TAIWAN’S SELF-CONSCIOUS NATION-BUILDING PROJECT

Some Taiwanese nationalists express, with alarm, the view that their country is about to be absorbed into a rising China, yet they are paradoxically optimistic that broader international trends will make it possible to secure de Jure independence as early as the end of the decade. Their first and most urgent task, in the process of thoroughly de-Sinifying the culture, is to imagine a new Taiwanese nation - a radical project that, in the aftermath of President Chen Shui-bian's reelection, is certain to roil cross-strait relations in the coming months and years.