The Collective Wisdom of the Chinese Nation Meme

Taiwan is a small country near China. Its formal name is the Republic of China. That Taiwan has the political identity of the ROC is a historical accident and a result of the Chinese Nationalist Party losing the Chinese civil war to the Chinese Communist Party in 1949 and first taking refuge on Taiwan, then transforming it into a proxy China. From 1949 until present, the ROC has existed on Taiwan whilst claiming to be the genuine Government of China. In 1971, the representatives of the ROC left the UN, their seats taken by those of the PRC, and in 1979 the USA switched diplomatic recognition from the ROC to the PRC. From 1991 until 2005, Taiwan undertook a range of constitutional amendments and institutional revisions that ushered in a democratic and representative political system. From 1945 until the present day, Taiwan and China have been administered by two separate and de facto sovereign national polities.

Taiwan now has a popularly elected President and Legislature. It has two large nationalist parties. The Democratic Progressive Party champions a Taiwan national identity. The Chinese Nationalist Party wishes to defend a Chinese national identity. The President belongs to the Chinese Nationalist Party. This man is currently seeking to deepen ties between Taiwan and China. This is politically difficult and often unpopular with many Taiwanese. Some of the ties the President is building are economic and some are cultural. Below we can see an example of the use of a meme that aims to identify peoples in Taiwan and China as both Chinese found in the English language pro-Taiwan nation Taiwan News:

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday lauded the Overseas Compatriot Affairs Commission (OCAC) for juxtaposing traditional and simplified Chinese in its textbooks for schools for overseas Taiwanese.

Ma made the remarks in a meeting with overseas Taiwanese residing in Asia at the Presidential Office yesterday morning.

Ma urged overseas compatriots associations to observe a “truce on expatriate affairs” because he hoped that Chinese “from the mainland and Chinese from Taiwan can all get along and help each other, so we will not be ridiculed by foreigners.”

Ma said that while he realized the goal could not be achieved overnight, both sides could find the answer to the question with the collective wisdom of the “Chinese nation.”

“It is a good thing to see a common language bridge the gap between Chinese around the world through modern technology,” he said.

Two things are clear. First Ma is articulating a warning to China that his efforts to build ties are undermined when overseas Taiwanese and PRC associations compete for international space, recognition and influence and regard each other with suspicion (This warning likely was intended to include general interactions between the ROC and PRC on the world stage).

Second, Ma articulates a concern for the 'face' of Chinese peoples outside the Greater China area. Lauding a decision to include both simplified and traditional Chinese characters in textbooks for overseas 'compatriots' as an example of Taiwanese and Chinese expatriates working together, Ma labels this unilateral move by the Taiwanese government as using the 'collective wisdom of the Chinese nation'. The PRC or its overseas associations have not, to my knowledge, made similar move to modify their textbooks to include Traditional Chinese script.

Ma's use of meme directly implies that he regards both Taiwan and China part of the Chinese Nation. The purpose is to build a sense of a single Chinese nation incorporating both Taiwan and China amongst all Chinese overseas. This 'united front' is perhaps as much designed to prevent outside countries driving a wedge between Taiwan and the PRC as it is to build confidence between the two countries. This is also a statement meant to be noticed by Beijing - the use of 'Chinese nation' signifying that the core ideological goal of Ma's party remains a form of unification between Taiwan and China.

The problem with this nation-building meme is that it goes largely against the trend of national identification of Taiwanese and the pace by which they wish to see ties between Taiwan and China develop. Whereas the Taiwan-nation building memes used by the previous Democratic Progressive Party administration had the irrefutable logic of Taiwan's de facto political autonomy and a genuine mass sense of public identification as Taiwan nationals naturally supporting them, Ma's meme is attempting to reconstruct the Chinese nation embodied in the 1946 ROC constitution after a solid Taiwanese national popular sovereignty has emerged. It remains to be seen which set of memes can last the distance.