The Strategic Logic of Taiwanization By SHALE HOROWITZ and ALEXANDER C. TAN " n Taiwan, since the early 1990s, Taiwanese identity has rapidly supplanted Chinese identity. This has pushed all the main political parties to adopt policies favorable to the new identity, and brought the Democratic Progres- sive Party to power. Rising Taiwanese identity has also affected military strategies. It has accelerated the cross-strait arms race by alarm- ing Beijing, which in turn has led to an offset- ting buildup in Taiwan. It has also strengthened Taiwan's will to retain her independence and, thereby, led to newer, more unconventional defense strategies. One such policy is to enhance the ideological legitimacy of Tai- wanese nationalism in the United States and Japan. Another policy is to embrace economic integration with China-a development hitherto seen as threatening. A third policy is to deter a Chinese attack by credibly committing Taiwan and its allies to a more dogged fight to preserve Taiwanese independence, even under condi- tions where such a fight seems hopeless. Finally, a strong Taiwanese identity makes it more likely that China's increasing conventional military predominance will ultimately call forth a Tai- wanese nuclear deterrent. National identity andpolitical development: A distinctly Taiwanese national identity unfolded rapidly following Taiwan's democratization in the late 1980s. This process can be seen in many areas of Taiwan's culture and politics. Consider the changes over time in the familiar polls asking if people identify themselves as Taiwanese, Chi- nese, or both. From 1992 to 2004, those that con- sider themselves to be only Taiwanese rose from 17.3 percent in 1992, to around 25 percent in the mid-1990s, to around 40 percent from 1999 to the present; whereas those that self-identify exclusively as Chinese fell from about 26 per- cent in the early 1990s, to around 20 percent in the mid-1990s, to a bit over 10 percent in late 2001, to 6.3 percent in June 2004. ' Since the early 1990s, there has been a corre- sponding decline in the fortunes of Taiwan's tra- ditional ruling party, the Kuomintang (KMT). The KMT, which continued to rule Taiwan after being driven from the mainland in 1949, long presided over an authoritarian regime commit- ted to reunification with China under a noncom- munist regime. As the United States restored relations with Beijing, and Beijing modernized under Deng Xiaoping, the KMT sought to bol- ster its legitimacy. It admitted ethnic Taiwanese into a ruling elite hitherto dominated by main- lander refugees and eventually democratized the political system. Meanwhile, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)-the opposition party most closely associated with a distinct Tai- wanese identity and enduring Taiwanese inde- pendence-grew into a formidable rival. Those identifying as supporters of the DPP rose from 2.7 percent in June 1992 and 5.4 per- cent in December 1992, to a range of 10.5-13.6 percent in the mid-1990s, to over 20 percent in 1998, to a range of 23.5-26.6 percent since 2000. With slight downward blips in between, those who identify with the Kuomintang (KMT) have been close to 35 percent in June 1992, June 1995, December 1996, and December 1999. Since the KMT-derived People First Party (PFP) formed in 2000, the KMT and the PFP together have attracted around 30 percent-with the PFP declining steadily from a high of 17.5 percent in December 2000 to 10 percent in June 2004. 2 Table I shows DPP, KMT, PFP, and other major party vote shares in legislative and presidential elections since 1992.3 The DPP's moderation under Chen Shui- bian's leadership has been evident in the deci- sion not to seek a formal declaration of inde- pendence from China and in its market-oriented Shale Horowit7 is an associate professor in the Department (4 Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Alexander C. Tan is a senior lecturer in the School of Political Science and Communication at the University (Y Canterbury in New Zealand. 87 Vol. 168 No. 2 Fall 2005