A plural identity
According to the most recent studies, the majority of the population claims a Taiwanese identity, with around 36% calling themselves Sino-Taiwanese and only 2-4% claiming to be exclusively Chinese. It's not difficult to make sense of the figures, which have probably not changed significantly since then. The former are often native Taiwanese, who came from Fujian or Guangdong centuries ago, while the latter are emigrants from mainland China or their children, who came to the island in exile with Chiang Kai-shek in 1949 to escape the Communists. Some consider themselves Taiwanese and regard the Chinese as their neighbors, while others define themselves as Taiwanese Chinese and regard the Chinese as compatriots. There is a certain rivalry between the "newcomers" and the native Taiwanese, which is also reflected politically, with the Kouo-Min-Tang on the one hand, which has never abandoned its territorial claims on mainland China, and the Democratic Progressive Party (PDP) on the other, which is now in power and is generally more inclined to maintain the status quo.
The question of Taiwanese identity is at the heart of political debate and the island's future. It came to a head in March 2004, during the presidential elections. Incumbent President Chen Shui-bian - who was re-elected - was a fervent advocate of Taiwanese nationalism. However, this nationalism is accompanied by a desire on the part of a majority of Taiwanese not to completely sever (economic) relations with mainland China. So, while the majority of Taiwanese today feel attached to their island as a homeland, this need not translate into a declaration of independence with uncertain consequences. President Tsai Ing-wen strives to represent this diversity of opinion through statements that illustrate the complexity of the question of Taiwanese sovereignty. The demonstrations in Hong Kong in 2019 against the extradition bill to the People's Republic of China reinforced pro-Taiwan sentiment, especially among the island's youth, who, faced with the situation in Hong Kong, no longer want to believe in the "one country, two systems" system. Highly educated and open to the world, they increasingly support a Taiwanese identity of their own, based on democracy and freedom. Many Chinese opponents, such as former Tiananmen Square protesters and Hong Kong students, have taken refuge in Taiwan.
Spoken languages
The official language is Mandarin Chinese, as in mainland China, with the difference that the Taiwanese do not use the characters simplified by the People's Republic of China at the instigation of Mao, who wanted to simplify language learning. Taiwan's main dialects are Minnan, also known as Fukienese or Taiwanese, and Hakka, spoken by 75% and 15% of the population respectively. English is also spoken in the major cities, although we shouldn't have too many illusions about the ability of the Taiwanese to speak a Western language. Even employees in the tourist industry speak little English, with Chinese and Japanese making up the vast majority of tourists visiting the island. In the metro, stations are announced, in order, in Chinese, Taiwanese, Hakka and English. The Chinese language has had its heyday in Taiwan; during Japanese colonization, the occupying authorities forced the islanders to speak Japanese, so that when Taiwan was handed back to China, some of its inhabitants knew no Chinese at all. So when you travel to the east of the country, isolated from the rest of the island, it's not uncommon to come across elderly people speaking Japanese.
But as soon as it arrived on the island, Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist government pursued an authoritarian language policy, imposing the use of Mandarin and banishing the Japanese language in the process. Today, however, numerous initiatives are seeking to revive Taiwanese languages, and aboriginal political movements have made the defense of their language a priority, thanks in part to the creation of several Austronesian-language media. Communication between the different languages is ensured by a single script, Chinese, which has always enjoyed great prestige. Its morphemic-syllabic system, in which each character corresponds to a morpheme, has fostered links between the different dialects. In Taiwan, a number of romanization systems are in use: Wade-Giles remains the predominant one across the island, but Hanyu Pinyin from mainland China can also be seen on the streets of Taipei. Once outside the capital, another system called Tongyong Pinyin takes over: created in the late 1990s by ex-president Chen Shuibian's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), this system was intended to compete with Hanyu Pinyin and incorporates consonances specific to Taiwanese languages and aboriginal dialects. To make things even more complicated, other systems are still in use, and mistakes and mix-ups are commonplace! A word of advice: look out for the main differences between transliterations (Hanyu Pinyin contains x, q and zh, while Tongyong Pinyin contains jh, iou and uei) and refer to the names given in this guide, which try to use the most widespread spellings. If the person you're speaking to doesn't speak English at all, there's a solution: smartphone translation apps. Simply type the desired phrase into the app, translate it into Chinese characters and show the other person. A practical D-system, which can be very useful when asking for directions, ordering in a restaurant, giving directions to a cab, requesting a room in a hotel, etc.
