Transformations of Taiwanese People’s State Identity
APSA 2016 “Conceptualizing Difference”
Frank C.S. Liu, NSYSU, Taiwan
• Whose Flag?
Taiwan, a nation-state (yet)?
The concepts of nation and state should be clarified
first.
Taiwanese people have multiple views about
• state: Taiwan or ROC?
• nation: Taiwanese, Chinese, Both, or something else?
• future relationship with PRC: separation, unification, or
status quo?
So we have a good number of measurements,
But few discussion about the concept-measurement
connections
How to measure state identification?
“Chinese/Taiwanese”? or
“unification/independence”?
Research Questions
• Are the measurements properly conceptualized?
• Do the major concepts find their measurements?
• How sure are we when we associate the measurements with concepts (national/ethnic and state/country identification)?
• How to conceptualize the most commonly used survey question—unification/independence preference?
• Could we find the right indicators for the concept of national/ethnic identification?
Main Ideas
• Revisit the Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) approach
• Explore with Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) techniques
• Double check patterns with multiple datasets
Data Sets
• F2F Survey: Taiwan Social Change Survey 2013 (n=1,952)
• CATI Telephone survey 2015 (n=1,100)
• Web panel 2015-2016 (n=468)
ca &
FactoMineR
Two R packages:
Main Findings
• We have many survey questions but not many concepts.
• Another emerging but neglected dimension is associated with acknowledging or rejecting the legacy of the Republic of China.
• The commonly used measurement
“unification/independence” preference cannot be
well conceptualized.
TSCS2013
TSCS2013
ID201
5
Webpanel
2015-2016
TSCS2013
ID2015
Webpanel
2015-2016
Summary (1): Measurements of National Identification
• “Do you consider yourself as Taiwanese, Chinese, or both?"
• “ The Chinese people consist of various ethnic groups, and those groups should not be isolated from one another
perception about Chinese nation.”
• “Taiwan has developed very different cultures that should no longer be regarded as part of Chinese culture.”
• “The Chinese people consist of various ethnic groups, and those groups should not be isolated from one another.”
• “Taiwanese people’s forefather is the Yellow Emperor (also called as Huang-di) from China, and we must inherit such an original and history."
• “As the descendants of the Yellow Emperor, we should try our best to promote Chinese culture in the international community.”
Summary (2): Measurements of the 2
ndDimension
• ”End of the Ching Dynasty and establishment of the Republic of China is an important historical event and should be remembered by the next generation and forever.”
• " The victory of the Second Sino-Japanese War is an
important historical event and should be remembered
by the next generation and forever.”
Summary (3): Conceptualization Failure
• The commonly used simple "unification/independence”
question can NOT be grouped into any of the top 10 dimensions.
• Even the conditional unification/independence questions are NOT measurements of state but national
identification:
• “If the independence of Taiwan would not lead to war, we should declare independence.”
• “If the economic, social and political development in China is more or less the same as development in Taiwan, there should be a cross-strait unification.”
Conclusions
• MCA is a promising tool for conceptualization.
• It is likely that most commonly used survey questions regarding Taiwan’s political future are linked to one concept: national/ethnic identification.
• The concept of state/country identification has been under- studied and its measurements are worth exploration.
• Time to Taiwan’s identity politics onto a radar with at least two axes,
• national identification: (Taiwanese-Chinese) and
• state identification: (accepting-rejecting) the legacy of ROC.
Discussion: unsolved puzzles
• There are at least two survey questions that may compose the third concept:
• “Do you believe the status quo with respect to Taiwan already constitutes independence?”
• “Do you believe the people of Taiwan already have their own country?”
