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> China is agreed by both the PRC and the RoC to include Taiwan -- they just disagree over who is the legitimate government This is the historical position of
by snogglethorpe 14y ago
> China is agreed by both the PRC and the RoC to include Taiwan -- they just disagree over who is the legitimate government
This is the historical position of the Taiwanese government, but it's decreasingly true amongst the Taiwanese people, so to some degree it's already an anachronism. Many actual Taiwanese don't self-identify as "Chinese" at all (while obviously recognizing the common heritage).
However, given the common tendency to use "Chinese" to refer to the greater cultural sphere, there can some confusion...
[I make this mistake routinely talking to people from Taiwan, saying something like "blah blah because you're Chinese" to which they immediately reply "No, no, I'm Taiwanese" (and this is generally amongst the politically apathetic young).]
- SheriffFatman 14y agoI would not disagree with you. In fact, I was led to understand that this is not a recent phenomenon, and that even before the flight of the Nationalist government to Taiwan, many (most?) Taiwanese did not consider themselves Chinese, until the Nationalist exiles started promoting that idea heavily.
- snogglethorpe 14y agoWell take this with a grain of salt (it comes mostly from informal discussion with Taiwanese), but my understanding is that whereas there was originally a sort of ethnic/historical split to Taiwanese identity following the RoC flight to Taiwan, recent generations of Taiwanese are increasingly self-identifying as "Taiwanese" (as distinct from "Chinese") regardless of which side they come from ethnically, though the ethnic split is still something people are aware of. I.e., many people now seem to have separate "ethnic", "cultural", and "national" identities (which can make conversations rather confusing).