Twelfth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

This paper discusses the changes in Taiwanese identity between 1992 and 2018. Taiwanese identity has been heavily influenced by political factors. Over the decades, the decline of the Kuomintang (KMT) authoritarian political regime, which was a stronghold of the Chinese Nationalist school of thought and was responsible for promoting Chinese culture in Taiwan, coinciding with the rise of the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP), which promoted a Taiwanese identity and contrasted the dynamics of Chinese and Taiwanese identities, allowed a distinction between a Taiwanese identity and a dual or Chinese identity to gradually enlarge. In addition to the impacts from dynamic of duopoly political power, this paper considers the influences from globalization that increased the inter-dependency between Taiwan and other countries, the impacts of changes of Global Logistic-Taiwan Direct Shipment mode of Information Technology production, and Patronism politics onto the changes of Taiwanese identity in recent years.