the Tayal indigenous people (e.g., the

wind-fallen beech incident in Smangus village) are detailed in Reid (2010)

Map of Northern Taiwan Terrain

(https://maps.google.com.tw/maps)