 There's Dr. Jay Bruce Jacobs, emeritus professor at Monash University in Melbourne. Professor Jacobs and I became acquainted while we were both visiting scholars at the Institute of Taiwan History and Academia of Cynica in Taiwan last year. He has a very long history of studying about Taiwan and a wide variety of publications about Taiwan. Poor example, 38 pages of them. Welcome, Bruce, it's great to have you with us today. Good to be with you, Bill. Great, great. Well, let's get right into it. You were at Academia of Cynica. You were working on a project and wrote a paper called a history of pre-invasion Taiwan, which you also gave a very interesting talk about one day. Can you give us the high points of that? Okay, I think that it's important to know that when you look at the history of Taiwan, that to study the real history of Taiwan is something that's only been free to do for about 20, 30 years because the colonial government of Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Jing-guo forbade real research about Taiwan. They had certain parameters that you had to agree to and it turned out that they're all wrong. So basically, so many people in Taiwan and people overseas are now starting to re-look at Taiwan. And in this paper, I argue there are sort of three historical periods for Taiwan, three large periods. The first is what I call the pre-invasion or the pre-colonial period, which goes from the beginning right up to 1624 and from 1624 until 1988, there were six colonial regimes. By colonial regimes, I mean regimes that came in from the outside and ruled in the interests of the outsiders. Could you even know just for the benefit of the audience who might not be familiar with them? Yes, I was going to. The first one is the Dutch from 1624 to 1662. And during the same period in this period of time the Dutch were in quite some competition with the Spanish and the Spanish when the Dutch went to Taiwan, the Spanish set up a regime in Northern Taiwan for part of that period. The third colonial regime was that of the Zhenggong family, the Zheng family, which was led by a man named Coxinger who was famous in East Asian history. But when he came to Taiwan, he died within six months. And his family set up a regime that lasted till 1683 when they were defeated by the Manchus who had taken over Taiwan in 1644. So 40 years later, there was an uprising in Southern China that the Taiwan, the sort of independent Taiwan regime set joined in with the southerners. And so the Manchus decided they had to be conquered. And so the Manchus ran Taiwan from 1683 to 1895 when Taiwan was separated from the Manchu Empire and became part of the Japanese Empire. So the fourth regime was the Manchus. And I think it's important to say here the Manchus were not Chinese. They were foreigners as far as the Chinese were concerned. And their empire was twice the size of the previous Ming dynasty. And then the Japanese from 1895 to 1945. And then from 1945, Zhang Kaixue came across and took Taiwan. And it was the first time a Chinese regime based in China had ruled Taiwan in all of its history. And he ruled from 1945 right through to his death in 1975. And then his son took over until his death in 1988. And even though the communists took over in China, the regime itself was a colonial regime in that it was ruled by a minority of Chinese who ruled over the Taiwanese and who oppressed the Taiwanese and didn't give them any opportunities. So it was only... Oh, I'm sorry. You mean to cut you off? Well, then the third great period is the democratization period which began with the presidency of Li Donghui starting in 1988. He had been the vice president under Jiang Jinghua and he was Taiwanese and he started a big process of democratization which is continuing today. And I see that as the sort of third big historical period in Taiwan's history. I wonder, well, I'm jumping ahead of myself here. What, just sort of a long question so that I ask you just to answer this briefly as you possibly could. What do you think are some of the key elements to the character of contemporary Taiwan that these different periods of colonization of added? I'm not quite sure. I get the gist of your question. Can you repeat it please? Sure, sure. Okay, each of these periods of colonialization that you mentioned, what did they leave behind? What kind of characteristics did they imprint on the face of Taiwan that we can see today? Well, I think you'd have to look at the different periods and sort of pick what was relevant for each one. So during the Manchu period, before the Dutch came, there were no Chinese living in Taiwan permanently. Taiwanese came temporarily, some came to trade, some came to fish, pirates came to hide but they were all there only temporarily. And there are other foreigners coming in and out of Taiwan too because Taiwan was in a trade networks at that time. But it was only with the Dutch that Chinese were imported for labor. And it's only with that period that you start to get any Chinese community in Taiwan at all. Before the Dutch came, Taiwan was a disunited island of many Aboriginal, what we today would call Aboriginal tribes who were mainly headhunters. And so there was quite a bit of internecine warfare within Taiwan, a lot of headhunting. So it was dangerous to go too far away from your home. But at the same time, what was interesting was many of these tribes were very egalitarian. They were very prosperous according to what the Dutch said and what Chinese said. Some of them were matrilineal as opposed to patrilineal, which was quite different from what came with the Chinese later. So I guess what's important to point out about these colonial regimes is that even though there were Chinese migrants who came and settled in Taiwan, their identity eventually changed from a Chinese identity to a Taiwanese identity. And all of the regimes that came in are... I think that's a really important point right there. Yeah. And all of the regimes that came in... This transformation to a Taiwan identity. Yeah. And all of the regimes that came in as outsiders and ruled the Taiwanese as locals. So who were Taiwanese began to change over time. Originally it was only Aborigines. Later, Chinese came in who became Taiwanese as well. But the regimes that were ruling them were ruling on top of them. None of these local, none of the people who lived in Taiwan permanently actually ruled themselves until democratization. Interesting. Now, I wonder if you've had the opportunity to talk to any mainland scholars about your research. That is mainland scholars who specialize on Taiwan. I have talked to some. It's very difficult because there's certain sort of truth that the Chinese Communist Party has set up. And it's very hard for these people, certainly in a public setting, to say anything which differs from what they say. But what they say is very different from what the historical facts show. So they say Taiwan was part of China from year dot and that's just patently wrong. And they say it belongs to us, which is also patently wrong. So yeah, I have given talks in China. I was invited to give talks and they've been a bit shocked by what I've said. Whereabouts did you give talks? In Beijing and in Qingdao. Okay, okay. I think what surprised me most was that these are people who knew some of the details of what was happening in Taiwan politics. For example, that Chairman Ma Yingzhou, who was president at the time and Chairman of the Guomandong had attacked the speaker of the house. They knew that sort of thing. But they didn't know that what the Taiwan community was like when Zhang Kaixue came. So they would ask a question was when Zhang Kaixue came to Taiwan were all the people their aborigines? That's sort of a silly question. And that's sort of basic knowledge if you're doing anything about Taiwan, but they didn't know. So there's a real ignorance about Taiwan. Once I was on a high-speed train to the South in Taiwan and there was a woman sitting there who turned out to be from China. And she kept asking me about these really right-wing conservatives who weren't very important. And I said, I told her about all these people, but I said, why don't you ask me about the really important people in Taiwan? And she said, well, I don't know much about them because of what's in our press. It's restricted. You know, I gave a talk while I was in Taiwan. Let me see what's in October, the last week of October, I got invited to the Taiwan Research Institute at Xiangming University. And I think your point of view on Taiwan in line is probably pretty similar. And so I gave them my point of view, which in accord with the party's point of view. And this one student asked me, I talked about the increasing sense of Taiwan identity and how that's really mushrooming. And this one student, who said, there's very nice girls. But we're taught that we're all descendants of the Yellow Emperor. And so I don't think everybody in Taiwan quite ties that. And there was this look of disbelief that covered her face instantly. No, it's true that there is that problem. And people in Taiwan, well, first of all, the people in Taiwan, what are Chinese or Han Chinese? That's already problematic. So they've been DNA studies which show that there's no DNA grouping which deals with Han Chinese. Northern Han Chinese and Southern Han Chinese are quite different. So most of the people in Taiwan would have had their background in Southern China, rather than Northern China. So in that sense, they're not sort of, they're not sort of descendants of the Yellow Emperor anyway. That's a really good point. Your research is really interesting because when people hear about Taiwan, they automatically think that it's gonna be a discussion about cross-strait relations, which of course is the focus of geostrategic interest. So I think that you really understand Taiwan, you have to move way beyond that. And some people just don't wanna do that. They wanna stop at cross-strait relations and that's it. That's what Taiwan means to them. Well, okay, let me ask you this. What's Taiwan culture? What is Chinese culture? Well, both, the word culture, I mean it has quite a wide range of ideas and concepts. So it's sort of hard to define easily what Chinese culture is and what Taiwan culture is. But I think people in, and there's certainly links too because some of the people from in Taiwan have Chinese ancestors. So in some ways, there's some links in terms of language, in terms of, or at least adopted language, Mandarin, and in terms of marriage customs and things, there are links between them. But there's also a variety of ways but there's also a very strong differences in identity and feeling of the difference. So I'll just pump that in, yeah. So, and of course in Taiwan today, being democratic is a very important part of how people identify. I think this identity issue is very important and identity does change. So in Australia, in the 1950s, lots of Australians who were born in Australia and had never left Australia would talk about going home and they meant they were going to Britain. No one talks like that anymore. I mean, for Australians now, home is Australia. It's not Britain or some other foreign place. And in a sense, maybe some people in Taiwan felt that they too originated or had some home in China, some idea of home. But people don't think like that in Taiwan anymore. And one of the problems that the Chinese have an understanding, Taiwan, is that many people in China today have what might call a bloodline perspective of what Chinese are or who Chinese are. So they say, well, if your ancestors are Chinese, forever you're Chinese. And of course that's not true. The people in Taiwan have different perspectives. People in Singapore have different perspectives. People who've moved to Malaysia from China have different perspectives. And it's just the same as the people that came from England and went to Canada, Australia, New Zealand. They don't feel like they're British anymore. They've changed. And the Americans too, Americans had a revolution and had a change. So, but the Chinese changed too. And a very good example of that was American ambassador Gary Locke, who had Chinese background, but he also had- I'm right up on the break here. Okay. Pardon? We're coming right up on the break. Okay, well, let's take a break and come back to Gary Locke. You're watching Think Tech Hawaii, Citizen Journalism from Hawaii. Finding the intersection of our sense of place and our place in the world right here at home. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel, host of Life After Statehood. And I do this with our regular contributor, Ray Tsuchiyama. And we tried to make sense of all that has happened in Hawaii, all that is happening and all that should happen. Ray, what do you think of that show? I feel delighted to be part of Life After Statehood, since after 59, so many things happened to the state of Hawaii, yet things could have gone in other directions. And that's what I'm fascinated about, that Hawaii has had a great history, but could have an even greater future. There you go. I believe that. I'm with you all the way. Ray Tsuchiyama and me, Jay Fidel, we do it as much as we can on Life After Statehood. Come around and see what we have to say. Thanks. Welcome back to Asian Review. I'm your host Bill Sharp. My guest today is Dr. Jay Bruce Jacobs, Professor Emeritus from Monash University in Australia. He's joining us via Skype from Melbourne. Our topic, Taiwan was never a part of China. Pretty provocative title, but that's what we tried to do here. We tried to bring provocative shows. Before the break, we were talking about what is Taiwan culture versus Chinese culture. So let's go back to that and add on a little bit more to that. Okay. We were talking about the American ambassador to China, Gary Locke, who had been, he'd been the governor of Washington state and things. And he went to China and he was very confusing for the Chinese because he was an American and he didn't speak much Chinese. If he did, he spoke mainly Cantonese. He looked Chinese, but he didn't act Chinese in this Chinese sense. So for example, here he was a senior official, but he flew economy. He took his children to McDonald's in public. He carried his own bags. And all these were sort of seen by Chinese is really weird. How would a high official carry his own bags or fly economy or go to the Mackers? And it was very disorienting for them because they thought this is guy where the Chinese face, he's Chinese. Well, he clearly wasn't. And that sort of, the key point is, you might have had Chinese ancestors, but that doesn't mean you're Chinese today. Well, let me ask you this question. And I'd like to move on to some more contemporary issues. Looking at today's Taiwan, where's the balance? In other words, in your view, what percentage of Taiwan culture today is Taiwanese, what is Chinese? Again, that's a very hard question to answer. That's the kind of questions we like. Well, I mean, clearly the people in Taiwan value their democracy very strongly. That's one key difference, and the Chinese don't. One of the things that I meant- So that's Taiwanese. We put that on the Taiwanese side of the ledger. That's the Taiwanese value of their democracy. And in China, they may value it, but they can't say it publicly. One of the things I was going to mention before, which came up, but I forgot to mention it at the time, was that one of the things is very confusing for Chinese scholars about Taiwan. And so when they have these meetings from people on both sides of the Straits, they don't understand what these changes in Taiwan identity mean. To them, it's confusing, because as you said, they're everyone's supposed to be the children of the Yellow Emperor. And in fact, of course, the aborigines aren't. That's for sure. They tend to forget that. And so they find that very confusing. In Taiwan now, to get back to the identity issue, there've been a study, well, there've been a whole series of studies and surveys, but they all show the same thing, which is that Taiwan identity is increasing. And there's a really important survey done by an academic institution, and it asks, are you Chinese? Are you Taiwanese? Or are you both? And this has been done every six months since 1992. Originally, Taiwanese were about one in six. Now Taiwanese are over 60%. Only Taiwanese. And the number that are only Chinese used to be about one in four, and now it's down to about two or three percent. So you can see there's been a very, very important change in Taiwan identity in Taiwan. And what's even more important is that these Taiwan identity is even stronger among young people. So the people who have a Chinese identity are the old ones who, like you and me, won't be around for very long. And it's the young people who have even stronger Taiwan identity. So this isn't going to change. Well, I don't know about you, but I'm a permanent 25, so... Okay, I'm so pleased to hear that. Okay, well, I mean, actually, this has, when we think about it, this has geostrategic ramifications too, doesn't it? I mean, it says that there's the increasing sense of Taiwanese-ness, then probably these folks don't wanna be part of China. Exactly. And what's more important is we tend to... People in Taiwan too sometimes talk about Taiwan being tiny or small. Taiwan is not tiny or small. Taiwan is the middle power. It's got a population the same size as Australia, about 24 million people, which means its population is bigger than three-quarters of the world's nations. It's got an area which is bigger than two-fifths of the world's nations. It has a very developed economy. It has high educational standards. It's got a very substantial military. So Taiwan is a middle power. It isn't just something tiny that can be tossed away. So you've got 24 million people who value their democracy and who don't want to be part of China. And I think it's really important that the nations of the world recognize this. I couldn't agree with you more. And it displeases me that so many countries are sort of willing to throw Taiwan under the bus because they think they get a better financial deal from China. It's refreshing that two of Taiwan's two remaining allies in Africa, Burkina Faso in Swaziland, despite all these overtures by China, have decided to stay with Taiwan, which I found refreshing. Can I just, I think it's really important not to concentrate on the official allies that Taiwan has. They're 21, I think now, or 20, including the Vatican. But these aren't the important foreign relations for Taiwan. The important foreign relations are with the big democratic powers. So the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, India, all the European powers. I would agree with you, wouldn't I? I would agree with you. And these nations all have offices in Taiwan, which are staffed by foreign affairs officials to become head of the, which is called representative in Taiwan is actually the ambassador. These are prestigious positions and highly sought after in all these countries. And Taiwan too has its foreign relations people outside. They're foreign service people in all of these other countries. And they have offices which have diplomatic privileges like diplomatic bag, they have tax privileges, they have some relief from judicial charges. These are typical diplomatic privileges. And so what you have, even though these countries won't admit it, you actually have one China, one Taiwan policy to both countries. And more and more, and these countries by and large have said they recognize, they understand that China claims Taiwan, but they don't accept that. They don't recognize it. And the problem was that all these countries set up their relations with China when Zhang Kaixue and Zhang Jinguo were still in power. So Zhang Kaixue and Zhang Jinguo insisted that Taiwan belonged to China, but they weren't democratic and they weren't representing the people of Taiwan. So I think it's really important now that these countries realize that the situation is drastically different because Taiwan is democratized. And it's now run by its own people not being run by outsiders. And to me, that's critical. And I think under the circumstances is working reasonably well, this sort of model where you have an understood one China, one Taiwan policy, even though you don't declare it out loud. Good. Well, we have about seven minutes left in the show. Let's move on to some real contemporary issues. Tsai Ing-wen, how's she doing? I think a lot of people in Taiwan are who support the Democratic Progressive Party are disappointed. There have been some poor appointments made that haven't worked out very well. On the other hand, I think generally, certainly the Aboriginal population appreciated the fact that she made the apology to the Aborigines even though it perhaps didn't get the sort of press that would have been desirable in Taiwan at the time. And there's still some racism against Aborigines in Taiwan. So I think she's making some progress. I think there's a feeling, though, that it's been a bit faltering and hopefully will work a bit better as time moves on. Okay, prediction. Will she be re-elected in 2020? Oh, that's still three years away. So I think it's probably, but we'll have to see. I mean, let's just take another example. Who would have predicted even a few months ago that Donald Trump would be President of the United States right now? Good point, good point. Let alone three or four years down the track. Good point, good point. What do you see as Xi's biggest challenges? Well, there's domestic challenges and there's international challenges. Okay, let's look at you. Okay, well, the big international challenge, of course, is China. Okay. And the Chinese are sort of saying, well, you don't agree with us and therefore we're not going to do this. We're not going to send tourists. We're not going to do this and we're not going to do that. We're going to make life hard for you. I don't think she really cares about that, but it is a challenge. And it's a difficulty that the people in Taiwan have to deal with. Domestically, I think the critical issues are to keep the economy going to make sure that employment doesn't decline. We're down to two minutes, Bruce. Two minutes? Yeah, down to two minutes. Okay, well, I think those are the key issues in terms of the domestic issues. Try to make sure that the welfare system works. Try to re-jig the pension system so the country doesn't go broke. Those are the key issues there. Fix the medical system a bit. That's pretty good, that's pretty good. So those are the basic issues that are facing her and Taiwan as a whole. We probably have about a minute left here, but let me pump in this question. Do you think that Taiwan voters are a bit unreasonable? No, I think they're very bright and very clear of what they want. And I think one can easily understand why they have voted as they have in the past. The reason I ask that is it seems that they have such a short span of patience and they want instantaneous results of very complex questions and situations. I don't think that's entirely correct. Okay. And I think if you look at the past elections, you can understand how they voted and why they did. Okay. I hope that's within a minute. I hope that's a good thing. Okay, I think we're doing pretty well. Zori, how much time do we have left? How much? Oh, we're down to, we have one minute at this point. Okay. 45 seconds now. Well, do you have any concluding comments that you would like to share with us? And I guess we're down to about 30 seconds now. Well, I think just to sort of summarize, I think Taiwan has been separate during the Aboriginal period before the Dutch came. The trading was mainly with Southeast Asia rather than with, and it wasn't with China. And overall, Taiwan has been built as a non-Chinese place for a long period of time. It was only with Zhang Kaixuek that a Chinese ruler based in China ruled Taiwan for the first time in 1945. Great, great. Well, I wanna thank Professor Jacobs for joining us today. He has a reputation for offering provocative ideas and as such, he's given us a lot to think about. And thank you for joining us today. Our guest next week will be Russell Xiao, who heads up the new Washington D.C.-based Global Taiwan Institute. So join us then and thank you for joining us today. Bruce, are you still there? Yeah. Hey, thank you very much. Thank you. I think you came about really well.