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This study examines the relationships among language, identity, and interaction in multilingual multicultural classrooms through a case study of classroom interactions involving "qiaosheng" (overseas Chinese students). Qiaosheng education was created in the historical context of nation building in Taiwan. Qiaosheng Chinese ethnicity has been linked to Chinese language and culture. However, like foreign students, most qiaosheng are multilinguals, speaking various L1s and studying Chinese and English as L2s. While classroom interactions with foreign students have received increasing attention among applied linguistics scholars in Taiwan, classroom interactions involving qiaosheng have not. This study adopts an ethnographic and discourse-analytic approach to examine classroom interactions between an English teacher and qiaosheng in a high school for qiaosheng. Analyzing classroom discourse as well as interviews with the teacher from the theoretical lens of language socialization and language ideology, we show that through interacting with qiaosheng over time, the teacher was socialized into recognizing and subsequently addressing qiaosheng linguistic and cultural diversity by adopting a translanguaging pedagogy. We argue that when teachers recognize the taken-for-granted language ideology about qiaosheng and harness their multilingual multicultural repertoire to teach, qiaosheng can attain their maximum potential to learn when they are appreciated for their multilingual multicultural existence.

This study applies CDA and story grammar analysis to investigate how Chinese language textbooks for primary schools foster Chinese national identity through their depiction of Chinese people struggling against foreign invaders. The analysis was conducted on 12 textbooks and the findings were based on stories featuring a range of ages, from children to soldiers and artists, who all displayed patriotic spirit and were willing to risk their lives for China. The textbooks also highlight China's past humiliation, such as the Nanjing Massacre and the loss of territories such as Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan. The authors of those textbooks seek to encourage the students' national identity by promoting a sense of patriotism, sacrifice, vigilance against foreign threats, affirmation for the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and putting the interests of the People's Republic of China (PRC) ahead of personal interests. Additionally, students are expected to have a strong sense of territorial sovereignty, recognizing Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan as parts of China. However, the results also show that the portrayal of Chinese national identity is Han-centric, excluding ethnic minorities.

This empirical study attempted to examine cultural and national values in relation to the teaching of musical multiculturalism, which is defined as music from regions around the world, as well as Taiwanese nationalism (i.e., a desinicized version of national identity based on Taiwan's localization movement) in school music education. Data were drawn from questionnaires completed by 70 in-service and 40 pre-service teachers between February and October 2018. Two major questions will be explored in this paper in response to the changing society of Taiwan: (1) how do teachers feel about music teaching related to diverse music cultures; and (2) how have they reacted to Taiwanese nationalism in school music education? The findings indicated a significantly higher preference for teaching traditional Western music versus that of other cultures among all the teachers. In addition, the participants with more experience exhibited a significantly greater preference for teaching traditional Chinese music and national education compared to their less experienced counterparts. Based on the survey data, this paper will argue that there is a cultural gap between teaching traditional Chinese music, Taiwanese local music, and other music cultures alongside the question of nationalism in contemporary music education in Taiwan.

This study examined how politics, along with familial and socioeconomic factors, influence the life satisfaction of marriage migrants in Taiwan. We conducted a social survey in Taiwan and offered a multidimensional and dynamic view on adaptation and life satisfaction among them. The results showed that in Taiwan, family relationships and socioeconomic class were significant factors of life satisfaction among mainland Chinese marriage migrants. A high level of social integration was positively related to life satisfaction, while the prejudice faced from neighbors, rather than from the media, was negatively related. Regarding political factors, political disagreement with their Taiwanese partners undermined life satisfaction among spouses from mainland China. However, those who possessed a dual identity (i.e., both Chinese and Taiwanese) and those who viewed mainland China and Taiwan as two separate entities tended to have high levels of life satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on China's policy response to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan in August 2022. Pelosi's action triggered a surge of popular nationalist sentiments in China, but the response of the Chinese government was far less tough than what many popular nationalists had expected. The article argues that the Chinese government's policy choice in response to Pelosi's visit to Taiwan did not depend on the demands of popular nationalists, but rather was based on a cost-benefit analysis according to its perceptions. The influence of popular nationalism on the government's foreign policy choices has been exaggerated owing to an overestimation of the government's reliance on nationalism for its regime legitimacy, and an underestimation of the government's control over public opinion and nationalist activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intertwined landscape of physical skills, political power, and diplomatic strategies in the Cold War narrative is always hidden in the spatial configuration and ceremonial symbolic layout of the main venues of international events from where it extends outward. The Cold War historicity of the Taipei William Jones Cup is a case in point. The micro-history of sports diplomacy from the narration of diplomatic history archives, collected by the Academia Historica in Taipei, illustrates that sports diplomacy can also play a key role in the formal history of diplomacy—the establishment of diplomacy, national identity, and regime legitimacy resort to the service of sports. The discussion includes documentary and media discourses related to the Cup, such as spatial power, banal nationalism, symbolic ritual, and identity. Consequently, the Taipei Men's and Women's Jones Cup promoted the development of basketball in Taiwan and Asia, created a platform for activating people's diplomacy, and provided Chiang's regime with a temporary place to survive the Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of Taiwanese nationalism in the late 1980s and early 1990s that rapidly, radically, but "peacefully" replaced Chinese nationalism to become the hegemonic discourse in two decades is a political "miracle." My paper argues that this compressed political transformation would not have been possible without the help of psychoanalytic discourse mediated by critical theory in the activist and critical intellectual circles. In the context of the (post-) Cold War era, there was a peculiar form of decolonization equated with de-Sinicization. At stake is a translational concept that itself becomes untranslatable: zhu-ti-xing, the Chinese word for subjectivity. By analyzing the conflicts within the Chinese-speaking activists and intellectuals in the United States and in Taiwan, I will demonstrate in this paper the ways in which the Lacanian idea of the subject as having a lack becomes a critical tool for the advocates for the independence of Taiwan to break through the existing discursive inertia and to effectively make Taiwan a nation without essence, a nation of zhu-ti-xing/subjectivity, and to facilitate the fitting of this new hegemony into the ideology of Pax Americana. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Taiwan, where relations with China define the major political cleavage, voters have distinct preferences on the issue of independence. Do Taiwanese favor a symbolic or pragmatic approach to the Taiwan independence issue? What are the factors that account for their political preferences? We identify two types of voters, symbolic and pragmatic, according to whether their preferences on independence are conditional or unconditional on China's potential counter actions. Specifically, symbolic voters have unconditional preferences on independence, while pragmatic voters are more agreeable to independence under more favorable conditions. Using multiple wave data from the Taiwan National Security Surveys (TNSS 2002–2022), we investigate the individual- and macro-level factors and find that gender, age, education level, ethnicity, partisan strength, and economic growth rate shape the types of voters in Taiwan. This paper contributes to the study of political attitudes in Taiwan, and have important implications on the regional stability in East Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an increasingly popular standpoint that the rise of Taiwanese identity has transformed Cross-Strait relations. The discourses of pro-unification are regarded as the antithesis of pro-independence. Seemingly, the shift from Han Chinese identity to Taiwanese identity has been a rupture in the recent development of Cross-Strait relations. This study sheds light on Wei Yung (Wei Yong, 1936–2004) and his concept of 'multi-system nations' to reassess this standpoint. Wei wanted to assist Taipei in recalibrating Cross-Strait relations in the late 20th century. He initiated the 'multi-system nations' concept to justify Taipei's adoption of dual recognition and parallel (international) participation. Wei used this concept to defend Taiwanese political scientists' collective representation in the International Political Science Association. However, the result was not as he had wished. Although Wei's concept of 'multi-system nations' is outdated and his wishful thinking about China's unification has become a path not taken for both Taipei and Beijing, this study shows that there is in fact common ground between the sympathisers of pro-independence and the advocates of unification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops the concept of 'patriotic consumer mobilization' to explain how China uses informal boycotts as economic coercion. Patriotic consumer mobilization employs citizens as the unit of action, facilitating manipulability, uncertainty, and plausible deniability. It manages public sentiment for domestic legitimacy and foreign policy goals. Citizens are mobilized via propaganda that underscores national humiliation, frames boycotts as grassroots patriotism, and signals resolve to foreign countries. After outlining conditions for use and a case comparison with Taiwan, we draw on Chinese-language sources to examine Beijing's coercion of South Korea over a missile defense system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does education affect attitudes toward immigrants? Shifting the scholarly focus from levels of education to educational content, I argue that the effect of education depends on the type of national identification that educational content promotes. Content that promotes a narrower form of national belonging fosters more negative attitudes toward immigrants because it emphasizes a more exclusive notion of national membership. To test the implications of my theory, I leverage a textbook reform in Taiwan that introduced a new narrative promoting Taiwanese identity based on a common ancestral and historical background. Using a difference-in-differences design that compares academic and vocational paths affected differently by the reform, I find that the consumption of educational content emphasizing a narrower form of national identification induces exclusionary attitudes toward immigrants. The evidence suggests that higher levels of education do not necessarily increase positive attitudes toward outsiders—it depends on what is taught. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A-Chin Hsiau's book, "Politics and Cultural Nativism in 1970s Taiwan: Youth, Narrative, Nationalism," explores the identity transformation of the "return-to-reality" generation of academics in Taiwan during the 1970s. Hsiau argues that this generation played a significant role in shaping the cultural politics of Taiwanese nationalism and democratization in subsequent decades. The book examines the impact of historical events, such as the Bao Diao movement and Japan's recognition of the People's Republic of China, on the generation's Chinese nationalism. Hsiau also explores the rediscovery and reinterpretation of prewar Taiwanese literature and the links between political activism and historical narration. While the book provides valuable insights into postwar Taiwan, it has limitations in terms of its narrow focus on a specific generation and its exclusion of nonacademic contemporaries and predecessors. [Extracted from the article]

Although many nations emerged during the collapse of the empire, the case of China is curious in its failure to divide into separate nation‐states. Resisting disunion, the Republic of China (ROC) adopted a rhetoric of national pluralism and laid claim to the fallen Qing Empire's vast territory. This divergence from other post‐imperial nationalisms engenders questions about the legacy of imperialism in the ROC's approaches to nation‐building. Such questions remain salient after the ROC retreat to Taiwan (1949), as since the end of martial law (1987), the ROC has championed itself as a model of multiculturalism. This paper examines the extent to which today's 'Multicultural Taiwan' paradigm differs from 20th‐century official conceptualisations of pluralism, through discourse analysis of publications from the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission (MTAC). Investigation finds that despite centring Taiwan in national ideology, certain Chinese imperialist attitudes towards cultural hierarchy remained influential in MTAC representations of pluralism within Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses how population genetics has impacted on nationalist discourses across the Taiwan Straits and affected the relationship between Taiwan and China since the 1990s. In Taiwan this cutting-edge science has helped to construct a native-based and Taiwan-centred national identity through promoting indigenous peoples' rights, rejecting a blood-based, cross-Straits nationalism, and founding a pan-Pacific indigenous peoples' community through genetic links and cultural affinity. In China, after subverting the nationalist myth of Peking Man (a Homo erectus group believed to be the common ancestor of the Chinese) by analysing genetic data, the same group of Chinese genetic scientists have constructed another nationalist myth of a genetically homogenous nationhood. Such a discourse not only valorizes Chinese nationalism through claiming a DNA-based Chineseness across ethnic distinctions but also asserts genetic links between China and Taiwan, therefore providing a 'scientific' basis for China's nationalism in the new century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This empirical study attempted to examine cultural and national values in relation to the teaching of musical multiculturalism, which is defined as music from regions around the world, as well as Taiwanese nationalism (i.e., a desinicized version of national identity based on Taiwan's localization movement) in school music education. Data were drawn from questionnaires completed by 70 in-service and 40 pre-service teachers between February and October 2018. Two major questions will be explored in this paper in response to the changing society of Taiwan: (1) how do teachers feel about music teaching related to diverse music cultures; and (2) how have they reacted to Taiwanese nationalism in school music education? The findings indicated a significantly higher preference for teaching traditional Western music versus that of other cultures among all the teachers. In addition, the participants with more experience exhibited a significantly greater preference for teaching traditional Chinese music and national education compared to their less experienced counterparts. Based on the survey data, this paper will argue that there is a cultural gap between teaching traditional Chinese music, Taiwanese local music, and other music cultures alongside the question of nationalism in contemporary music education in Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2017, the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission (MTAC) was disbanded after 68 years of operation on Taiwan, raising the question of how an anachronistic institution evolved as the Republic of China (ROC) underwent democratisation. Documentary analysis finds that until the end of military rule (1987), the MTAC retained a Han-chauvinist mission to civilise its "frontier" through development policy and reform. By the twenty-first century, rhetoric emphasising bilateral and international exchange emerged. However, MTAC literature continued to highlight the relatively higher status of Taiwanese development to that of Mongolia, even as espousal of political "Chineseness" had faded. As ROC statehood in the early twenty-first century has increasingly embraced Taiwanese "multiculturalism," the history of the MTAC sheds light on a neglected but significant aspect of the evolution there of discourse on national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates how fashion and nationalism were expressed through two iconic dress styles worn by women, the qipao in Taiwan and the terno in the Philippines in the post-WWII era. We consider the positioning of women's bodies in the nation-building project and how sartorial practices reflected expectations around gendered performance in the public and private spheres. Both countries emerged from domination by major powers—Japan and the US—in the post-war era and ruling elites were keen to project an image of nation that was distinctively Asian and modern, while the first ladies of both nations championed their respective styles of national dress. In the Philippines, the terno was a fusion garment adapted over time that reflected the nation's earlier cultural links with Spain, whereas in Taiwan the qipao marked women's bodies as Chinese in the public sphere as Chinese nationalists consolidated their political control over the country. We argue that the relative success and longevity of the terno in the Philippines is due to a lengthy, organic process of internal cultural authentication prior to its take-up by former First Lady Imelda Marcos, as opposed to the top-down imposition of the qipao on Taiwanese women's bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the advent of the reform era and its relaxation of cultural and economic restrictions, Gang-Tai pop (i.e. pop music from Hong Kong and Taiwan) gained popularity in the music scene of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Recent scholarship regards Gang-Tai pop primarily as an individualistic and individualizing force that could potentially resist the persisting cultural and political hegemony of the collectivistic ideology. However, it overlooks the occasions in which Gang-Tai pop and collectivistic politics developed a symbiotic and complicit relationship. Tracking the trans-regional transmutations of a pop song, "Descendants of the Dragon" (Long de chuanren), from Taiwan and Hong Kong to Mainland China, this article shows how the circulation, reception, and revision of the song were embedded in and driven by two forms of collectivistic cultural-political forces: the state-run propaganda machine and the anti-state social movement. The appropriations of the song served as an affective technology of power through which both pro-state and anti-state collective politics were articulated, performed, and communicated. The examination of Hong Kong and Taiwan (Gang-Tai) pop thus allows us to grasp this coexistence and continuous dialogues on market individualism, state hegemony, and the revolutionary cultural tradition, all of which underlay the cultural landscape of Chinese society in the reform era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay investigates how Arif Dirk's works are interpreted in Taiwan through the lens of language politics and argues that postcolonialism, the dominant epistemology, has been central in mediating the translation and interpretation of his works. It traces back the debates in the 1990s over postcolonialism and points out that postcolonial cultural hybridity has been used as the "unquestioned truth" to maintain the colonizer's language and dismantle the nativist project of recovering lost languages and cultures. In this process, Dirlik's works are appropriated to legitimize the colonizer's status quo. This essay demonstrates how Dirlik's engagement with "the colonial" in his later years helps to theorize contemporary forms of injustices committed by the nation state under global capitalism and offers a radical critique of our postcolonial present in Taiwan. By reading his critique of postcolonialism, we show how Dirlik's works can be used to challenge the legitimacy of the ROC as a colonial state. By excavating his notion of indigenism and its spirit of utopianism, we hope to engage with the Tâi-gí movement in reviving a language that is on its way to extinction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although researchers have identified conditions for marital formation across and along ethnic lines, few efforts have been made to clarify factors behind in-group rejection. This article looks at one specific aspect of rejection within 'us' through the lens of long-distance nationalism. The data were collected from islander-origin first-generation Taiwanese Americans in a transnational community organization in the San Diego area, whose ancestors can be traced to provinces in southeast China. The long-term development of the islanders-led nationalist movement in Taiwan has made these immigrants long-distance nationalists by default. The article finds that although all immigrants identify 'us' with Taiwanese American, they have developed two types of transnational attachment (homeland and home) affecting their different ways of transforming 'us' into 'marriageable us.' While immigrants with homeland attachment have developed a Taiwan-first hyphenated identity that excludes Chinese people from the group of 'us' and 'marriageable us,' those who have a home attachment apply a symbolic approach to Taiwanese ethnicity resulting in the decoupling of 'us' and 'marriageable us.' By showing in-group heterogeneity in the transformation of 'us' into 'marriageable us' in the context of Taiwanese immigration to the United States, this article identifies community organizations as a mechanism for supporting the variance of transnational attachment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Republic of China (ROC), a founding member of the United Nations, had since 1949 been reduced to ruling effectively only in Taiwan, but still maintained the fiction of ruling China. This book is a creative contribution to Taiwan sociology because, rather than focusing on differences between "four ethnic groups", it examines how different generations imagined Taiwan. The ROC had brought to Taiwan a political identity of national humiliation and redemption, which Hsiau claims is "the very same master narrative in the PRC" (p. 9). [Extracted from the article]