Understanding Taiwanese Confucianism 台湾的儒家

Image: China Daily (2011). Confucius’ birthday celebrated in Taiwan. Retrieved June 12, 2017 from http://english.sina.com/life/p/2011/0927/400733.html

Over the past decade, academic circles have been increasingly interested in exploring the relationship between Confucianism and modernization in East Asia. The term “East Asian Confucianism” means Confucian traditions in East Asian countries that have had cultural and economic links with China, including Korea, Japan, Vietnam as well as other political units that developed later, such as Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong (Little & Reed, 1989).

Although Confucian traditions have varied across the region according to the ideological positions of different governments, most East Asian countries have faced common problems in the pursuit of modernization where traditional systems have either collapsed or weakened. The most significant example of this was the decline of Confucian ideology where East Asian scholars condemned Confucianism to the “dustbin” of history as it was thought to oppose progress and modernity in both Capitalist and Communist economies.

But with the restoration of Confucian traditions in the 1980s, Confucianism again reappeared as an influential philosophy. As David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames note in Thinking Through Confucius (1987), the renewed interest in Confucianism has been so profound that many scholars identified the revival as a ‘Confucian renaissance’ in mainland China, Japan, and South Korea. However, what was commonly ignored in most of these studies was the various versions of Confucianism across East Asia, with “relatively little written about Confucianism in Taiwan” (Huang, 2009, p. 71).

Before explaining why this gap in the literature exists, some context should be given. Taiwan has had an independent identity apart from mainland China for more than a century. To quote Professor June Teufel Dreyer (2003) from the University of Miami, “the Polynesian cultures of the aboriginal tribes, occupations of varying lengths and degrees of intensity by the Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch, 50 years of colonization by an assimilationist Japan, and a period of strong American influence after World War II” (p. 1) have all shaped the development of a distinct Taiwanese culture.

Despite this, Taiwan became increasingly sinicized under Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Nationalist Party during the founding years of the People’s Republic. For example, streets were re-named with place-names from the Mainland, while Mandarin was learnt as the official language in Taiwan. Those who disobeyed and spoke Taiwanese, Hakka or aboriginal dialects were “fined, slapped, or subjected to other disciplinary actions” (Dreyer, 2003, p. 2). As history textbooks were rewritten and memorials re-created to fit into a national Chinese past, popular culture was also influenced by China. As well as restricting non-Mandarin shows and films, performers who spoke non-Mandarin parts tended to be portrayed as criminals or those with low-status jobs, giving the impression that not speaking Mandarin was associated with being from the lower class (Schmitt, 2011).

Because of this process, Confucianism in Taiwan was commonly understood in one of two ways. The first was where Confucianism as a tradition originating in China was merely planted in Taiwan with its universal elements not being localised. In that sense, “Taiwanese Confucianism” could be understood as just another representation of ‘cultural China’, relating to Tu’s (1991) idea of China as existing in three symbolic universes. The first consists of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, whose members are predominantly ethnic Chinese; the second of Chinese communities in predominantly non-Chinese societies; and the third of non-Chinese individuals who study and bring Chinese culture into their own communities. Confucianism in Taiwan belongs to the first universe of cultural China.

The other characterisation of Confucianism in Taiwan is that of a localised version of Confucianism without universal significance. As Chen (2009) notes, “historically speaking, ‘Taiwanese Confucianism’ during the Ming and Qing dynasties was nothing more than the ‘Taiwan branch’ of the Fujian School” (p. 11). What this means is that as the first Confucius Temple was built in Taiwan in 1665, and Confucianism became a key part of Taiwanese architecture, education, and national rites, this localised branch of Confucianism has only ever been significant in Taiwan.

However, the reality of how Confucianism developed in Taiwan is much more complex. On the one hand, Confucianism was applied to serve political ends as certain ideological values of Confucian thought, such as loyalty, patriotism, and filial piety, were promoted by the government in standardized textbooks (Huang, 2009). Specifically in the postwar period, certain facets were also selected by political elites to create an “official Confucianism”, whose goal was to support the state ideology by creating a highly selective interpretation of Confucian ideology. This sort of misinterpretation and misapplication of Taiwanese Confucianism was not an exceptional occurrence in history. Even in China, at the start of Emperor Wu’s reign during the Han dynasty (140–86 BCE), all non-Confucian schools were banned as Confucianism was utilized and distorted by the officialdom (Huang, 2009).

At the same time, in contrast to official Taiwanese Confucianism, Confucianism was also interpreted by intellectuals such as Xu Fuguan (1902–1982), as it became a key school of thought to resisting foreign influence. In Development of Confucianism in Taiwan, Chen Chao-ying (2014) pointed out that Confucianism in Taiwan led the territory to oppose the Qing and support reinstatement of the Ming, criticize Japanese occupation, and resist wholesale Westernization during the period after Second World War. In that case, clashes between the Taiwanese and Japanese and the incoming Mainlanders after 1945 shows that the cultural and intellectual tradition in Taiwan was diverse, complex, and multifaceted.

As the revival of Confucianism continues throughout East Asia, the history of Confucian development is not as clear-cut as is usually imagined. Rather than simply being part of China’s cultural sphere of influence or as an indigenised ideology in Taiwan, Confucianism has been influenced by a number of cultural, political, and economic factors that were both local and global, allowing the tradition to develop “in the unique context of the interaction between Taiwan and China, tradition and modernity, and indigenous and foreign culture” (Huang, 2009, p. 8). For future research, the question remains as to what are the prospects for Confucian tradition in Taiwan with the challenges of air, water, and industrial pollution that accompany industrialisation in addition to the other challenges of modernisation. More work needs to be done to investigate these processes.