Where do Austronesians come from? The linguistic war between Beijing and Taipei
Mainland Chinese scholars are increasingly challenging the Out-of-Taiwan theory for aboriginal peoples whose ancestors crossed the ocean and settled thousands of miles. This comes as Beijing and Taipei continue their battle over alliances in the Pacific.
Milan (AsiaNews/Agencies) – A red thread binds together peoples who today live in countries and islands thousands of kilometres apart but with a single root, traceable in their languages, from an original stock found among the Indigenous peoples of Taiwan.
This is how the Austronesians are defined, a large group of peoples from Southeast Asia and many Pacific islands, numbering some 400 million people scattered over an immense portion of the planet, from Madagascar and New Zealand to Easter Island, off the coast of Chile.
This is the prevailing linguistic theory that binds them to the 16 aboriginal groups recognised in Taiwan. Put together, they are but a small minority – 600,000 people or just 3 per cent of the population – marginalised for decades, sharing the same fate of tribal groups everywhere else.
But political tensions are now bringing them to the forefront of a new ideological war of words in the world of academia, pitting the mainland against its “rebel province”.
In the People’s Republic of China, more and more studies are trying to demonstrate the groundlessness of the Taiwanese origin of the Austronesians, arguing on the contrary that their true toots are on the Chinese mainland.
The South China Morning Post recently published a piece citing an article published in January by an outlet affiliated with the National Ethnic Affairs Commission.
Signed by Prof Ao Peng, from Fujian University of Technology’s Austronesian Language Family Research Institute, the cited article argues that the “Out-of-Taiwan” theory is baseless, and that the origin of Austronesian peoples lies in communities that lived 8,400 years ago along the southeastern coast of mainland China, in the present-day provinces of Fujian, Zhejiang and Guangdong.
“In recent years, pro-independence forces in Taiwan have sought to divide the Chinese national community by promoting separatist rhetoric, claiming that Taiwan’s Austronesian peoples are not part of the Chinese nation and have not been influenced by Chinese civilisation,” Ao writes in the article. “This narrative aims to deliberately erase the undeniable fact that people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait share common ancestral roots.”
More specifically, the scholar dwells on ancient Austronesian elements present in the languages and dialects widely spoken in southern China, such as the Zhuang-Dong languages, also known as "Tai-Kadai", an aspect seemingly neglected by the proponents of the Out-of-Taiwan theory.
It is not hard to see the political side of this linguistic dispute. For Beijing, the inhabitants of the mainland and Taiwan are part of a single “Chinese national community”.
Yet, as late as 1624, when the Dutch occupied the southern part of Taiwan, only a few hundred ethnic Chinese, mostly fishermen from the province of Fujian, lived on the island, while the rest of the population was made up of aboriginal communities.
Things changed in 1662, when Prince Zheng Chenggong (known as Koxinga in Western sources) seized Fort Zeelandia (Tainan), the main Dutch outpost. He was the pretender to the throne of the Ming dynasty and engaged in resistance against the Qing conquest of China.
Some 20 years later, in 1683, the Qing ended up defeating Koxinga’s short-lived kingdom and extended their control over Taiwan after breaking the last Ming resistance. At that moment, Beijing exercised control over the island for the first time.
In recent years, the Taiwanese government has focused on rediscovering the Taiwanese roots of the Austronesians, partly because of the importance of its relations with Pacific island nations.
During his visit last year to the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and Palau, Taiwanese President William Lai Ching-te emphasised Taiwan's shared Austronesian heritage with the three nations, saying he felt deeply that “we’re like a family.”
He expressed similar sentiments during his visit to the US territory of Guam.
In Taiwan, some observers see linguistic studies by mainlanders as a new offensive to undermine the island's international influence.
In this dispute, however, what remains in the background is the ambition of the aboriginal peoples of Taiwan to develop their own identity beyond any geopolitical consideration.
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10/10/2016 17:09
