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Rethinking the Global and theNationalReflections on National Imaginations inTaiwan

Horng-luen Wang

As I have suggested, ‘nation’ and ‘nationalism’ are no longer adequate termsto describe, let alone to analyse, the political entities described as such, oreven the sentiments once described by these words. It is not impossible thatnationalism will decline with the decline of the nation-state . . . the phenom-enon 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 andnationalism. (Hobsbawm, 1990: 182–3)

Introduction: The Tension Between Globalization andNation/Nation-State

IN THE concluding chapter of his now classic Nations and NationalismSince 1780, Eric J. Hobsbawm made a rather bold prediction about thedecline 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 aprediction. Scholars and analysts across a wide spectrum of disciplines havebeen quick to cast doubt upon the future of nations and nation-states. Whilesome 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 evenfurther to argue that globalization may eventually lead to the hollowing-out(Jessop, 1994), the decline (Held, 1990) or even the end (Ohmae, 1995), ofnations and/or nation-states.

In that light, this article explores the interplay between globalizationand national imaginations in contemporary Taiwan. If nations are indeed

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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 ofChina’ (ROC) nation on Taiwan, maintained by its ruling KMT state (Kuo-mintang, literally ‘Nationalist Party’), is rarely recognized by other nationsand 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-unifi-cation fundamentalists who are so ready to side with the People’s Republicof China (PRC), Taiwan is not yet a part of their imagined unified China.2 Inthis 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 toinvestigate how different factors of globalization have affected the way cul-tural 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 anongoing phenomenon and remains an unsettled issue,4 this article presentsTaiwan as a counter-example that contradicts the speculation that nation-states and nationalism are in general losing their significance due to theimpacts of globalization. Indeed, recent changes in Taiwan have made it anintriguing case where the tension between globalization and nation/nation-state can be critically examined. Ever since the lifting of Martial Law in1987, two major forces have been shaping subsequent development ofTaiwanese society. First, there is the escalation of the politics of nationalidentity surrounding the question as to whether Taiwan should become (orremain) an independent (nation-)state, or should be ‘unified’ with China inthe future. Second, the 1990s have witnessed simultaneous waves of inter-nationalization (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 thecraving for nationhood and nation-stateness. What is more, globalization incertain contexts has been strategically incorporated into the nation-buildingprocess. ‘The global’ and ‘the national’ need not be two dichotomous, con-flicting categories; instead, their relationships have to be reconceptualized.

Before analyzing such a case, however, some qualifications have to bemade regarding the two messy concepts, ‘nationalism’ and ‘globalization’.Nationalism itself has been conceptualized in a variety of ways. RogersBrubaker (1996) has usefully distinguished between polity-seeking andpolity-based nationalisms that are usually at odds with each other. My dis-cussions in the following cover both kinds of nationalisms – namely, thepolity-seeking TI nationalism and the polity-based Chinese nationalism ofthe KMT state. However, since the state of Taiwan is virtually de-recognizedby other nation-states, the two supposedly conflicting nationalisms convergefrom time to time in their pursuit of Taiwan’s nationhood. Under thesecircumstances, national imaginations have become inseparable from sover-eignty of Taiwan’s state.5

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Meanwhile, globalization also comes in different flavors with differentimplications. To avoid conceiving of globalization as a homogeneous, all-in-one package of world-historical development, we need to unpack some ofthe 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, DavidHeld (1990) has also brought up four ‘disjunctures’ between the power ofthe nation-state and global structures: the world economy, hegemonicpowers and power blocs, international organizations, and international law.Synthesizing their frameworks, among others, I will examine Taiwan alongthe following four dimensions: (1) flows of people, (2) flows of culture, (3)flows of capital and economic globalization, and (4) international organiz-ations and institutions. The following discussions will address each of thesefour dimensions.

Flows of PeopleFlows 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 asprofessional/managerial strata and intelligentsia who travel across nationalborders regularly and frequently). It is often held that transnational flows ofpeople have diversified the ethnic and cultural composition of society, ‘thusshattering the illusion of homogeneity and closure on which the modernnation, as imagined community, was founded’ (Comaroff, 1994, not pagi-nated). However, if we consider the people flows of ‘export countries’ suchas Taiwan, the story may develop quite differently.

In Taiwan, flows of people are a newly emerging phenomenon of par-ticular significance. According to the Ministry of the Interior, from 1990 to1996 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-classbusinesspersons, investors and professionals. These emigrants, however, donot leave their homeland for good. On the contrary, no matter where theysettle, a majority of them continue to be integral members of the society fromwhich they originated.6 Although the absolute number of migrants is notexceptionally large, previous studies have pointed out that Taiwan is becom-ing one of the major exporters of emigrants in the world, while emigrationhas become a public concern in Taiwanese society (see Tseng, 1998). Thesame holds true for overseas students and, above all, tourists. In 1991, thetotal 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 firsttime, was then ranked number one in the world. The following year, the ratiojumped to one-fifth, hailed by Taiwanese journalism as another title of‘World’s No. 1’.

As these statistics indicate, Taiwan’s population is traveling acrossnational boundaries regularly and frequently, and this proportion is still

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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/con-testation of national identity – has had transnational experiences (e.g. havinglived or studied abroad for a considerable length of time, or having dealtwith transnational institutions on a regular basis, etc.). These transnationalexperiences, in turn, are of particular importance in shaping and trans-forming one’s national identity. As the ‘cultural contents’ of transnationalexperiences will be examined in the next section, my discussion here willfocus on three points: the question pertaining to citizenship and nationality,the national imagination based on the hyper-mobility of the people, and therole of diasporic communities in the nationalist movement.

First, as Taiwanese people interact with people from other parts of theworld more intensely, citizenship and nationality are becoming more andmore problematized, but only to the extent that a new quest for an emergingnational identity is growing and spreading. In the public sphere, more andmore people complain about discrimination in foreign countries due tohaving an unrecognized passport, or due to being misidentified as PRC citi-zens. Troubles concerning visas and travel documents are most oftenridiculed when people talk about Taiwan’s awkward international status anddubious 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] statushas never been ‘gradually established.’ Most nations do not even issue visasto us [directly]. Some visas have to be acquired through the agency of HongKong, and some European nations even issue ‘political refugee’s visa’ toTaiwanese travelers – we are even inferior to Hong Kong, which is ‘utterly nota nation!’ (Kuling, 1991)

An outspoken supporter of TI, Kuling has been known for his anti-govern-ment position, so it is no surprise that he frequently makes fun of thefictitious ROC nation and ridicules the Chinese identity constantly in hiswritings. In contrast, we find another popular writer Long Ying-tai, a second-generation mainlander7 who is not known for her involvement in anynationalist movement. But even to her, nationality is nonetheless a dubiouscategory, constantly contested and problematized. In a newspaper articleentitled ‘From Taiwan’ (Taiwan laide), Long vividly illustrates a number ofepisodes in which she was frustrated by traveling with a Taiwan passport. Atone time she was rejected for a visa by the French Consulate in Zurich dueto the lack of diplomatic ties between Taiwan and France; at another she wasmisidentified as a national of the People’s Republic of China, because herTaiwan passport, with the official title ‘the Republic of China’, indicated thather nationality was ‘Chinese’. On yet another occasion, she felt like ‘anational of a third-class country’ being publicly humiliated on a ship in theMediterranean when the Greek authorities refused to admit her into thecountry due to her unrecognized Taiwan passport. Furious and desperate,


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she cannot help but make a sarcastic analogy: ‘Using the Taiwan passport islike a beggar soliciting from one door to another’ (Long, 1996 [1988]: 60).At first Long thought she was discriminated against because Taiwan was ‘asmall 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 isonly one-third of Taiwan; in terms of territory, Taiwan is about of the same sizeas Holland and Switzerland; and in terms of wealth . . . we are much richerthan 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, whilespeaking of herself and fellow Taiwanese as ‘Chinese’. Nonetheless, Taiwan’sstatus as a nation is taken for granted and has never been questioned byLong. 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 travelershave finally culminated in a few ‘public’ events that have called for acollective 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 sevenEuropean Union countries to facilitate easy cross-border travel for thenationals of the signatories. When the agreement was first fully implementedin July 1995, harmonized visa arrangements for third-country nationals werecoordinated, covering most countries in the world with only a few excep-tions.8 Initially, Taiwan was listed for exclusion, along with another unwel-come nation, the PRC. When the news was released, Taiwanese journalistsregistered their deep dissatisfaction. To them, it is simply ironic that ‘theWorld’s No.1 Traveler’s Nation’ should be discriminated against, rather thanfavored, by such a travel-facilitating measure. Due to the widespread mediacoverage of this incident, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was pressed tonegotiate with the countries in question to settle the issue.

To people from other nations, a passport perhaps means little morethan an official document, indispensable for international travel but bearingno broader significance. However, to many Taiwanese people, a passportcontains such rich symbolic meaning that it is worthy of serious discussion.One can simply think about the symbolic ‘passport’ issued by the TaiwanIndependence Party (TAIP). The passport, which indicates the imagined (oryet-to-be-established) ‘Republic of Taiwan’ as the bearer’s nationality, is notofficially recognized by any government. Its issuance is primarily meant tocontest the official ROC nation and its unrecognized passport. As such, thepassport has become a site where national identity is contested, and itsimportance is underscored in Long Ying-tai’s statement:


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

The passport as site of contestation gains its significance only aftercross-border travel has become a prevalent practice in society.9 Thegrandiose idea of the nation may remain abstract and remote, but the humil-iating experience of bearing an unrecognized ROC passport has made thenation a very ‘personal’ matter for individual citizens. In cases such asLong’s, the passport forces people to question their citizenship and nation-ality; in yet other cases, it has even become a kind of catalyst that triggersthe transformation of national identity. I shall deal with this later when wediscuss the case of a Taiwanese writer, Chen Fang-ming.

Second, the hyper-mobility of the Taiwanese people has also laid newground for imagining the nation. The mass media have documented therising awareness of Taiwan’s highly mobile population, and this mobility hasbeen incorporated into a public discourse in which the nation is imaginedor constructed.10 One of the most significant examples comes from TheRising People, the agenda-setting book by the former opposition party DPP’schairman Hsu Hsin-liang (1995). In an attempt to lay down a new theoreti-cal foundation of Taiwanese nationalism, Hsu juxtaposes Taiwanese withother ‘rising peoples’, to put it in his own terms, who have successfullyascended in world history – for example, the Mongolians, the Manchurians,the Dutch, the British, the Americans and the Japanese. He states in a ratherconfident tone:

On the eve of the twenty-first century, the Taiwanese people, most know-ledgeable and most active [in the world], have most significantly demonstratedthe epochal character of a rising people. . . . That our activity is the strongestis by no means a boasting exaggeration. There are perhaps no other nationsthat 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 charac-teristic of the newly risen ‘Taiwanese People’. Throughout the book, Hsustresses time and again that the Taiwanese people are ‘more active and moreknowledgeable than others’ due to their geographical dispersal and mobil-ity, and that for this reason they will be playing an increasingly importantrole 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 ‘Taiwannation’) is novel, as it is rarely seen in previous Taiwanese nationalist dis-courses. As we can see, transnational flows of people during globalizationhave profoundly changed the way Taiwanese nationalists envision theirnation. In fact, recent ideological shifts of Taiwanese nationalism have beencharacterized by their deliberate attempts to stage Taiwan against a global


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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 importantpart in the development of the TI movement, a fact that has been overlookedin current discussions of Taiwan’s nationalist politics. In the past, the TImovement had to be developed overseas by Taiwanese exiles due to theKMT’s authoritarian rule. As the polity became democratized in the 1990s,many leaders and activists of the TI movement returned to the island to con-tinue their campaign, while overseas Taiwanese communities, which havebeen growing significantly due to the rapid increase of emigrants andstudents abroad, continue to contribute to the defense of Taiwan’s autonomyand to the promotion of Taiwanese identity. One of the most notable examplesis the ‘global campaign’ of the candlelight vigil. In March 1996, Taiwanesestudents and migrants across the world simultaneously held a candlelightvigil to protest against China’s missile tests that were meant to intimidateTaiwan during its first direct presidential election. Moreover, with the aid ofelectronically mediated communication, there gradually emerged a publicforum – what Appadurai has called the ‘diasporic public sphere’ – in whichnew forms and contents of national identities are constructed and contested.The Internet, for instance, is one of the forums where diasporic Taiwanesepeople around the globe passionately debate the independence/unificationquestion. To be sure, participants in these debates as to ‘whether Taiwan ispart of China’ include not only Taiwanese people of different national iden-tities, but also PRC nationals and foreigners from other countries. Arguably,a global campaign for Taiwan’s nation-building is emerging, an example ofwhat Benedict Anderson (1994) called ‘long-distance nationalism’. Such along-distance nationalism highlights the global interconnectedness ofTaiwan’s ‘national question’, which is par excellence of international nature.I shall deal with this in a later section on international organizations.

Flows of CultureIn the cultural sphere, symbolic elements (information, images, ideas, etc.)flow transnationally through global media and other forms of telecommuni-cation. The resultant ‘global culture’, or what Featherstone (1990) has called‘the third culture’, bears the potential of homogenizing the cultural scene ona global scale. Although not necessarily leading to cosmopolitanism orcultural homogeneity, these cultural flows may have had a profound impactupon political-territorial arrangements of the contemporary world, inasmuchas nationalism involves construction and contestation of cultural heritage,lifestyle and value-commitment.

To investigate the impact of these cultural flows on national imagina-tions in Taiwan, first of all we need to understand recent changes in thecultural sphere of Taiwanese society. In the past, the KMT state was able tomaintain the imagination of the ROC partially through censorship andcontrol over the cultural sphere. Free flows of culture were only made poss-ible after 1987 when the KMT state lifted Martial Law and the 40-year


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authoritarian rule on the island started to collapse. Before that, cultural flowsfrom the outside world, particularly those pertaining to the PRC and com-munism at large, were strictly censored. By preventing people from learningabout ‘the other China’, the KMT state had been able to maintain the ideol-ogy within Taiwan that the ROC is an ‘authentic’ Chinese nation both politi-cally and culturally.

Under such circumstances, the exposure of people to outside culturescan carry the potential to subvert the ROC nation constructed by the KMTstate. And since there used to be strict cultural censorship until the late1980s, ‘going abroad’ once played a key role in exposing people to outsidecultures.11 Here we can take two notable pro-TI writers Chen Fang-ming andLin Heng-zhe (Chen, 1988 [1989]; Lin, 1989) as examples. As both Chenand Lin acknowledge, before leaving Taiwan, they had whole-heartedlyembraced the dream of ‘Great China’ and Chinese identity. Chen Fang-mingrecalls that when he first arrived in the USA in 1974, he was still a ‘GreatChinese chauvinist from inside out’. Then a student majoring in Chinesehistory at the University of Washington in Seattle, Chen was able to satisfyhis thirst for knowledge of modern China through the abundant resourcesand information in the USA that had not been previously available to himin Taiwan. However, the more he learned about contemporary China, themore he felt that ‘China is a strange country to me’ (Chen, 1988 [1989]:10–11). The newly acquired knowledge made Chen become disenchantedwith his dream of ‘Great China’, and finally he concludes that ‘China hasbecome my disaster’ (Chen, 1989a: 397). On the other hand, Chen began toread about the history of Taiwan’s silenced past, such as the tragic 2–28Incident,12 about which he had had very little knowledge, even though, ironi-cally, his major was history! Shocked and shamed by his lack of knowledgeabout the history of his own motherland, Chen started to reflect on hisTaiwanese origin, and his ‘Taiwanese personality’ emerged when his nation-ality (guoge) was severely challenged (Chen, 1989b: 317). Here, the pass-port has played a dramatic role in triggering Chen’s eventual transformationof national identity. As he reflects:

Taiwanese overseas can best perceive Taiwan’s international isolation andhumiliations. In the winter of 1974, when driving northbound from Seattle toVancouver in Canada for the first time, I keenly suffered from being a citizenwithout international personality.13 Witnessing many foreigners holdingdifferent passports enter the [Canadian] territory without any difficulties, I wasthe only one being held at the entry point, simply because my passport wasnot recognized.

I was finally admitted into Canada, not because of my passport, but becauseof my student’s status. . . . I profoundly realized that a [US] student certificateis much more useful than an official passport [of Taiwan]. This kind of nation-ality 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]


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

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

Before going abroad, I knew only Western Culture and Chinese Culture. Atthat time, it could be said that I was illiterate about of Taiwanese Culture,knowing absolutely nothing about the existence of colorful varieties ofTaiwanese 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 worldcitizens’, since ‘we ordinary people cannot live without our own nation andcultural tradition’ (Lin, 1989: 15). By his own account, his Taiwanese iden-tity was enlightened through his contact with the Overseas TaiwaneseAssociation, and his political conviction of TI nationalism was furtherenhanced after a visit to mainland China (Lin, 1989: 16). After his identityconversion, Lin Heng-zhe aspired to become a ‘cultural doctor’ (his occu-pation being a pediatrician), devoting himself to the construction and intro-duction of Taiwanese culture into world society.

In these cases, we find that only when they were abroad did thesetravelers get to learn the buried memories and silenced history of Taiwan(which in turn gave rise to their Taiwanese identity), and that only when theywent 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 dis-courses of TI nationalism, we can find numerous illustrations of how TIsupporters convert their identities from ‘Chinese’ to ‘Taiwanese’ after goingabroad. Two implications can be further inferred. First, the cultural contentof transnational experiences may have had a profound influence uponpeople’s identity formation and transformation. Given that a rising portion ofTaiwan’s population is traveling abroad, we may continue to see a trans-national effect on people’s identity. Moreover, nowadays going abroad is nolonger the only means for acquiring transnational experiences. Thanks toelectronic media that facilitate global cultural flows, people no longer needto travel across national borders to acquire such experiences. In other words,people can be ‘armchair travelers’ to a high degree. Second, it also impliesthat, as the state’s control over culture has relaxed, and, as outside infor-mation and ideas can travel more freely, the official Chinese identity is more


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likely to be questioned by those who are exposed to these idea/informationflows. However, unlike what most globalization authors may assume, thethreat to the established national identity results not so much from what hasbeen characterized as ‘global culture’, but from images and information con-cerning 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 globalscale; moreover, its explicit aim is to articulate information, images andideas pertaining to contemporary China. Aspiring to become ‘the CNN of theChinese World’, CTN intends to broadcast to Chinese people around theglobe. At the early stage, the Hong Kong-based executives set their primarytargets as Taiwan, Hong Kong and diasporic Chinese communities in South-East Asia and North America. The ultimate market, however, is consideredto lie in the vast land of the PRC. The executives believed that once theCommunist Party loosens up the control of mass media, they would be ableto profit enormously in this most-populated market in the world. Althoughnationalism may not be of central concern to CTN, the executives havenonetheless made explicit their pro-unification position and ‘one Chinapolicy’, reflected clearly in their news reports. As a global medium, they alsointended to promote the idea (and ideal) of a unified world of Chineseculture.15 When CTN started broadcasting at the end of 1993, there wereconcerns in Taiwanese society that their pro-PRC programs would graduallyharm Taiwan’s collective identity and solidarity. However, the oppositeoccurred. Promoting the PRC at the expense of Taiwan has displeased themajority of Taiwan’s audience, and antipathy to the idea of a unified Chinahas grown stronger. Still, CTN’s news broadcasts have even heightened thedistinction between Taiwan and China by making their difference ‘natural’.According to CTN’s news policy, Taiwan’s official title, the ROC (zhonghuaminguo), should not be used in its broadcasts (except when quoted in thefootage). Consequently, whenever the very term ‘China’ (zhongguo) isemployed, it is meant to refer only to the PRC, not Taiwan or the ROC.16 Insuch a case, the transnational flows of culture have helped to distinguishTaiwan from China, which, in turn, may have helped to debunk the Chineseidentity and foster a new identification for Taiwan.

Furthermore, cosmopolitanism and global culture have also played animportant role in the making of a Taiwanese identity, as ‘globalization’ or‘internationalization’ is now regarded by TI nationalists as constitutive ofTaiwanese culture. TI supporters have consciously employed globalizationas a strategy to differentiate Taiwanese culture from Chinese culture. In thelong tradition of nationalism, ‘culture’ is often a category intertwined andconflated with ‘nation’. This is how the KMT state has been able to implantand maintain a Chinese identity in Taiwanese society, by stressing thatTaiwan and mainland China share the same cultural roots even though theROC no longer represents China politically. Rejecting this as myth, theleading TI nationalist Peng Ming-min (1994) accused the KMT state of


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intentionally confusing Taiwanese people by mixing up the ethno-culturalidentity with a political-legal identity. Some TI supporters went a stepfurther, arguing that Taiwanese culture is now distinctively different fromChinese culture. For instance, Lin Heng-zhe, who is so eager to usherTaiwanese culture on to the global stage, has maintained that Taiwaneseculture is characterized by a rich variety of ‘international colors’, a spectrumincluding Chinese, Japanese, American, Spanish and Dutch cultures, inter-twined through complicated historical legacies (Lin, 1989: 39–41). Such aview of Taiwanese culture is shared by many supporters of TI. In other words,‘cultural heterogeneity and hybridity’, rather than ‘cultural homogeneity andauthenticity’, are currently recognized as another defining characteristic ofTaiwanese culture. The penetration of global cultural flows has given suchan argument a stronger hold, and it is through the deliberate articulation (ofthe global and the national) that TI nationalists intend to construct a newidentity that can be distinguished from China not only politically but alsoculturally.

Flows of Capital and Economic GlobalizationGlobalization in the economic realm is often considered of central import-ance in undermining the foundations of nation-states. It is found to be atodds with the sovereignty and autonomy of nation-states in at least twosenses. First, cross-border flows of capital, circulating through transnationalmonetary systems and multinational companies, have undermined the state’scontrol over the wealth of its nation. Second, the international division oflabor and the global circulation of commodities have gradually renderedirrelevant the conventional concept of the ‘national economy’, as the processof production, exchange and consumption is no longer confined to a geo-graphically bounded territory. Thus, the consequences of economic global-ization 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 anotherturn. Taiwan has gained its international reputation as a successful NIC(Newly Industrialized Country), and globalization in the economic realm, farfrom remaining a ‘purely economic matter’, has always been vested withmoral values under nationalist veils. Here, we encounter what Mayall (1990)has called ‘economic nationalism’, yet its meaning needs to be expanded toinclude two aspects. On the one hand, economic nationalism can refer tothose nationalist doctrines that serve as the guideline for economic activi-ties (e.g. mercantilism and protectionism that aim to promote the wealth andinterests of the nation). On the other hand, economic activities themselvescan provide a ‘base’ – in a nearly Marxist sense – upon which nationalistsentiments are fostered, or nationalist ideology can be constructed.

Flows of capital have been heavily vested with symbolic meaningsrelated to Taiwan’s national imagery. Isolated in international society due tothe lack of diplomatic ties, Taiwan has gained its international visibilitymostly through its economic success, while official nationalist discourses


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have long been constructed upon the imagery of the so-called ‘TaiwanMiracle’. Capital is one of the key factors in economic development: in thepast, Taiwan received a great deal of foreign investment to build up its econ-omic muscles; at present it tries to maintain its vitality in the global economyby playing the role of the ‘exporter of capital’. In the early 1990s, the stateactively encouraged Taiwanese businesspersons to invest in South-EastAsia, a policy referred to as ‘Marching Southward’. The policy was meant todivert Taiwan’s rocketing cross-strait investments in the PRC, which wereconsidered potentially harmful to Taiwan’s national security. The situationis 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 largeextent, upon where these streams of capital flow.17

It is important to recall that the genealogy of the KMT’s Chinesenationalism can be traced back to the late 19th century, when imperial Chinawas in crisis due to the Western imperialist invasions. ‘Becoming modern-ized’ (xiandaihua) or ‘becoming rich and powerful’ (fuqiang) has alwaysbeen the central concern of Chinese nationalism. Taiwan’s current risingposition in the world trading system has enabled the KMT state to constructnationalist ideology, as Taiwan’s economic success and vitality in globaleconomy have been presented as a showcase of ‘prosperity and freedom forall 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 vitalityin the world economy. In such a context, globalization is somehow parallelto the imperative of ‘modernization’ of the 1960s – ‘becoming globalized (orinternationalized)’, just like ‘becoming modernized’, has been turned into ateleological goal to be achieved by the whole society. Here, we are broughtback to the old theme of the affinity between modernity and nationalism(Anderson, 1983; Gellner, 1983). Let us not forget that ‘nation-building’ hasbeen part of the modernization project, a primary pursuit of those ‘late-comers’ to industrial capitalism. In its current form, nation-building remainsan 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 hasrecently launched a project, the ‘Asian-Pacific Regional Operational Center’(APROC), as a means of maintaining economic vitality and perpetuating thenational imagery of the ‘Taiwan Miracle’. One may argue that APROC is notnecessarily relevant to nationalist ideologies in general. However, national-ist imaginations are always implicit in such an economic project. Forinstance, in a public address, preaching his idea of ‘the community ofdestiny’ (shengming gongtongti), President Lee Teng-hui (1995: 103–8)links the APROC project to the ‘community consciousness’ by stressing thatkeeping Taiwan’s ongoing development and vitality in the world economy isa necessary foundation upon which to cultivate the consciousness of acommon destiny.

Political rhetoric and ideological propaganda notwithstanding, such


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programs have substantive consequences as well. According to the officialblueprint drawn up by the Executive Yuan (head of the central governmentin Taiwan), the goals of the APROC plan are to build Taiwan into the follow-ing six ‘centers’ for the Asia-Pacific region: a manufacturing center, a seatransportation center, an airport transportation center, a financial center, atelecommunication center and a media center. These goals have beenpursued through policy- and law-making, infrastructure construction andinstitutional adjustments. In addition, to compensate for its diplomatic frus-trations, the KMT state has deliberately sought to engage with internationalsociety, mostly through economic exchange, where interlocking traderelationships with other countries – sometimes via the agency of Multi-national Corporations (MNCs) – act as a proxy for formal diplomatic relation-ships (see Simons, 1992). All these efforts, in turn, have facilitated thepenetration and circulation of transnational flows of commodities, people,capital and symbolic goods. As a result, Taiwan has accelerated the pace ofits 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 nationalismdiscussed above, economic success has also laid the ground for the rivalanti-state Taiwanese nationalism. The advanced economic development,accompanied with a better living standard and lifestyle, has long been amajor reason that TI advocates draw upon to oppose unification. Here,Taiwan’s economic success is attributed more to the colonial legacy ofmodernization, a highly qualified and dedicated workforce or Taiwan’s inte-gration into the global economy, rather than to the leadership role of thestate. Moreover, it is believed that Taiwan’s future well-being as a nationhinges to a great extent upon its embeddedness in the world economy, andhence ‘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 evenmore invested in an international agenda. Learning a lesson from HongKong, political leaders, scholars and elites of different nationalist stancesconverge to agree that Taiwan’s security can be enhanced as long as it isinternationalized and plays an integral or pivotal role in the world economy.It is believed that, if anything wrong happens to Taiwan, Western powers willintervene, at least in an attempt to protect their own interests, to neutralizeany threat from China. Paradoxical as it may seem, globalization or inter-nationalization is now regarded as one of the best strategies to build Taiwaninto a nation (see DPP, 1993: 37–9), or at least to maintain its nation-likestatus quo as a sovereign political community.

International Organizations and Transnational InstitutionsThe era of globalization has witnessed the growing significance of inter-national/transnational organizations, institutions and movements thatoperate independently of individual nation-states. These institutions andorganizations have formed a new decision-making structure that both


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constrains and enables the activities of nation-states. Generally put, theseinstitutions fit into two categories: international organizations such as theUnited Nations, GATT/WTO and the Olympic Games, or internationalregimes such as international law and commercial arbitration systems. Bymobilizing resources across national boundaries and forming supranationalregulation 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 heargues, international organizations themselves are more likely to be theembodiments of the transnational rules of the game that have accompaniedand enforced competing national sovereignties. Transnational institutionssuch as multinational companies, international monetary systems orGATT/WTO have not led to the decline of nation-states, but rather reinforcethe prerogatives of such states. Moreover, as long as these prerogatives arereiterated, it can be expected that the aspiration to achieve full nationhoodand nation-stateness will remain. This appears to be what has happened inthe case of Taiwan. I shall explore this from the state and non-state sides.

To the state of Taiwan, international organizations and transnationalinstitutions are of particular importance. Ever since 1971 when the ROC lostits seat in the United Nations to the PRC, Taiwan has been enduring apeculiar international isolation. The number of countries with which theROC has formal diplomatic ties dropped dramatically, reaching a low of 22countries from 1978 to 1980, climbing back to barely 30 in the 1990s. Mostof these are small nations in Africa and Latin America. In addition, Taiwanhas either lost its membership or been barred from participation in most UN-related international organizations such as Unesco, the World HealthOrganization (WHO), the World Bank, etc. In other formal international orregional associations, Taiwan has also been denied participation, or beenforced to use awkward titles such as ‘Chinese Taipei’ or ‘Taipei, China’, dueto political pressure from the PRC.

Although the PRC seeks to bar Taiwan from most such internationalorganizations, there are simply too many (well over 20,000 in total), andTaiwan 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 diplo-matic battlefield. Therefore, it has desperately sought to participate in allkinds of international/transnational institutions, especially those of a non-governmental nature, in order to ‘claim sovereignty’ symbolically. This strat-egy is made explicit in an official report published by the centralgovernment:

Although other nations generally have paid relatively less attention to inter-national non-governmental organizations (NGOs), our difficult diplomaticsituation represents a special condition . . . we have to expand our par-ticipation in NGOs with more practical, more aggressive, active, innovativeideas and measures in order to win over friendships and to contribute to the


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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 internationalorganizations – be they of governmental or non-governmental nature – hasled to an apparent paradox. As the interactions between Taiwan and theglobal community intensify, there is a rising awareness of Taiwan’s awkwardinternational position, reflected in a collective anxiety concerning Taiwan’sstatus in those international organizations such as United Nations,GATT/WTO, the Olympic Games, and many other international/trans-national institutions.

On the non-state side, therefore, it is observed that ‘the internationalorphan’ has long been part of Taiwanese nationalist discourses. The non-representation or misrepresentation of Taiwan in international settings hasled to a rising anxiety that ‘Taiwan will gradually disappear on the worldmap’.18 Even on non-governmental occasions, where politics is supposed tobe of little concern (such as academic conferences and professional associ-ations), people from Taiwan tend to find themselves frustrated with theproblem of representation and reception. At most of these internationaloccasions, nationality still serves as the most convenient and habitual wayof classifying people from different places and/or of different origins, whilenationhood remains a primary principle of classification and representation.Taiwan’s tangled relationship with China simply makes its awkward inter-national status even worse. We can take International PEN as example.

As suggested by the acronym, International PEN was founded as aninternational association for Poets, Playwrights, Essayists, Editors andNovelists. In spirit, it is meant to promote universal humanitarian values andto protect writers around the world from political prosecution. As such, theinstitution 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 internation-ally?’ (Global View, 1 November 1986). Li and Zheng complain that duringthe meeting, Taiwanese writers were not properly introduced and have neverbeen granted a chance to present their papers. In sharp contrast, Chinesewriters 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 onebillion people; contemporary Chinese literature, is the literature about thoseChinese people who struggle with natural disasters and human foes by theYellow River and on the Yangtze River; and Chinese writers, are of coursethose 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 regardedas Chinese literature. (1996 [1988]: 115)

Again, Long points out that when the Westerners are looking for ‘Chinese


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literature’, they look for what they consider ‘genuine’ or ‘authentic’ rep-resentations. Taiwanese literature under the sign of ‘Chinese literature’ isjust ‘a counterfeit’.

In fact, what Long describes in the field of literature is merely the tipof the iceberg. In other professional and academic fields, the same scenariois 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, theofficial national title of Taiwan (namely, ‘the Republic of China’) is prohib-ited on most international occasions. The reasons are not necessarily politi-cal, 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 formalname for official representations. The reason for this is far more complicated.For one thing, ‘China’ as a collective totem is a historical legacy that theROC government can hardly eschew. Originally a regime in exile fromChina, 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 isagainst their interests, too, to let Taiwan simply use ‘Taiwan’ as the officialtitle, 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 theirterritory. As a result, Taiwan is either excluded from international organiz-ations, or being misrepresented under a wrong title.

As globalization picks up its pace, Taiwan’s anxiety about beingexcluded from the global village is growing. The concern itself may notnecessarily be political, but how these issues can be handled is alwayspolitically charged. For example, there has been an increase in ‘global prob-lems’ or universal humanitarian issues that call for international cooperationor 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 nonethelessobliged to follow their rules or to make contributions. In 1992, the Britishenvironmentalist group the Environment Investigation Association (EIA)accused Taiwan of consuming rhino horns and tiger bones. The EIA broad-cast 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 con-sidered the commercial to have inflicted serious damage. Yet when variousgovernmental and non-governmental agencies in Taiwan tried to respond tothis accusation, they found themselves unable to find appropriate channelsto express themselves, since Taiwan was excluded from membership of theinternational wildlife protection organization.

Another example is the World Health Organization. Taiwan wasexcluded from the WHO in 1972, just after losing its seat in the UnitedNations. In 1997, Taiwan applied for observer status in the WHO but wasdenied. Under pressure from the PRC, the WHO insisted that membershipmust be based on sovereign states; and since Taiwan is regarded as merely


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a province of China, it was not qualified to join. The WHO’s decision hasupset not only the ROC government, but also the medical profession. As theleader of the Taiwan medical association argued, health is now considereda basic human right worldwide, and the prevention, treatment and control ofepidemic diseases is a global/universal issue that calls for internationalcooperation. He contended that Taiwan’s exclusion from the WHO due to itsunrecognized nationhood is not only unreasonable, but unfair to the peopleof Taiwan (Deng, 1998). This appeal seems to have won some sympathy over-seas and was later echoed in the Washington Post, when it published anarticle 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 fostereda sense of injustice. That has focused the problem around two issues. First,people have started to criticize the ‘one China’ policy – the ‘ROC’ is nolonger considered representative of China, and a distinctive nationhood inthe name of ‘Taiwan’ is considered much needed and most appropriate.Second, people have begun to realize that it is the PRC that stands in theway of Taiwan’s participation and interaction with global communities.Antipathy towards China remains high, which has further fueled Taiwan’spursuit of a place in international communities as an independent nation.

Concluding Remarks: Re-conceptualizing the Global and theNationalAbove, I have suggested that Taiwan’s nationalist politics, which is parexcellence of international nature, has been intertwined with Taiwan’sinvolvement with the globalization process. The preceding analysis can besynthesized as follows.

First, transnational experiences have had a profound impact uponidentity formation and transformation for the people in Taiwan. Objectively,this experience has taken the form of the increasing transnational flows ofpeople traveling and living abroad. ‘Transnational mobility’ is now regardedas one of the defining characteristics of the Taiwanese people and distin-guishes them from the Chinese. Moreover, as the interactions betweenTaiwan and other parts of the global village intensify, people start to ques-tion their citizenship and nationality. Far from leading people to reject suchcategories altogether, however, these circumstances have led them to a questfor a new identity.

Second, transnational experiences have spread through transnationalcultural flows facilitated by electronic media, creating the ultimate ‘armchairtravelers’. These cultural flows have helped to debunk the existing Chineseidentity, and opened new opportunities to foster a separate Taiwanese iden-tity. 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 economicglobalization. Taiwan’s economic achievement, made possible by successfulintegration into the global economy, has provided a solid material base on


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which two competing nationalist ideologies – namely, Chinese andTaiwanese nationalism – have been constructed. More recently, globalizationhas 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 byfacilitating the penetration of transnational flows of all sorts.

And finally, the increasing importance of international organizationsand transnational institutions has given Taiwanese people stronger aspir-ations to pursue a recognized nationhood or nation-stateness, as Taiwan’sexclusion from these organizations and institutions in global communitieshas fostered a sense of injustice and collective anxiety about being an ‘inter-national orphan’.

Being an anomaly in terms of its ambiguous international status,Taiwan is perhaps too idiosyncratic a case to generalize from. However, byvirtue of being a rare anomaly, it carries the potential to shed new light onour theoretical interpretation. Taiwan seems to contradict speculations thatglobalization will eventually lead to the waning significance of nation-statesand/or nationalism. In this case, we have seen that certain forms of global-ization can strengthen aspirations for the pursuit of nationhood and nation-stateness. Yet, as well as this simple dichotomy, the Taiwanese case can helpus further reconceptualize the two analytical categories, ‘the global’ and ‘thenational’, with three theoretical implications.

The first implication concerns the nature of ‘the national question’. Asscholars have pointed out, nation, nationalism and nation-states are allglobalized and globalizing phenomena (Duara, 1995; Giddens, 1985; Lashand 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/internationalbackdrop. In explaining recent identity politics in Taiwan, the argument thatthe Chinese identity is a ‘false consciousness’ constructed by the KMTcannot sufficiently explain why such an identity should have collapsed whenpeople left their homeland, or were confronted with outside informationthrough cultural flows. As a social classification system of grouping people,nationalism is usually defined in relation to the exogenous ‘Other’. Moreimportantly, as Löfgren (1989: 11) has put it, national identity is ‘totallydependent upon the imagined or real approval of this identity as a nationalotherness by others, i.e. other nations’. The case of Taiwan gives strongsupport to such a view. As many have acknowledged, Taiwan’s status as anation hinges not so much on ‘whether Taiwanese people think of themselvesin terms of a nation or not’, but more on ‘whether others around the globeconsider it a nation or not’. By providing institutional support for a certainnation 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 andmutual reinforcements. In the Taiwanese case, we have found in four dimen-sions changing configurations of national imaginations that, in turn, give


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Taiwan a stronger hold over its nationhood. And, more interestingly, thenation in Taiwan is now being imagined with heavy international tints andglobal flavors, as globalization itself has become a strategy for nation-build-ing. What is emerging is a new strategic alliance between the global and thenational, where globalization has provided new ground upon which thenation can be (re)formulated. As shown in this case, ‘transnational mobility’is now regarded as a defining characteristic of the Taiwanese people, ‘globalculture’ is viewed as a component of Taiwanese culture (as differentiatedfrom Chinese culture), and the magic term ‘globalization’ is employed, bothas rhetoric and as policy, to build the nation.

Finally, the last theoretical implication concerns the possible waningsignificance of nations and nation-states. Nation-states may eventuallydecline, and in the future there may exist a nation-less world where nation-ality and nationhood hold no significance at all. But this time is by no meansupon us. Like it or not, people still need a nationality to live with, while thenation is likely to remain an indispensable, institutionalized category of thesocial 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 somethingto be eschewed.

To conclude, let me once again quote a passage from a classic scholarof 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; adeficiency in any of these particulars is not inconceivable and does from timeto time occur, but only as a result of some disaster, and it is itself a disasterof a kind. (Gellner, 1983: 6; emphasis added)

Gellner initially made this analogy in an attempt to debunk – or rather, toridicule – the essentialist view of nations put forward by most nationalistideologies, as he immediately went on to contend that ‘Having a nation isnot an inherent attribute of humanity, but it has come to appear as such’(Gellner, 1983: 6). However, Gellner’s analogy, taking yet another ironictwist, vividly illustrates the predicament that people in Taiwan currentlyendure. To put it in Gellner’s terms, the people of Taiwan tend to find them-selves ‘men and women without a nation’ who ‘defy recognized categoriesand provoke revulsion’ when they are internationally situated. Being un-categorizable, they find themselves in ‘a disaster of a kind’ that afflicts theentire society as globalization proceeds: having no nation or nationhood isperceived as a shame, an embarrassment, or a defect that leads to collectivehumiliations. The rise of Taiwanese identity, and the increasing appeal ofTaiwanese nationalism to the public, perhaps cannot be solely attributed tothe awakening of primordial ties or ethnic consciousness, as is usuallyargued by earlier studies, nor can it be explained away merely by invokingdomestic politics. Rather, in order to fully understand ‘why the nation


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matters at this point of time’, we need to look for some ‘exogenous’ factorsto present a more complete picture. Here, I am not arguing for the import-ance of global factors at the expense of the significance of domestic politics,nor do I consider globalization alone the prime mover of nationalist politicsin Taiwan. Instead, the central argument of the article is that, ethnic cleav-ages and geo-political conditions being given, globalization may work forrather than against the cravings for nationhood and nation-stateness. As thisstudy has tried to suggest, the escalation of nationalist politics may also bea reflection, to a certain extent, of Taiwan’s accelerated engagement with thecomplexities of globalizaion. Just as Chatterjee (1986) has argued thatnationalism outside Europe is necessarily a ‘derivative discourse’, so we findTaiwan’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. Transnationalflows of people, culture and capital during globalization may have ignored,subverted and devalued national boundaries and their associated states, butthis does not necessarily imply the decline of nations and/or nation-states.By intensifying the interactions among different constituents of the globalvillage, globalization may also assert and reinforce the institutional preroga-tives 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 therelationship between globalization and the nation/nation-state.

Notes

An earlier version of this article was presented at the Fourth Annual North AmericaTaiwan Studies Conference on ‘Putting Taiwan in Global Perspective’, University ofTexas 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 Riesebrodtand Joseph Wong for their comments on the earlier draft. I would like to thank threeanonymous reviewers, whose comments have been helpful in improving the originalmanuscript. I particularly appreciate one of the reviewers who has patiently madeseveral detailed stylistic suggestions. My thanks also go to Elizabeth McSweeneyfor her valuable help in revision. Any weaknesses are mine, of course.

All Chinese names and characters are romanized in the pinyin system, unlessthere 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 secondand the third characters of the given name where applicable, although it is acknow-ledged that this practice does not conform to the pinyin rule originally designed bythe 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 insist-ing that it is the only legitimate government of China, the KMT state claims that theROC’s territories include the vast lands of the People’s Republic of China and ofthe Mongolian Republic – though it has no control over either of them.2. For those who are not familiar with Taiwanese history, a brief historical outlinemay be helpful. Before being made a province by the Qing Dynasty of China in 1885,


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the island of Taiwan had been in part occupied by the Dutch, Spanish, Americanand 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 theJapanese government for 50 years. After Japan’s defeat in the Second World War in1945, 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 theChinese Communist Part (CCP) and took refuge in Taiwan. The CCP founded thePeople’s Republic of China (PRC) and subsequently became the recognized state ofChina, 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 Taiwanby drawing on legacies of Chinese history, a third claim is made by Taiwanesenationalists, who insist that Taiwan should become an independent nation-state thathas nothing to do with China.3. On the issue of ‘imagination’ and ‘fictiveness’, Taiwan adds a new flavor thatcomplicates previous discussions. True, all social communities larger than thoseconstituted through direct, face-to-face interactions can only be imagined, and onlyimaginary communities are ‘real’ (Anderson, 1983: 6; Balibar, 1991: 93). However,for an ‘imagined community’ to become ‘real’, it requires not only self-identificationbut also identification by others as a community (as a nation). Taiwan’s lack ofidentification by others has made this ‘imagined community’ more ‘imagined’ andhence less ‘real’. For further discussion of identification/recognition by others inidentity formation and group making, see Bourdieu (1991: 117–26, 220–8). I thankthe 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 thedecline of the nation-state. Anthony Smith (1995), for instance, has argued ferventlyagainst the globalization thesis in defense of the nation.5. Elsewhere, I discuss more fully the conflation between nation and state to explainwhy 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 onmigrants from Caribbean nations and Philippines (Basch et al., 1993). They definethese migrants as ‘transnationals’, as these people live lives stretched acrossnational borders, forging and sustaining multi-stranded social relations that linktogether their societies of origin and settlement. Although a thorough investigationof Taiwanese emigrants has yet to be done, a related study on the overseas Taiwanesecommunity in Los Angeles has confirmed that the same situation holds true forTaiwanese migrants in North America (Tseng, 1995).7. ‘Mainlander’ is one of the four major (although problematic) ethnic groups thatconstitute the population in Taiwan (the other three being Holo, Hakka and aborig-ines). It refers to those people, including their descendants, who came from main-land China to Taiwan after the Second World War, mostly with the exiled KMTregime in 1949. Generally speaking, this ethnic group is considered stronglyinclined to maintain a Chinese identity and hence opposes the idea of Taiwan inde-pendence.8. With this arrangement, a third-country national needs only to apply for a visafrom one country to travel in all the signatory countries.9. Two recent episodes further exemplify how the passport has become a battlefieldfor nationalism and national identification. First, the Japanese government has


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recently decided to acknowledge the Taiwan passport. As usual, this announcementhas caused ‘serious concerns’ for PRC diplomats. Second, the Guangdong ProvincialGovernment of the PRC has also announced that they will issue PRC passports toTaiwanese businesspersons who do business in the province. This, in turn, hasbrought about disturbances in Taiwan, as it unavoidably raises the problem ofsovereignty (of the state) and loyalty (of individuals).10. For example, the leading newspaper, China Times, reported on 26 April 1993that Taiwanese people are ‘number one’ in the world in traveling abroad, winninganother 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 nationof 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’, hasbecome the building block for nationalist ideology, for both Chinese nationalism (ofthe KMT), and Taiwanese nationalism of the TI movement. The ‘miraculous achieve-ment’ of Taiwan is always assumed whenever the nation is being imagined. This iswhy many Taiwanese people, especially those elites like Long Ying-tai quotedabove, 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 discussionof the cultural contents of transnational experiences in this section more appropri-ate 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 ofthousands of native Taiwanese, including many political and cultural elites, weremassacred during the subsequent suppression by Chinese troops, planting a deep-rooted antipathy and grievance against the mainlanders among native Taiwanese. Itis considered an important divide that has stimulated the development of Taiwanesenationalism, and to mention the incident in public was considered taboo until thelate 1980s.13. ‘International personality’ is a literal translation of the Chinese term ‘guojirenge’, which is perhaps idiosyncratically used only in Taiwan. Depending on thecontext, 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 importantfactor 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 discussionhere.15. Interview with Cheung Kwai Yeung, former Vice President and Chief Editor ofCTN.16. A TI activist told me in confidence that he was not worried about the impact ofCTN 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 thatTaiwan 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 nationalimaginations, the state and Taiwan’s rising role as an exporter of capital, can befound in Chen Kuang-hsing (1994), in which Chen goes so far as to assert thatTaiwan has become a sub-empire of the region, and that Taiwan nationalism hasbeen turned into an imperialism.


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18. This is the rhetoric that Chen Wen-qian, the former head of the PropagandaDepartment of the opposition DPP party, frequently uses when reflecting on hersupport 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 chapterof 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).

References

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Horng-luen Wang received his PhD degree from the University of Chicagoand 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 astudy on state, nationalism and globalization in contemporary Taiwan.


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