Taiwan must come to terms with its identity crisis if it plans to move forward

It's not easy for me to say this. It comes across as arrogant and condescending, at best. Taiwan first entered into the sphere of my like over 7 years ago, and I was pretty jazzed on the place from the get go. I won a competition to be part of a cultural exchange program that would let me have a short homestay with a local family while I was toured around parts of the island to learn more about the culture and history. Actually, I had already showed up prepared to do my best to dive into life on the island. This included a English teaching certificate and a semester of Chinese language. Over the first many months it was essentially a passionate love affair that only got better. As an exchange student in Hong Kong for a semester, that was been my first fling, but actually living and earning money in Taiwan, on an open ended time frame, I felt connected to the island.
I remember vividly the first time my radar picked up a signal that told me something was off with the identity. I was in the middle of another day of teaching, the only thing of interest at that time was the 2012 Olympics were happening in London. One of the topics which kept coming up was the Olympics and some of the sports and athletes we were interested in. Now people generally tend to show a degree of pride for their country and their athletes. But as I made the rounds asking different students, again and again I would hear support for athletes and teams from other countries, but almost never from Taiwan. Finally, I dug deeper with one of the male students who I knew was a big sports fan, had an above average command of English as well as a little extra confidence to express himself instead of simply feeding the teacher what he thought I wanted to hear. So when he told me the countries he was rooting for but didn't bother to mention Taiwan, I asked why? He simply said Taiwan sucks in the Olympics and they don't qualify or win medals.
In fact, there's truth in his statement, so at the time I didn't take it as any kind of a sign about a larger issue. If your country doesn't do well in a sport you like (such as basketball which is popular in Taiwan), but most of the stars you know are from the NBA, then it's not unreasonable that you'll root for the American team. Perhaps similar to how many Americans that like soccer follow the English Premiere League instead of the American MLS.
But there was still something that startled me a bit about his comment. For a young man, he seemed so quick and comfortable to disparage his own identity and to instead prop up another. Sure it's sports we're talking about, and a young man, so certainly it wouldn't be wise to overanalyze this type of comment.
However, it would be a few years later, in a similar setting, but now in China, with the 2016 Olympics unfolding. And to see the energy and passion of those Chinese students and they bragged and boasted about how many golds, silvers and bronzes China was winning. This reminded me more of the patriotism I had grown up around in America, and contrasted greatly with that interact in Taiwan.
I again returned to Taiwan a year later, but this time saw Taiwan in quite a different light. For one thing, there was a new ruling party in Taipei, with a much colder and more distant relationship with the Beijing government. The dynamics and relationship between the two had changed more markedly than I had expected since my first introduction to Taiwan in 2011, when it seemed safe to think the status quo would persist and slowly evolve over the coming years and decades.
I had also changed how I saw Taiwan. While my initial introduction in Taiwan had turned me into a bit of a fanboy about the potential of the island. My two years in the belly of the beast of China forced me to come to terms with a starker and less ideal situation for Taiwan.
At the beginning of 2018, I had a chance to again relocate this time to Myanmar, one of the few places in Asia that might have a legitimate claim at actually being more politically and culturally complex than all the other politically and culturally complex regions of East/SE Asia. Here was this ass poor (economically) country that was just coming out of a cultural dark ages. If China were to represent hyper-patriotic identity and Taiwan hyper-disillusioned identity, Myanmar must certainly be closer to the Taiwan end of the spectrum (if not even beyond it). However, to my (somewhat, but also not really) surprise, Myanmar demonstrated a strong sense of pride, emphasizing their strengths, the heritage, and confident they would continue to rise doing better and better. Perhaps they didn't earn the number of medals China did, but you wouldn't know it by the pride they exuded for their country.
So as I tried to make sense of all this, I reflected on the history of Taiwan. The concept of identity kept bouncing around my head. What is Taiwan's identity. Where does it come from? How does Taiwan's history relate to its identity, and how does its identity relate to its future.
So all this takes me back to my original comment, which is hard for me to say, but I also feel it needs to be said. Taiwan lacks a clear sense of identity. It's not really Taiwan's fault either. I think anyone in Taiwan's position would wind up with a similar confused sense of self.
Let's consider the history for a moment. Taiwan is a place where lots of aboriginal tribes lives. They don't see themselves as unified, but rather a often shifting set of alliances in order to compete with each other for resources. Han Chinese begin coming over to the island, but they are mostly traders and pirates, not exactly the nation building types keeping on promoting a unified identity. Some Europeans briefly show up, do their thing for a bit, but it doesn't last long. The Qing take over in China, but the last remaining Ming loyalists survive on Taiwan. So already we see some distinct signs of distorted identity. China becomes Qing, but Taiwan remains Ming. Eventually the Qing claim control of the island, but they do it in a very ambivalent way, claiming only part of the island is Qing controlled, and leaving the other part of the island to the Aboriginals. The Japanese rise in power in the region and take steps to secure control over Taiwan, which the control in various ways over the next 50 years. During this period, the Taiwanese, of which there is not a singular group, struggle in how to relate to, resist against, and generally deal with the Japanese (and the Japanese likewise struggle in the best ways to manage the island the people on it). The Taiwanese fight for the Japanese during World War 2, but then soon after, in 1949 the Nationalist government loses the Chinese Civil War and flee to Taiwan. So they were Japanese for 50 years, but now suddenly there are home to the entire Nationalist loyalist population, while the Communists began to full run Mainland China. Now a strong divide begins, in which the local Taiwanese are oppressed by the Nationalists, but the Nationalists also make efforts to form a distinct anti-Communist identity on Taiwan. Communist China stumbles many times, but eventually begins rising. The Nationalists slowly fade, and Taiwan rides of a modern of development and stability. They leverage their Chineseness but also their otherness to serve as a strategic middleman. Their ambiguous identity during the Japanese period and again during economic globalization allowed Taiwan to adapt, morphing to fit the needs and expectations of different groups. But this role usually only lasts so long, before the complex interrelated roles shift too much, and their lack of identity goes from being a strength to a liability.
Thus, through Taiwan's history, they have struggled to have and develop and project a distinct identity. At times this has served them well, but they are currently as a point where they are struggling with their role and relationships. This lack of identity trickles down to the young people, how they see themselves and how they interact with the world. Identity is important. It's important to have some sense of who you are, no matter how bad the current situation is. Taiwan seems to lack that identity. And it's my belief that until Taiwan comes to terms with lacking identity and then taking steps to develop that identity, they will increasingly continue to struggle on the world stage. And on an individual level, the people will struggle, choosing either to leave their island for more stable locals, or simply accepting whatever status quo is pushed upon them, hoping not to rock the boat too much and pray for better days ahead.