BOOK REVIEWS

Christine Chaigne, Catherine Paix and Chantal Zheng eds., Taiwan: enquête sur une identité

This is a work that in a timely way fills a gaping hole, at least in French. It is true that Taiwan's contemporary political realities and, to a lesser extent, its ethno-history were not exactly unknown to us—thanks to the efforts of a number of researchers, most notably Jean-Pierre Cabestan, Françoise Mengin, Samia Ferhat-Dana and Chantal Zheng. However, there had been no previous attempt to provide such a multi-sided and complete approach to understanding the unique features of this important island. Indeed, Taiwan is in this book implicitly and often explicitly treated as a “society” or “country” whose complex relation/confrontation with the Chinese mainland is only one of its dimensions.

A glimpse at the table of contents alone, showing 12 French authors (in addition to Chen Chung-yu, an archaeologist at Taipei's Academia Sinica), will surprise more than one reader, as few would have suspected there to be such an interest in Taiwan in France. History, geography, political science, ethnology and sociology are represented among the authors, without their approaches being discipline-based in any narrow way. In fact, the work features most of the members of the small community of French “Taiwanologists”, and each writer here is led to go well beyond his or her initial problematic. Their points of convergence (a sympathy for democratisation, a willingness to value Taiwanese identity...) are, beyond the diversity of subject-matter and approach, strong enough for the 15 articles presented to appear to complement and echo each other without excessive contradiction.

The sweeping introductory chapter by Catherine Paix (“Between China and the World…”) defines their common ambition rather well. The work shies away from the usual double denial: on the one hand, by the Chinese nationalists, of a specific history and identity for the island-state; and on the other, by the Taiwanese nationalists, of any organic link with the Chinese world. Instead, its aim is to assess a fundamentally ambiguous heritage, leading to an identity that is constantly wavering between several possible ones. Indeed, Taiwanese identity is unsure of itself to the point of being occasionally tempted to give up on self-definition, yet it remains something that is both hardy and unavoidable. Marked by the late arrival of a Chinese population that represents today a huge majority (over 90% of the some 4,000 years of Chinese history went by before their arrival...), the island was also very early on the object of other imperial ambitions, those of the Spanish, Dutch and above all the Japanese. Japan showed itself to be just as authoritarian as it was integrationist and a power that ushered in a modernity that did not exclude education and intellectual life. It was by measuring itself against Japan that the island consciousness was born. That newly assumed identity, not content to resist the strong mainland transplantations after 1945, in particular thanks to an economic dynamism that was by then already operative, gradually learned how to disarm, then charm its wild conqueror—and the Kuomintang found itself little by little “Taiwanesed”. Today, even more than through economic success that can also be fragile, it is in democracy—something unique in the Chinese world—that Taiwan's identity derives its legitimacy, a bit in the way that the Federal Republic of Germany described by Jürgen Habermas finds its raison d'être in its democratic constitution, and not in a national history that is too tainted with excesses that it could not possibly take on.

The first part (“The bases of a unique society”) brings together five contributions on several aspects of the pre-1945 period. Chen Chung-yu shows the early advances of the Neolithic period (agriculture, pottery)—from the time of the fifth millenium BC—, the growing diversity of technical cultures, and the elements of continuity right up to the various Aboriginal groups of today. The two chapters penned by Chantal Zheng complement each other, examining as they do through toponymy and literature the “three-man game” which, from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries linked Aborigines, Europeans and Chinese. The latter borrowed a significant number of place-names from the others. The Europeans, continuously present since 1858, often had more affection for the Aborigines than for the Chinese, themselves rarely taken with compassion for the indigenous population that was gradually pushed back into the mountains. Josiane Cauquelin returns more systematically to the “Aboriginal wound”, that is also a lasting open sore for Taiwanese society. Admittedly, democratisation has enabled a break with the excesses of the past, such as the “barbarisation” and roll-back of non-Hans during pre-colonial times, the violent repression under Japanese domination, then the forced assimilation with the Kuomintang. Aboriginal history, languages, and traditions are now recognised, but it is the lure of modernity that causes problems, with prostitution and alcoholism being rampant, and rural exodus massive, while tourism turns rituals into show. Finally, David Kempf and Chantal Zheng explore the (rather scarce) physical traces of colonial—both Western and Japanese—constructions. There, efficiency and modernity always prevail over ornamentation, enabling us to grasp some indications of Taiwan's special situation compared to the Chinese mainland, given that we are closer to the norms of Singapore or Tokyo than to those of Peking.

With the second part (“Development and the Emergence of an Identity”), we get to the core of the Taiwanese political machine. The two articles by Jean-Pierre Cabestan map out its interior (institutions, parties, election system) as much as the interface with the rest of the world, where relations with the People's Republic of China still play a pivotal role. The institutional process that, despite being a rich one, gradually destroyed the bastions of authoritarianism, appears ambiguous and incomplete as well as imaginative and promising: it involved decentralisation (but also a reduction of the many local powers), a confirmed presidentialism (but simultaneously the growing relevance of the Legislative of Yuan), a preservation of most of the bodies set up in the Nanking period, and the imprecise nature of their powers. The political parties, largely non-ideological, factionalised and affairistes, have nonetheless enabled the mushrooming of channels for discussion and demonstrated the possibility of democratic alternation of power. As for the island's various political currents, they are largely defined by their attitude towards China. In spite of the intensification of economic and human exchanges, and in spite of the inequality of both partners, reunification appears less likely than the maintenance of the status quo, and time itself is not necessarily on Peking's side. Christine Chaigne, in her very detailed analysis, combining law and history, of the evolution of Taiwan's international status, stresses two points that are hardly ever mentioned. In the early 1950s, when faced with the dual discourse of “one China”, there was in the diplomacy of several countries the temptation of underlining the absence of any incontestable severing of Taiwan's legal link with Japan. Moreover, more recently, diplomatic recognition of the People's Republic of China did not necessarily mean an alignment on its views on Taiwan. There were those who “admitted” its claims (like Balladur's France, different in that from De Gaulle's France), while others “admired” them, with others again being content to “take note” of them. As for Stéphane Corcuff, he shows the role of national holidays in maintaining the symbolic link with Greater China (many are political, much more than in France), and how the weakening of this link brings about a modification of these festivities, those that appeared to be less important having since 1997 been celebrated on a Saturday, which is a non-descript day off for the vast majority, in any case.

The third part (“A New Economic, Social and Cultural Reality”) is more eclectic, and some themes (Women's literature, by Catherine Morillot, or Sino-Vietnamese marriages, by Michel Dolinski), could appear to be minor subjects. But these six chapters help us to better understand what makes Taiwanese “common man” tick, his concrete experiences, his fears, his atavisms and his aspirations… Gilles Guiheux shows the development of consumerism: enrichment and ostentation, but also a certain discretion, even among the young, and the maintenance of a good number of the more traditional values. David Kempf highlights those dysfunctions that seem to be a part of the Chinese scene: having “connections”, vote-catching and corruption. On the positive side, they show the inability of the Kuomintang, contrary to the Communist Party, to set up tightly-controlled cells in society as a whole. On the negative side, local factionalism determines the success of the national parties, and constantly warps the political debate. Eric Sautedé shows the importance of “movements” (student, worker, environmentalist…) as much in giving birth to a civil society up to now constrained by the Party-state to the point of being atrophied by it, as in bolstering democratisation. Today, however, the collective momentum is losing steam. One may ask whether this a sign of disillusionment or, on the contrary, of the fact that the country is reaching democratic maturity where voting is a concentrated form of political expression, and where the individual, mistrustful of “great causes” and “great leaders”, finds it more judicious to fall back on activities with an immediate pay-off, or on the private sphere. Evelyne Micollier closes this important work with a table of the main curses that are the object of major public health campaigns, such as AIDS, drug-taking, alcoholism, addiction to cigarettes and the consumption of betel-nuts. Yet there again the traditional social structures (family) or the new ones (NGOs) prove themselves to be both unavoidable as well as compatible. No doubt that the institutional ascent of civil society is one of the “red threads” of today's Taiwan.

Translated from the French original by Peter Brown