Taiwan as a Factor in China's Quest for National Identity

The premise of this paper is that China has a divided national identity, characteristic of a category of nation-states divided for political reasons since World War II. Until 1999, responsibility for this sense of national division could be diffused, but since the retrocession of Hong Kong and Macao, frustration and blame have focused on Taiwan, the last remaining symbol of China's ‘national humiliation’. Characteristic of such a divided identity are ambivalent feelings, aiming on the one hand to idealize and desire to incorporate the ‘missing’ or ‘lost’ segment of the nation, and on the other to punish it for refusing to return. It is important to understand that Chinese feelings about Taiwan are not a simple reflection of empirical developments on the island, but also project latent ideas about China's own unresolved national identity. China's attempts to overcome this division have undergone several changes, making significant progress while encountering difficult (and as yet still insuperable) obstacles.