An existential question: what does it mean to be Taiwanese?

何谓台湾人

Drum Tower

2025-05-13

48 分钟
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单集简介 ...

At the heart of Chiang Kai-shek's vast memorial in Taipei, a giant bronze statue of the leader sits facing China. For the exiled Chinese Nationalist Party and its faithful who fled China's civil war, Taiwan was a temporary home and China was the motherland. Decades later, only 3% of people in Taiwan consider themselves primarily Chinese. But plenty of people don't think of themselves as being fully Taiwanese, either. That ambiguity is being exploited by China's Communist Party, which insists the island is part of China, and has threatened to take it by force. Without a concrete sense of what it means to be Taiwanese, how will people resist? In a report that first aired on The Weekend Intelligence, Alice Su, The Economist's senior China correspondent, visits the island's tombs, memorials and streets in search of Taiwanese identity. Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts. Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+. 
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单集文稿 ...

  • The economist.

  • For the past four years, Alice Sue has lived in Taipei.

  • It's a city where the imprint of Chinese nationalism is still apparent,

  • from a sprawling memorial to Chang Kai Shek, the leader of the KMT,

  • to a network of streets named after Chinese provinces and Confucian virtues.

  • But Taipei is also a place where protests and pride marches crowd the streets,

  • and legislators brawl with one another in parliament.

  • As the economist's senior China correspondent,

  • and until recently, co-host of Drum Tower, Alice covered everything,

  • from the rise of Xi Jinping's power to the deepening US-China rivalry.

  • And living in Taiwan, she experienced China's military and psychological intimidation of the island first hand.

  • Part of China's campaign against Taiwan is an argument that there is no such thing as a separate Taiwanese identity.

  • Beijing's hope is that if and when it invades the island,

  • the Taiwanese won't have a coherent sense of who they are to stand up and fight.

  • So what is Taiwanese identity?

  • I'm Jie Hao Chen, a producer of Drum Tower and China researcher at The Economist.

  • This week, we're bringing you an episode that first aired on the Weekend Intelligence,

  • the podcast where economist journalists get to take a break from the new cycle and tell the stories that mean the most to them.

  • We'll join Alice as she packs up her family's apartment in Taipei and reflects on what it means to be Taiwanese,

  • and why that's a question that many people from the island struggle to answer.