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Fear not the
cross-strait culture war
By J. Michael Cole 寇謐將
Much has been made in recent years of an apparent campaign by elements on both
sides of the Taiwan Strait to convince Taiwanese that they share a common
culture, ethnicity and history with Chinese. This emphasis is without doubt part
of the multifaceted effort by Beijing — an effort that also has political,
military and economic angles — to unify Taiwan with China. However, culture is
the weapon in Beijing’s arsenal that is the least likely to succeed.
A good number of Taiwanese and their supporters recoiled when President Ma Ying-jeou
(馬英九), once he was safely ensconced in office, began waxing lyrical about the
“shared ancestry” of Taiwanese and Chinese, or hurt sensitivities when he harped
on about a so-called “Chinese culture with Taiwanese characteristics.” Similar
apprehensions arose when his administration, and its counterparts in China,
began encouraging cooperation in all matters cultural, from the movie industry
to linguistics.
Suddenly, Taiwanese culture and identity seemed to be under assault, dwarfed by
the weight of 1.3 billion Chinese who, we can only deduce from Beijing’s
propagandistic line on such matters, all share a homogenous “Han” culture. Some
of the deformities that have arisen from such a stubborn adherence to a cultural
“one China” include “Chinese Taipei” and, as one often encounters in the opening
paragraph of reporting by (state-controlled) Chinese media, “China’s Taiwan,” as
if repeating a lie often enough would somehow transmute that into truth.
There is no doubt that China has far greater resources to support its cultural
industry and that Taiwan’s proximity, added to shared linguistic attributes,
makes it especially vulnerable to a “cultural invasion.” That being said,
greater cultural contact need not necessarily translate, and oftentimes will
not, into the uncritical and total assimilation of foreign ideas — let alone
serve as an instrument by which to change a people’s identity.
Those who argue that Chinese culture — movies, dance troupes, literature, music
and so on — poses a fundamental threat to Taiwan’s sense of self fail to fully
appreciate the resilience and adaptivity of Taiwanese identity. Taiwan’s long
history is a unique laboratory of a people picking up foreign influences
(including Dutch, French, Japanese, American and, yes, Chinese) and indigenizing
them, while rejecting an array of others. Why things would be different when
that outside influence is Chinese cannot but stem from a failure to appreciate
the continuity that has characterized the development of Taiwan’s distinct
consciousness. Not only that, but it treats Taiwanese as half-wits or empty
vessels incapable of making their own choices about who they are. This is
condescending and will not stand.
Unsatisfied with seeing Chinese culture as a dangerous external object — some
kind of Trojan horse, with Chinese characteristics — some pundits are now seeing
danger in the discourse of some Taiwanese who, after decades of isolation, have
come into increasing contact with Chinese. The danger, someone told me recently,
is that Taiwanese are starting to say: “I like the Chinese, they are a lot like
us.” Of course they are, but note the they and us.
This situation is rather analogous to, say, the experiences of this author
growing up in Quebec, under the shadow of an Anglophone Canada and, to the
south, the mother of all cultural giants, the US. Try as it might to limit North
American cultural influences in the French-speaking enclave, government
officials in Quebec City could not, unless they had resorted to force, have
prevented me and other youths from watching US TV, reading English books and
listening to US music. And where did we go when the long Canadian winters became
unbearable? Down south, to bask in the sun and US culture. Which country did I
look to when, for a brief while before I destroyed my right arm with tendonitis,
I entertained dreams of a career in professional baseball? Again, the US.
At no time, though, did such influences, or my liking Americans, alter or
somehow undermine my self-identification as a Quebecer and Canadian. In fact,
the reverse is probably truer, with exposure bringing into sharper contrast the
differences, however small, which existed between us.
The same applies to Quebec’s “special ties” with France, a former colonial
presence, which reached their height (or low, depending on who you’re asking)
when former French president Charles de Gaulle made his famous “Vive le Quebec
libre!” remark from a balcony in Montreal in 1967. To this day, many French will
refer to people in Quebec as les petits cousins (the young cousins) in a
way that manages to summon both friendliness and condescension (this
nevertheless is a major improvement on references to Canadians by US pundits in
the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 as “retarded cousins”).
All this is to say that shared languages and cultural elements, or even periods
of colonization, will not alter a people’s sense of identity, however hard
governments try to turn back the clock. Young Canadians today can dote all they
want on Harry Potter or Brad Pitt or Justin Timberlake, and Quebecers can share
a certain affinity with La Peste, Bardot or Hallyday, but this in no way changes
who they are. Unless one looks at Taiwanese from the pedestal of superiority,
the same applies to the 23 million inhabitants of the nation.
As with many other aspects of the relationship, time is on Taiwan’s side, and
China, debilitated as it is from increasingly untenable systemic contradictions,
will likely collapse, or democratize, or become embroiled in a regional war,
well before cultural engineering can be imposed on enough generations of
Taiwanese to convince them that they are Chinese.
Just look at how well served the Chinese (not to mention their colonial
subjects) have been by more than half a century of imposed Sinicization in
Tibet. As the Chinese author Wang Lixiong (王力雄) showed us in his reporting, even
those Tibetans who are “fortunate” enough to be sent to Beijing to receive an
education (or re-education) and be taught, one may suppose, everything about the
greatness of Chinese culture, will more often than not return to their homeland
even more convinced of their own distinct cultures than they were prior to
making the journey.
What ought to make us pause amid efforts by bigoted Chinese and Taiwanese
officials to conjure up an all-encompassing “Chinese culture” is Chinese
investment in the cultural sector in Taiwan. The more dependent Taiwan becomes
on Chinese money, the narrower will its margin to maneuver become in terms of
its ability to explore and say certain things, either as the result of direct
intervention by the Chinese side, or from self-censorship on this side. Creative
freedom, rather than identity, is what’s at risk.
Another, and not unrelated, aspect of this is the neutralization of the news
industry in Taiwan, which has its precedents in what has happened in Hong Kong.
Increasingly, news media are focusing on economics, sports and “soft” social
events, rather than the problematic and oftentimes controversial politics.
Rather than add fuel by reporting on these subjects, media are encouraged to
look elsewhere, to the opiates of GDP growth or Jeremy Lin’s (林書豪) exploits on
foreign basketball courts.
As with the film industry, cross-strait investment is having an impact on
journalistic freedom, with critical reportage on, say, human rights in China, or
Taiwanese independence, being turned unfashionable and inconvenient for the
“rational” actors who want to make money. Look at which media outlets are
hiring, where the money is: Bloomberg, the Financial Times, &c.
Taiwan does need to be protected from nefarious Chinese influences, whatever the
form they may take. Identifying the area where prophylactics or pushback are
needed is a good place to start to avoid wasting energy and resources.
J. Michael Cole is deputy news editor at the Taipei Times.
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