The kids aren't alright: the growing Taiwanese generation gap

This is an article for anyone who believes that the question of Taiwanese independence or unification with China is the most important issue facing the Taiwanese electorate over the coming months. This is also for anyone who believes that the referendums on the KMT's ill-gotten assets and UN membership are the defining problems to be sorted in the election.

As the numbers of younger Taiwanese voters grow, an older, more emotionally-charged debate is being pushed aside due to a "moderate and pragmatic" generations fears about the economy, regardless of Taiwan's political status.

A while back, I had a conversation with someone about Taiwanese politics in which my interlocutor lamented the lack of faith or pride young Taiwanese seem to have in their country. He said that as much as he liked Taiwan and as much as he believed it deserved to have its de facto independence recognized as de jure sovereignty, he did not believe the US should fight for them in the event of an attack from China as long as the younger generation -- the ones who would be fighting -- didn't believe enough in protecting what they have here.

I later wrote:

All of the interactions that I have had with Taiwanese people my age lead me to feel that they wouldn't be so likely to fight if there ever were to be an attack from the big guy next door.

This very well could be a false conclusion derived from the impression I get that most young Taiwanese -- the so-called "Strawberry Generation" -- pay little attention to Taiwanese current events because they feel that it's all a sham anyway. They seem to feel that their politicians are all corrupt drama-queens that treat the Legislative Yuan more like a sandbox than the highest lawmaking body in the land and have a tendency to whore themselves out to anyone who has a camera and a microphone (this view, by and large, is probably true).

Can you blame them? They're too young to remember things like the Kaohsiung Incident or even more so the general repressive power that the KMT wielded prior to the 1990's. They've grown up with an education system that through the 90's -- if not to this very day -- teaches the KMT's version of history and civic duty. The freedom's their press has gained over the past several decades have been dictated, largely, by an almost pornographic desire to show and tell, without the burden of giving context, proof, or dissenting voices.

So, when I imagine the scenario, I imagine the Chinese coming, saying, "You can keep your jobs, and your houses. We're not going to do anything. We're just going to take the pesky burden of governing yourselves democratically off your shoulders."

Sure, I don't think people would be happy about it or even at ease about it, but at the same time, I wonder if the youth -- after all, they would be the ones fighting, wouldn't they? -- would be asking themselves, "Fight? What for? A do-nothing government full of crooks and gangsters? Freedom of the press? Who needs it when you don't get any valuable information from this media theater?"

and again here:

Changing this mindset should be paramount for those who believe Taiwan should be -- and is, de facto -- an independent nation, because I have never met a Taiwanese person under 30 who even cares about the politics of their country, much less anyone who feels strongly enough about its direction to fight for it. That doesn't mean, of course, that they don't exist.

This has been a running theme in several of my posts over the last four or five months, as it has become more and more evident to me that a rift has developed in Taiwanese politics from one generation to the next.

Several months ago, I was reading an article about politics in Taiwan when I came across a quote from a certain Dr. Shelly Rigger, stating that contrary to popular belief nationalism in Taiwan was getting weaker. This, obviously, ruffled the feathers of many a Taiwanophile.

For some reason, though, Dr. Rigger's name rang a bell, so I did what any intrepid journalist would do and googled her. Turns out she's been brought up several times, in anger and in praise, on various Taiwan-related sites. Judging that her comments, at one time or another, rankled and delighted people on both sides of the aisle, I sent her an email asking her for a reading list. She responded not long after with a long list of books, articles, and the pdf article that I linked to yesterday entitled Taiwan's Rising Rationalism: Generations, Politics, and "Taiwanese Nationalism".

I recently sat down and read the latter and was delighted to see some statistical evidence that for the most part back up my assumptions. I took copious notes on the paper only to find that the PDF is locked, meaning it won't allow me to copy and paste segments here, so I highly recommend anyone interested in the research read the fifty-odd page report.

My hopes in presenting this are to make clearer, perhaps, comments Rigger has made over the last year that seem to make little sense in light of several different studies that show Taiwanese see themselves more and more as Taiwanese -- not Chinese* -- and that very few Taiwanese people actually want to be a part of China. Dr. Rigger's assertions regarding what she sees as weakening nationalism in Taiwan do not dispute these findings. Rather, she shows how the phenomenon of "Taiwanization" does not necessarily predicate a rise in nationalism, i.e. "a political demand for Taiwan independence."

So, here are the four generations:

1. born by 1931. This generation "acquired its political identity during the period of Japanese colonization."
2. born between 1931 and 1953. This group "was socialized during the height of KMT... single-party authoritarianism."
3. born between 1945 and 1968. This generation "reached maturity during the transition to democracy as the KMT's authoritarian control was fading."
4. born after 1968: "The fourth generation came of age after democratization was well under way, so that democracy is the only political system this generation has ever known."
   

The "significant discrepancies" in the attitudes from generation to generation can be summed up as follows:

...the older generations -- especially the second generation -- tend to hold strong, emotionally charged views about China and cross-strait relations whereas younger people tend to be more moderate and pragmatic. And while older Taiwanese tend to view the relationship between Taiwan and China in zero-sum terms (to be pro-Taiwan is to be anti-China and vice versa), many young Taiwanese resist the idea that they must choose between Taiwan and China.

I doubt many people would dispute the idea that younger Taiwanese are more or less ambivalent towards China. That is not to say, however, that they aren't concerned about the question of unification. Three quarters of Taiwanese residents still believe that the question of unification should be left solely to Taiwanese to resolve, while less than ten percent would let the Chinese decide. Moreover, the latter of the three generations all have unfavorable views of "the mainland."

There is also very little question as to whether younger Taiwanese see Taiwan as an independent country. While many of them see spending time working in China as a good opportunity and a resume boost, they still see it as studying abroad, referring to it as 出國 (chu guo or "leaving the country").

However, this does not translate into growing Taiwanese nationalism. Third generation Taiwanese are growingly disillusioned with politics in Taiwan, and it has a lot to do with this very question of unification. Young people see much greater problems facing Taiwan than the menace of an invasion from China, namely the three e's: economy, education, and employment. While older generation certainly do pay attention to how competitive Taiwan is in world markets, older politicians tend to focus more on more emotional issues like past injustices and de jure independence. On the other hand, fourth generation Taiwanese are "deeply anxious about Taiwan's economic prospects."

While young Americans worry about competition in India, China, and Europe, the anxiety young Taiwanese feel is directed almost entirely toward the PRC.

Add to this the fact that most young Taiwanese feel completely powerless in the political arena, and, I think, you can bid adieu any desire to get them motived about independence [emphasis mine]:

In their view, politics is distant and irrelevant. A 2004 Sinorama youth survey reflects this view. Asked "Do you feel you have the power tor opportunity to change or improve the current political, economic, and social situation in Taiwan?" 49 percent said they had no power at all, and another 40 percent said they did not have very much power.

The paper goes on to explain that young people view any of their politically impassioned peers as a little strange, and the idea of being a part of KMT or DPP youth groups on campus was laughable.

This covers most of what the paper says about the younger generations in Taiwan, but there is a lot more valuable information in the document, including a summary of the historic developments that brought about each generation.

I have to say that most of what's said about the political perspective of third and fourth generations of Taiwanese seems to jive quite well with my own personal experience with my Taiwanese friends. As I said in my last post, I think this bodes much worse for the DPP than it does the KMT. The study mentions that "almost half of young voters neither liked or disliked any political party," and the KMT has very little to lose now.


* p. 4: Currently most surveys that include this question find about equal numbers of islanders identifying as "Taiwanese" and "both Taiwanese and Chinese," while fewer than one in ten describes himself or herself as "Chinese" only.