17 October 2014

Chinese Check: Forging New Identities in Hong Kong and Taiwan

October 14, 2014

In both Hong Kong and Taiwan, residents are identifying less and less as Chinese, a trend that troubles Beijing.

At the time of Hong Kong’s election for its next chief executive in 2017, first-time voters, having been born two years after the 1997 handover, will have known nothing but Chinese rule. When Taiwan’s people elect their next president in 2016, first-time voters will have known nothing but democracy, and will be several generations removed from the 1949 flight from the mainland.

To young Hong Kongers, the city has always been part of China; to young Taiwanese, the idea that the island is part of China is an anachronism. Given these differences, one might expect each community to relate to mainland China in very different ways. One would be mistaken.

In both Hong Kong and Taiwan, research centers conduct regular surveys on identity. And in both polities, these studies have revealed long-term trends that must be troubling to the mandarins in Beijing.

Hong Kong University researchers conducted their latest survey in June. Their results are striking. Not only do those identifying themselves as Hong Kongers significantly outnumber those identifying themselves as Chinese, but that divergence seems to be growing.

These trends are evident across age groups, but particularly pronounced within the 18- to 29-year-old cohort. In 1997, 16.5 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds held an ethnic identity of "Chinese," a share which dropped to 3.6 percent in the latest survey. Over the same time, the share of young people holding an ethnic identity of "Hongkonger" [sic] increased from 46.2 percent to 53.1 percent.

Even more remarkable is the ranking of a range of identities that Hong Kongers hold:

If we use "identity indices" ranging between 0 and 100 to measure people's feeling of different identities (the higher the index, the stronger the positive feeling), Hong Kong people's feeling is strongest as "Hongkongers", followed by "Asians", then "members of the Chinese race", "global citizens", "Chinese", and finally "citizens of the PRC".

As far as the Beijing authorities are concerned and as they are wont to remind us, Hong Kong is, and always has been, part of China; according to the Chinese State Council's recent white paper, Hong Kong "returned to the embrace of the motherland" in 1997 [emphasis added]. Yet the people of Hong Kong would prefer to think of themselves as Asians or even "global citizens" before identifying as Chinese or Chinese citizens.

In Taiwan, National Chengchi University's Election Study Center regularly conducts a similar survey, asking respondents whether they identify as Taiwanese, as both Taiwanese and Chinese, or as Chinese. The latest poll, also conducted in June, found that 60.4 percent of respondents identify as Taiwanese, a historic high and up from 17.6 percent in 1992, when the study was first conducted. Only 32.7 percent of those questioned identified as "both Taiwanese and Chinese," down from 46.4 percent in 1992. A measly 3.5 percent identified as Chinese, down from 10.5 percent in 1992.

The Election Study Center also conducts a survey on views towards unification. All told, there is very little support in Taiwan for unification, whether immediate (1.4 percent) or eventual (8.8 percent), and those numbers have undergone two decades of decline. Eighteen percent are in favor of eventual independence, with 5.8 percent favoring independence as soon as possible, and those numbers are trending upwards. And 24.9 percent of respondents are in favor of maintaining the status quo indefinitely, up from 9.8 percent in 1994. Increasing support for maintaining the status quo indefinitely can and probably should be read as increasing support for continued de facto independence and increasing opposition to unification.

To recap, the people of Taiwan, an island that has enjoyed de facto independence for six decades and democracy for two, and which, arguably, has never actually been "part" of China, increasingly identify with their locality and oppose unification with the mainland. There's little surprising there.
The latest poll, also conducted in June, found that 60.4 percent of respondents identify as Taiwanese, a historic high.

On another island not too far distant, people with only limited experience of democracy and who by and large do not dispute that their home is Chinese territory are demanding free elections. And like the people of Taiwan, they also increasingly identify with their locality and, as the New York Times put it, "desire to preserve a distinct identity from China — in areas like rule of law, freedom of speech and of the press, financial infrastructure, anticorruption institutions, education, Cantonese language and Western influence."

Beijing must find this all very disconcerting. And if the case of Hong Kong proves that familiarity breeds contempt, China cannot even look to Taiwan and claim that at least absence makes the heart grow fonder.

These trends are due not only to the uniqueness of Hong Kong and Taiwan as compared to mainland China, but also to aversion to China's political system. What do Hong Kong and Taiwan see when they look at Beijing? The Tiananmen Square massacre, an absence of freedom, the violation of basic human rights, corruption run rampant, and a Chinese Communist Party that spent decades rejecting thousands of years of Chinese culture before belatedly casting itself as that culture's ultimate defender.

To be fair, many in Taiwan and Hong Kong are proud of what mainland China has accomplished over the last 30 years. They recognize that millions have been lifted from poverty and that China once again is playing a major role on the world stage. But they also now harbor fewer illusions about the nature of the Chinese Communist Party or about the Party's ultimate intentions for either territory.
Neither Hong Kong nor Taiwan isChinese as the communist party understands it. Rather, each represents, in its own way, the China that could be.

As much as Hong Kong is a part of China and as stridently as Beijing claims Taiwan is as well, neither Hong Kong nor Taiwan is Chinese as the communist party understands it. Rather, each represents, in its own way, the China that could be. Their very existence poses a threat to the Party's legitimacy to govern.

As the surveys about identity make clear, Beijing has already lost its battle for hearts and minds in Hong Kong and Taiwan. China, now, will have to re-conceptualize its strategies for bending Hong Kongers and Taiwanese to its will. As the people of Hong Kong continue to demand a greater say in their own governance and as those on Taiwan remain engaged in a lively political debate over their own future, they'll also have to dig in and rededicate themselves to defending the already extant institutions and the way of life that make them so threatening to Xi Jinping and his ilk.

The democrats in Hong Kong and Taiwan stand at the pass of Thermopylae and China's dictators are closing in, eager to extinguish, one way or another, the flame of freedom that burns in each.

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