Since the 1980s, simultaneous trends in Taiwan toward globalization and localization have contributed to people's construction of a past promoting local solidarity. Such rewriting of Taiwanese consciousness has relied heavily on a "rediscovery" of cultural traditions corresponding to Pingpu identity. (Pingpu identity is debated as an indigenous or a mestizo identity and used to claim that Taiwan is not Chinese.) Professor Pans examination of the development of Pingpu identity over the past ten years focuses on the 1996 event "We are All Pingpu" and uses both ethnographic and historical materials to analyze the role of Pingpu identity in rewriting Taiwanese conscious-ness.

Dr. Pan's research addresses the following questions: Who are the Pingpu? Why do some Taiwanese choose to be identified as Pingu while others do not? What is the significance of Pingpu identity for present-day Taiwanese consciousness? How has Pingpu identity been constructed? How and why do people rewrite the past when an identity is being created?

This is the final seminar in the Taiwan Seminar Series hosted by Shorenstein APARC.

Part of the Taiwan Seminar Series hosted by Shorenstein APARC.

Since the beginning of President Chen Shui-bian's second term in 2004, there has been great controversy about plans to rewrite or revise the national constitution and what that new constitution should include. Although it is largely seen as a declaration of Taiwanese sovereignty, one important area of constitutional reform concerns human rights for the 450,000 Aboriginal people of Austronesian descent on the island and their communities.

In the summer of 2004, a series of public consultations were held at the Indigenous Peoples Council in Taipei to debate how indigenous rights should be incorporated into the new constitution. After a long process of debate in Taiwan, as well as studies of similar cases in Canada, Latin America, New Zealand and elsewhere, a series of clauses on indigenous rights were drafted and submitted for deliberation at higher levels. These included demands on such issues as return of traditional lands, regional autonomy, and increased representation in the central government.

Professor Simon will discuss the relationship between the indigenous social movement and the Taiwan Independence Movement. How do there interest merge; and where do they differ? What does aboriginality mean for the evolving Taiwanese national identity?

Waishengren (or mainlanders) make up about 12% of the current population in Taiwan. This is an artificial category referring to the Chinese people and their descendants who were originally from mainland China and who have been settling in Taiwan since 1945. The term can be literally translated to mean people from outside the (Taiwan) province.

Despite the diversity of social and economic backgrounds, the Waishengren have shown a strong and almost uniform tendency in opposing Taiwanese nationalism or Taiwan independence. They have shown a strong inclination in supporting a unified and strong China, though the Republic of China, not the People's Republic, is still the country that embodies their collective identity.

Dr. Chang will address the following questions: (1) why do the Waishengren act, or are perceived to act, as one "ethnic group" in Taiwan, given the differences?; (2) what were the main historical reasons for their nationalistic feelings?; (3) what are the features of Chinese diaspora nationalism in Taiwan?; (4) how does Waishengren nationalism differ from the Taiwanese and Chinese nationalism that is found in Southeast Asia?; (5) what is the general and theoretical meaning of diaspora nationalism?

Kimberly Marten is a tenured associate professor of political science at Barnard College, Columbia University, and also teaches at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).

She earned her Ph.D. at Stanford in 1991, and held both pre-doc and post-doc fellowships at CISAC. She has written three books: Enforcing the Peace: Learning from the Imperial Past (Columbia Univ. Press, 2004), Weapons, Culture, and Self-Interest: Soviet Defense Managers in the New Russia (Columbia University Press, 1997), and Engaging the Enemy: Organization Theory and Soviet Military Innovation (Princeton University Press, 1993), which received the Marshall Shulman Prize. Her numerous book chapters and journal articles include a Washington Quarterly piece in Winter 2002-3, "Defending against Anarchy: From War to Peacekeeping in Afghanistan," as well as op-eds in the New York Times and International Herald Tribune.

In May 2004 she was embedded for a week with the Canadian Forces then leading the ISAF peace mission in Kabul. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Program on New Approaches to Russian Security (PONARS). Her current research asks whether warlords and gangs can be changed from potential spoilers to stakeholders in state-building processes.

Richard Bush is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and Director of its Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies. The Center serves as a locus for research, analysis, and debate to enhance policy development on the pressing political, eco-nomic, and security issues facing Northeast Asia and U.S. interests in the region.

Bush came to Brookings in July 2002, after serving almost five years as the Chairman and Managing Director of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), the mechanism through which the United States Government conducts substantive relations with Taiwan in the absence of diplomatic relations.

Dr. Bush began his professional career in 1977 with the China Council of The Asia Society. In July 1983 he became a staff consultant on the House Foreign Affairs Committee's Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs. In January 1993 he moved up to the full committee, where he worked on Asia issues and served as liaison with Democratic Members. In July 1995, he became National Intelligence Officer for East Asia and a member of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), which coordinates the analytic work of the intelligence committee. He left the NIC in September 1997 to become head of AIT.

Richard Bush received his undergraduate education at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. He did his graduate work in political science at Columbia University, getting an M.A. in 1973 and his Ph.D. in 1978. He is the author of a num-ber of articles on U.S. relations with China and Taiwan, and of At Cross Purposes, a book of essays on the history of America's relations with Taiwan.

Co-hosted with the Hoover Institution.