Analyzing the Relationship between Identity and Democratization in Taiwan and Hong Kong in the Shadow of China
Taiwan also experienced colonial rule by the Japanese for 50 years after 1895, until the Chinese Nationalists accepted the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II. In the late 1980s, an intense debate over Taiwan’s national identity, on which the two major political parties, the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) and the newly legalized Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), took opposing views became an integral part of Taiwan’s struggle for democracy. The development of a new identity in these two regions was inextricably linked to their democratization. Young Hong Kongers and Taiwanese want to assert their distinctive social, economic, and political identities that differ both from that of their elders and from that advocated by Beijing. The return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 did not reverse these trends toward a distinctive local identity. The open contestation over Taiwanese identity for three decades after democratization has also led to a consolidated identity that is more Taiwanese than Chinese.