This chapter aims to develop an understanding of the rise of Taiwanese nationalism associated with Taiwanese democratisation, and the impact of Taiwanese democratisation on the politics of the national identity question. It will also examine the possible effects of Chinese democratisation on the resolution to the national identity conflicts across the Taiwan Strait, and the relationship between democratisation, federalism and the resolution of the conflict between Taiwan and the Mainland.

The chapter begins with a discussion of the national identity question in Taiwan and the rise of neo-nationalism in Taiwan. It then investigates the impact of democratisation on the Taiwan national identity question, in particular the hypothetically possible and plural impacts of Chinese democratisation. The chapter develops several hypotheses concerning the impact of Chinese democratisation on the resolution of the Taiwan question. The idea of federalism, as a super-national arrangement which could manage national identity conflicts, its limits and resistance to it, is also discussed, with the suggestion that the PRC should be renamed Huaxiang Guo.

THE NATIONAL IDENTITY QUESTION

Taiwan possesses a number of unique historical, political and social characteristics that differentiate it from the Chinese Mainland. Taiwan's colonial history includes half a century of Japanese colonial rule from 1895 to 1945, during which time the introduction of the Japanese education system and language had a major effect on Taiwanese culture (Copper 2003: 16). Not only did Taiwan possess unified and modern systems of law, administration and education, but Taiwanese who had grown up under Japanese rule had also been introduced to a worldview in which Taiwan, as part of the Japanese empire, was superior to China (Chu & Lin 2001: 112). In the second half of the twentieth century, Western culture also became much more influential in Taiwan than on the Mainland. Political development has also taken a completely different path to that of the Mainland. After early decades under the control of the Kuomintang (KMT) government of Chiang Kai-shek and then his son Chiang Ching-kuo, from the late 1980s Taiwan began to move away from a system of government that claimed to represent the whole of China and towards a stand-alone democracy. In 1996 the first direct presidential election was held and since then rule of the country has changed hands between the KMT and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), indicating the consolidation of Taiwan's democratic system (Copper 2005).