Taiwan: Identity, Media, and Culture

The Institute of East Asian Studies at UC Berkeley presents a discussion of Taiwan's national identity as reflected by the popularity of certain media

Speakers/Performers: Frank Liu, Associate Professor, Institute in Political Science, National Sun Yat-Sen University; Fang-chih Irene Yang, Associate Professor, Department of English, National Dong Hwa University; Ti Wei, Associate Professor, Department of Communication and Technology, National Chiao Tung University

Sponsor: Institute of East Asian Studies (IEAS)

Are We Family? Taiwanese People's Chinese Nationalism, Country Identification and Cultural Identification with “China.”

Country identification in Taiwan has been identified as a salient issue and concern in the politics across the Taiwan Strait, one that is connected to the dynamics of interaction between Washington, Beijing, Tokyo, and Taipei. Country identification of Taiwanese people is influenced by their partisanship, the perception of politically correct symbol of Republic of China, emerging national identity, and the feelings about Chinese culture. This study, based on a telephone survey data collected in early 2014 in Taiwan, attempts to explore how these entangled factors influence the perception of “China”, particularly the emerging of Chinese nationalism. Analytic models takes into account political interest and attitudes toward Japan in the recent territory controversy over the control of Diaoyutai (Sankaku) islands. As Taipei-Beijing relationship is smoothed over the past years regarding economic cooperation, this study provides a bottom-up perspective about how citizens in Taiwan perceive the image of China and about the extent to which nationalism affects individuals' country identification.

Fang-chih Irene Yang: The Politics of Interpreting Inter-Asian TV Dramas in Taiwan: The Cases of Empresses in the Palace and Hanzawa Naoki.

Two inter-Asian TV dramas have recently swept over Taiwan and become the focus of national attention: the Chinese costume/historical drama, Empresses in the Palace (後宮甄環傳) and the Japanese Trendy drama, Hanzawa Naoki (半澤直樹). The popularity of these two shows led to a proliferation of tertiary texts which try to interpret these two dramas and make sense of their popularity. In these tertiary texts, the Chinese historical drama is interpreted largely through the lens of the economy (via the discourse of the workplace). The Japanese workplace drama, however, is interpreted through the lens of not only the economy, but also politics in Taiwan. I will investigate these tertiary texts, ranging from variety talk shows, bestseller books, media comments and criticisms, and youtube video clips, and analyze how these two shows are interpreted and as well as the politics of these interpretations. Specifically, I will address these issues: How is the economy/workplace constructed? Why is it constructed this way? What are the differences and similarities in these interpretive constructions of the economy/workplace? Why? Second, why is the Chinese drama (which is largely about gendered political power) constructed through the lens of the economy, while the Japanese dramas (which is about work) constructed through political discourses? I want to situate these interpretations within the political economy of Taiwan as it is caught between Japan and China, both historically and in the present. Finally, the politics of gender: Empresses in the Palace deals with women’s power struggles while Hanzawa Naoki, men’s. As such, gender politics is central to Taiwan’s interpretations. My main focus here will look at how these gendered interpretations intersect with the dominant political and economic discourses.

Ti Wei : Rethinking the private and the public: Assessing the experience of Taiwan’s media reform movements.

The media news performance in Taiwan has been criticized as ‘gossipy, trivial and sensational’ for more than twenty years. This phenomenon became increasingly evident since the late 1980s, after the lift of martial law and the state control on the media, and was only more serious in recent years. The issue not only generated media reform movements but also a debate. Some critics stress that most content in major news media, particularly the 24-hour cable news channels, is too ‘private’ and lacks of ‘publicness’. But there are also people to point out that the above viewpoint relies too much on a conservative and rigid framework dividing ‘private’ and the ‘public’, and who argue that ‘trivial and gossipy’ content has its own ‘publicness’ and the potential to challenge the established value formation. My research aims to go beyond the binary thinking and attempts to re-examine the meaning and the significance of ‘publicness’ in Taiwan’s media in particular and in Taiwan society in general by reassessing the experience of media reform movements in Taiwan.