Taiwan’s Aboriginal Culture Threatened by China

Rising number of Chinese tourists and ensuing pressure from local governments puts heavy pressure on Taiwan’s Aborigines 

For a relatively small country, Taiwan is blessed with no less than 14 recognized Aboriginal tribes, whose existence greatly enriches the ethnic and cultural fabric of its society. According to recent scientific research, it is now believed that Taiwan was the birthplace of all Polynesian Aborigines, thus placing its indigenous population at the center of peoples who have spread out to every corner of Asia. Though by no means perfect, the Taiwan model nevertheless provides the world with several lessons on how to make the center and the peripheries, where most of its Aborigines live, work. 

Now that precarious balance is under threat, and the growing influence of China within Taiwan is to blame. More and more, as Chinese tourists, investors, and officials penetrate Taiwanese society following the thawing of ties across the Taiwan Strait initiated in 2008, the island’s most vulnerable societies have had to adjust to an influx of people, money, and influence, a challenge of “modernity” the likes of which they had not encountered since the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) fled to Taiwan in 1949, or perhaps even since the arrival of the Japanese toward the end of the 19th century. 

My article, published today in The Diplomat, continues here.