FEATURE/Taiwan seeks national identity boost in classrooms amid China fears

By Teng Pei-ju, staff reporter

Taiwan is opening a new front in its efforts to counter China's threats to its security -- the classroom -- to foster a greater sense of national identity and awareness of China's threat, but scholars warned that the approach could blur the line between education and political indoctrination.

Previous Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administrations have sought to put more focus on Taiwan and less emphasis on China in local curriculums, but the new initiative goes a step further, intertwining security and the government's desire to raise awareness of the Chinese with education.

Education Minister Cheng Ying-yao (鄭英耀) told lawmakers in mid-April that his agency was developing teaching materials designed to forge a stronger national identity, including by showing students how to interpret Chinese threats.

"If there is no security for the nation, there is no safety for individuals," Cheng said, indicating that the government sees the classroom as a bulwark in the defense against threats to national security and sovereignty.

"What we hope to give students is an accurate historical perspective and accurate information and knowledge rather than muddled concepts that can be easily used to spread disinformation," he said.

The supplementary materials for high school civics classrooms Cheng talked about are being developed by a team of scholars and teachers and should be ready this summer, a representative of the MOE's K-12 Education Administration (K12EA) told CNA.

The source said the initiative is aligned with the existing curriculum, but provided few other details about the plan or examples of the type of terms, language or specific content that will be used to build a national identity.

Curriculum reflects politics

Speaking with CNA in a recent interview, Tseng Kuan-chiu (曾冠球), a professor in the Department of Civic Education and Leadership at National Taiwan Normal University, said education has always served as a means for those in power everywhere to shape national identity.

Certainly in Taiwan, the school curriculum has long mirrored shifts in political power.

After the DPP first took office in 2000, it promoted a distinctly Taiwanese perspective, placing greater emphasis on Taiwan's history.

When the Kuomintang (KMT) returned to power in 2008, it revised the curriculum to reassert China-centered views, which were again reversed by the DPP in 2016, by folding Chinese history into a broader East Asian context.

Tseng observed that the MOE's latest initiative was part of the DPP government's broader efforts to build up "the democratic resilience of Taiwan" against external influences and threats, and to promote internal cohesion.

"It's like when a typhoon hits, a tree branch may bend but it will not break -- it springs back," Tseng said, noting that a resilient democracy might feel the shocks of an authoritarian regime, but society will know how to assess, reflect on and respond to them effectively.

The MOE's initiative aligns with a range of strategies President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) announced in March to counter what he described as Chinese threats, including infiltration, espionage, United Front activities and cognitive warfare, with measures spanning the military, economic, and educational sectors.

Scholar concerns

At a news conference in March, Lai requested that the MOE and other agencies "work together to comprehensively strengthen young students' literacy on China and deepen their understanding of cross-strait exchanges," with the goal of helping them "have more confidence in the nation's future."

Tseng, however, cautioned against "brainwashing education," stressing that civic education should focus on fostering students' critical thinking and avoiding indoctrination.

In Taiwan, Tseng said, there are several interpretations of national identity, perceptions of China, and understandings of cross-Taiwan Strait relations, and these perspectives should all be reflected in teaching materials.

Favoring one perspective while downplaying dissenting views is likely to spark pushback in today's society, given the contested and fluid nature of the identity issue in Taiwan, he said.

According to the latest poll results released by the Election Study Center at National Chengchi University (NCCU) earlier this year, 63.4 percent of respondents identified as exclusively Taiwanese, 31 percent identified as both Taiwanese and Chinese, and only 2.4 percent identified solely as Chinese.

The annual survey continued to reflect the marked transformation national identity in Taiwan has undergone in recent decades, with a steady rise in those identifying exclusively as Taiwanese -- from around 17.6 percent in 1992 to over 60 percent today.

In the meantime, those identifying as exclusively Chinese and as both Taiwanese and Chinese have continued to decline.

Kuo Fu-chi (郭復齊), a civics teacher at National Tainan First Senior High School, told CNA that most teachers are wary of how their own political views could influence students and generally present differing viewpoints during class.

For example, when discussing controversial topics such as whether Taiwan's sovereignty remained undetermined, Kuo said he always made sure to present competing perspectives.

Available as needed

Kuo, who is a member of the material development team commissioned by the K12EA, sees the ongoing project as driven by "current global circumstances and directions."

He said the team had worked on similar projects in response to policy shifts, such as the introduction of the citizen judge system and the lowering of the age of majority from 20 to 18 in the Civil Code in 2023.

K12EA deputy head Tai Shu-fen (戴淑芬) said at a Cabinet press briefing in April that the supplementary materials were needed to support classroom learning because teachers feel the content of textbooks on China-related topics is insufficient.

Kuo would not go that far, saying only that the planned materials would "help teachers prepare and deliver their classes more easily," as civics covers "a wide range of topics, including politics, sociology, law and economics."

At the end of the day, however, it is up to individual teachers to decide whether or not to use the materials provided by the MOE in their class, he said.

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