David Emanuel Andersson

Nationalism January 14, 2009

If there is one aspect of politics that serves as a motivating force of all political parties and movements in Taiwan it is nationalism, or rather competing nationalisms. The current governing party, the KMT (Guomindang in Hanyu Pinyin), is usually translated as the Nationalist Party, although the National People’s Party would be closer to its meaning in Chinese. The KMT is historically based on the ideology of Sun Yat-sen, the “Three Principles of the People” which are nationalism, democracy, and social welfare. The nationalism of Sun Yat-sen was a form of  ”civic nationalism;” a territorial and political rather than ethnic nationalism. Its original domain comprises the present de facto jurisdictions of the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan (the “Republic of China”), and Mongolia.

The main opposition party and the governing party from 2000 to 2008 is the DPP, or Democratic Progressive Party. In spite of its name, this is also a nationalist party, but the nationalism of the DPP is Taiwanese rather than Chinese nationalism. While it is officially committed to civic rather than ethnic nationalism, its opponents claim that it in fact represents the values of one of Taiwan’s ethnic groups (or sub-ethnic groups, depending on your point of view). The ethnic group in question is called Minnan in Mandarin, Hoklo in Taiwan, and Hokkien in Singapore and Malaysia. Minnan make up about 70 percent of Taiwan’s population, are the descendants of pre-1949 migrants from the southern part of China’s Fujian province, and speak a distinctly Taiwanese version of Minnanhua, which is also spoken around Xiamen in the PRC and on the Malay peninsula. The main distinguishing feature of the Taiwanese variant is that it  incorporates a fair number of borrowed words from Japanese. Although the KMT draws support from all four major ethnic groups, the DPP is almost exclusively supported by members of the Minnan majority.

The only ideological difference in Western terms between Taiwan’s political parties is between the Chinese nationalism of the KMT (and other “blue” parties) and the Taiwanese (or Taiwanese Minnan) nationalism of the DPP (and other “green” parties). In all other ideological respects they are indistinguishable: they are both culturally conservative parties that favor a mixed economy of small private and large government-subsidized firms. They like to exhort people to come together in the pursuit of economic growth as expressed in the national GDP figure. The government, whether KMT or DPP, formulates national development plans that focuses on the role of high-tech export-oriented businesses in three science parks (Hsinchu, Taichung, and Tainan/Luzhu). As part of these plans, the firms in the three science parks benefit from subsidized land rents, targeted infrastructure investments and tax exemptions. Both parties also like to express national achievement in supposedly impressive national monuments from the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial to Taipei 101.

While the official ideologies of the two main parties are non-ethnic, an ethnic bias has always been present. Until the 1990s, naturalization was limited to “overseas Chinese” and immigrant wives of citizens (traditional Chinese society is patrilineal). According to the “civic nationalism” of the KMT, ethnic diversity is limited to Han Chinese and “recognized” national minorities such as Tibetans, Mongols, Taiwanese aboriginal tribes and so forth (it is noteworthy that the PRC adopted the same approach when bestowing Chinese citizenship on Hong Kong residents in 1997). In the late 1990s, the policy was liberalized somewhat to also allow the naturalization of male spouses, although the naturalization of PRC spouses was becoming gradually more difficult. This was perhaps a result of the rise in Taiwanese nationalism during that period.

Now I have an admission to make: I’m a lifelong opponent of nationalism in all its forms – civic or territorial, ethnic or linguistic, religious or cultural. A caveat is that given the existence of nationalism, I prefer the civic nationalism of the United States over the ethnic nationalisms of, say, Germany, Ireland or Japan. Why should one attach any moral or ideological significance to something (location of birth, ethnicity etc.) that is not an object of individual choice? Open-minded people sometimes concur, but add that interjurisdictional migrants do indeed choose an institutionally laden location. Supposedly, this implies that they can be viewed as voluntary citizens, should they be naturalized by the government of their destination. But this overlooks the hostility to new entrants among earlier established nation states: the United Nations is in effect an oligopolistic club that raises the costs of potential entrepreneurs in the nation-building business. It sorts of reminds me of OPEC in its attitute to competing suppliers.

The DPP may protest and state that it does indeed want to add to the number of offerings (although only in a legalistic sense, not in an economic de facto sense). But would the DPP allow spatial agglomerations of non-supporters to secede and establish new independent nations within Taiwan?  I think everyone already knows the answer to that question.

I believe nationalism  is incompatible with both the laissez faire and egalitarian versions of  liberalism. The free-market liberal question is this: does nationalism contribute to individual autonomy? The corresponding egalitarian (or Rawlsian) question would be whether we should care more about the worst-off “compatriots” rather than the worst-off human beings? (Do individuals behind the veil of ignorance know nothing except for their nationality?)

For the run-of-the-mill utilitarian economist the attractions of nationalism should also be non-existent. It would imply that a governmentally imposed addition to the spatial friction of transportation and communication networks would be a desirable additional constraint on individual utility maximization (perhaps it would be desirable if the cost of border-crossings were more than offset by reductions in spatial frictions that are only possible with nation states – but surely infrastructural investments do not depend on nationalist sentiments).

For me, however, the decisive question is this: Is an overrepresentation of  ”compatriots” within the interpersonal networks of individuals conducive to their personal growth of knowledge? If knowledge is understood in its widest sense – ranging from theories of natural and social processes to more elusive aspects such as moral intuition, aesthetic appreciation, and personal skills -  nationalism would seem to be the enemy of such growth. My hope is that we (as fellow inhabitants of the earth) will reject all the trappings of nationalism: flag-waving as well as national languages, national development plans and national curricula, and - most important – any special treatment of individuals on the basis of their citizenship or – even worse – ethnicity.