Taiwan's multiculturalism

Re-defining Taiwan and Taiwan's cultural and historical legacy has become a major endeavour in recent years. Taiwan's thinkers and politicians are busy trying to work out how best to unravel the reality from the propaganda a make a new sense of identity for the Taiwanese people.

Being from the UK I can identify strongly with this process and cultural shift. The UK and Taiwan are both islands and both have a long history of invasion and absorption of different cultures and peoples.

Rather than Taiwan seeing itself as a Chinese backwater, it is now seeing itself as a unique entity with a long and colourful history of cultural development leading to it becoming the first constitutional democracy in Asia, something that the Taiwanese now seem determined to maintain despite antagonisms from across the water.

Multiculturalism is at the heart of this new identity for Taiwan. Different from China's Han superiority "we won't hassle you, as long as you do as we say" approach to ethnic minority management within its own boundaries. Taiwan is learning to embrace all under one.