Chapter 9 - Taiwan Inside and Out: Redefining the Self during the Pandemic

Summary

Abstract

This chapter examines how one of the key binaries of Chinese thought—that of nei–wai (internal– external)—has evolved during the COVID-19 pandemic in Taiwan and is reflected in its discourses on its neighbours. The authors argue that the pandemic has served as a meta-catalyst in which material and discursive conditions continue to transform the way that Taiwanese construct and understand their identity and their world.

Keywords: Taiwan, migrant workers, New Southbound Policy, nei-wai

The pandemic which began in 2020 set in motion a series of disruptions, or departures from the norm, rendering exceptional aspects of lives which were previously quotidian, and rendering mundane those which were previously novel. To cross a border became a distant memory, while to work from home shifted from novelty to necessity, and then monotony. More crucially, to hear of illness or even death in a neighbouring area or country became not a reason to mourn but a metric by which progress or its lack was marked.

Taiwan itself is a state of exceptions. Although a self-governed and democratic island of 23 million, it is excepted from the contemporary global community which takes the nation-state as a basic unit and building block. Governed by the Japanese from 1895 to 1945, Taiwan was then transferred to the Republic of China (ROC) after World War II. The ROC, a state centred around the person of Chiang Kai-shek, then retreated to its newly acquired island in 1949 after defeat in a civil war with Communist forces. Chiang and his own forces established a China under martial law, an alternative to Mao Zedong's PRC. This repressive state evolved, through much internal struggle and external pressure, into a fledging, and soon fully formed and highly transparent democracy. However, despite its comparatively liberal political situation, Taiwan remains unrecognised as a sovereign state by all but a handful of nations.

This journey has left the Taiwanese people with some exceptions of their own. The threat of invasion by the People's Republic of China has created a cognitive dissonance for the citizenry. Taiwan is at once an heir of traditional Chinese culture and a society in need of protection from the contemporary Chinese state.