Is Taiwan Chinese?: The Impact of Culture, Power, and Migration on Changing Identities (Berkeley Series in Interdisciplinary Studies of China) (Volume 2) - Softcover

Brown, Melissa J. J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520231821 ISBN 13: 9780520231825

Publisher: University of California Press, 2004

Synopsis

The "one China" policy officially supported by the People's Republic of China, the United States, and other countries asserts that there is only one China and Taiwan is a part of it. The debate over whether the people of Taiwan are Chinese or independently Taiwanese is, Melissa J. Brown argues, a matter of identity: Han ethnic identity, Chinese national identity, and the relationship of both of these to the new Taiwanese identity forged in the 1990s. In a unique comparison of ethnographic and historical case studies drawn from both Taiwan and China, Brown's book shows how identity is shaped by social experience―not culture and ancestry, as is commonly claimed in political rhetoric.

About this title

About the Author

Melissa J. Brown is Assistant Professor of Anthropological Sciences at Stanford University. She is the editor of Negotiating Ethnicities in China and Taiwan (1996).

From the Back Cover

"In this eye opening book, Melissa Brown shines an illuminating light on the divisive political issues now facing China and Taiwan as both struggle over how Taiwan's future will be decided. If identity has profoundly and rapidly changed in Taiwan over the past fifteen years, as she persuasively argues, extraordinary skill, patience, and luck will be needed on both sides if a mutually acceptable political settlement is ever to become a reality."―Ramon H. Myers, Senior Fellow and Consultant to Hoover Archives, Hoover Institution at Stanford.

From the Inside Flap

"In this eye opening book, Melissa Brown shines an illuminating light on the divisive political issues now facing China and Taiwan as both struggle over how Taiwan's future will be decided. If identity has profoundly and rapidly changed in Taiwan over the past fifteen years, as she persuasively argues, extraordinary skill, patience, and luck will be needed on both sides if a mutually acceptable political settlement is ever to become a reality." Ramon H. Myers, Senior Fellow and Consultant to Hoover Archives, Hoover Institution at Stanford.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520231821
• ISBN 13: 9780520231825
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352