One issue that regularly comes up in Taiwan is the thorny issue of national identity – do the people here consider themselves Chinese or Taiwanese? Clearly, this question has big implications for people’s views on eventual reunification with China vs. independence.

TVBS (one of the main (pro-KMT) news channels in Taiwan) commissioned a survey this week to ask people their opinions. The results were:

• 45% Said they were ‘Taiwanese’
• 44% Said they considered themselves both ‘Chinese’ and ‘Taiwanese’
• 6% Said they were ‘Chinese’
• 5% Said they didn’t know

[The original survey is here – it’s in Chinese & PDF]
These results were pretty consistent with 5 other surveys done over the last 13 months (although the year before that say quite a big shift from ‘both’ to ‘just Taiwanese’ – possibly as a result of campaigning for the 2004 presidential elections).

Of course, the word ‘Chinese’ has many different connurtations (ethnic, cultural, historical, political) which aren’t brought out in this survey (note that the term used in the survey ‘zhongguoren’ has more political overtones than other possible words like ‘huaren’), but the basic conclusion is quite clear:
If you call someone from Taiwan ‘Taiwanese’ then you’re pretty safe, but if you call them ‘Chinese’ you’ve got a 50-50 chance of causing offense.

Looked at from this perspective, it’s fairly clear why (a large part of) Taiwan has such a problem with China’s one-China principle.