KMT "Greater China" government ideology opposing revival of plains-tribe Austronesian culture

The Ministry of the Interior (MOI) of the KMT-controlled Taiwan national government has been active in opposing the rediscovery of Austronesian plains-tribe ancestry and revival of their Austronesian Siraya culture. Whereas Ma Ying-jeou pretended to a Taiwan-centric consciousness during the presidential campaign, upon his election and inauguration, he has pursued the ruthless Greater China ideology of the authoritarian one-party KMT dictatorship of his father's generation.

In the past two centuries, many of the lowland Austronesian peoples were forced to take on Han surnames of the larger Hoklo or Hakka ethnic groups and additionally the non-Chinese Manchu cue to symbolize submission to the Manchurian empire which had conquered and ruled several nations including China for several hundred years. The Pazeh and Siraya peoples were absorbed, their cultural distinctives almost completely destroyed. The Kavalan people of the I-Lan plain escaped this fate by moving to Hualien and living among the still culturally-strong Austronesian Amis people. Fortunately for the Siraya people, they had registered their ethnicity in the Japanese colonial era, and some had taken very unique Han surnames. So their descendants have been able to ascertain their ancestry and now seek to reclaim their cultural heritage while throwing off the Han culture that was forced on their ancestors.

But with the colonialist "Greater China" ideology of the Chinese Nationalist Party now currently in power in Taiwan, any attempts to revive non-Chinese Austronesian culture are either treated with neglect and indifference or even suppressed if neglect and indifferent do not do the trick to put out the fire of the cause. This arrogant dismissal of the legitimacy of these people's rights to reclaim their ancestors' culture that was taken from them illustrates the brutal elitist attitude of both the Chinese Nationalist Party in power and two thousand years of Chinese culture that consider all outside their domain as barbarians and almost less than human.

Please see the following news report. Taiwan needs representatives of every ethnicly distinct cultural group in Taiwan -- whether Hoklo, Hakka, Ami, Atayal, Bunun, Kavalan, Paiwan, Puyuma, Rukai, Saisiyat, Sakizaya, Seediq, Thao, Taroko, Tsou, or Yami -- to speak up. If you do not stand up to the Mandarin Chinese colonialist attitude now, your cultures will also one day die, through a slow death of neglect and even suppression by the government you yourselves helped elect.

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Following is a link to taiwanschoolnet.org about the revival and restoration work for the Siraya language.

Trend of Cultural Annihilation -- from the KMT

"... The Ma administration is gradually redefining Taiwanese culture as more "Chinese" than Taiwanese."

"... Mr. Ma is not the first Kuomintang leader to do this. The KMT embraced "Chinese-ness" for an entirely different reason: From the 1950s to the 1970s the dictatorial KMT-led regime legitimated its rule over the island by declaring that Taiwan was "Chinese," brutally suppressing local identities. Acceptance of local identities grew after Taiwan's transition to democracy in the 1990s.

Given this history, the claim that the people on both sides of the Strait belong to the zhonghua minzu is clearly colonialist: To say that someone belongs to the zhonghua minzu is to assert that they and their territory are part of the Chinese nation. It is thus common to hear Chinese nationalists define such disparate peoples as Manchus, Tibetans, Mongolians, Uighurs and Taiwanese indigenous peoples as "Chinese" and therefore, inevitably, part of China. To the Chinese, who constantly refer to their "brothers and sisters" across the Strait, this language legitimates China's drive to swallow Taiwan."

excerpt from "The Culture of Taiwan: President Ma Ying-jeou's symbolic gestures matter." - By MICHAEL TURTON | From today's Wall Street Journal Asia.

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