It was used to make a clear distinction from those Chinese emigrants to the island after 1945 who are known as “Wai-sheng ren” or “people from (Chinese) provinces other than (the province of) Taiwan. The Western press call the “people of this province” Taiwanese or islanders and the “people from provinces other than Taiwan” Chinese on Taiwan or mainlander Chinese or Chinese mainlanders or simply mainlanders. Indigenous peoples, or Austronesians, are often referred to as aborigines or Formosans. Taiwan is inhabited by Taiwanese who form some 80 percent of its population, Chinese mainlanders (about 17 percent) and Formosans (3 percent). Incidentally, there are no official statistics on the breakdown of Taiwan’s Han Chinese population.

The Taiwanese majority on Taiwan have an ambivalent affinity with China. It can be an oxymoronic love-hate experience for a very small minority of Taiwanese, but by far most of the islander Han Chinese identify themselves with China ethnically and at least culturally, if not wholeheartedly.

Let’s examine their relationship with China historically first. All the ethnic Chinese on Taiwan supported and helped in Koxinga’s ouster of the Dutch colonialists from the island in 1672. After Qing China annexed Taiwan in 1683, Taiwanese rose against the Manchu — not Chinese — overlords on the island numerous times, so frequently as to earn the unsavory reputation of its “one big turmoil every five years” during the 212 years before 1895. The Taiwanese fought their war of independence in that year, proclaiming Asia’s first republic.

The Taiwanese take pride in their Republic of Taiwan, which precedes the Republic of China as Asia’s first republic — though it was so proclaimed mistakenly in President Ma Ying-jeou’s inaugural address on May 20 — by close to 17 years. But Tang Jing-song, a native of Guangxi who happened to be the governor at that time, was inaugurated as president and fled for Fuzhou in China in 12 days. The war continued for more than a half year, with Taiwanese and Chinese from the mainland fighting shoulder to shoulder against the Japanese. As a matter of fact, many Hunanese — like Ma Ying-jeou himself — laid down their lives for the cause of Taiwan independence, albeit it was a lost cause to keep Taiwan still part of China in fact, if not in name. That China was Qing China which not only the Manchu on the mainland of China but Taiwanese on Taiwan had come to accept. All Taiwanese in 1895 considered themselves Chinese who chose independence rather than submission to Japanese colonialists.

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