TAIPEI — During last month’s election day in Taiwan, 21-year-old Lin Tingyu was hurrying to the Democratic Progressive Party headquarters in Taipei. Despite the excited atmosphere of the party’s winning results in the Jan. 13 race for president, Lin found himself less enthusiastic than others.
Lin is a “new second generation” and a “new resident.” These terms emerged with the launch of the New Southbound Policy in 2016, replacing the previous labels “mixed-race children” or “children of foreign spouses.” Thanks to this policy, these populations have gone from societal rejection to being designated “New Southbound Pioneers” by the government.
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Living in Taiwan yet connected to a distant “motherland,” members of the new second generation find themselves straddling two worlds. While their immigrant mothers keep a low political profile — focusing on the economy and unwilling to vote — many second generations are seeking to shape their identity through political participation, and to change Taiwanese society’s perception of them.
As of 2023, Taiwan’s population of nearly 23.35 million included more than 590,000 first-generation immigrants. Approximately 290,000 of them have the right to vote, including some 150,000 immigrants from China, Hong Kong and Macau and some 110,000 immigrants from Vietnam. Approximately 400,000 second-generation immigrants have the right to vote. The number of Taiwan’s new residents and their children is nearly 1 million, and those who have the right to vote account for nearly 4% of Taiwan’s voters. Yet the recent election paid minimal attention to the demographic’s concerns.
In the city of Tainan, members of the Gramophone for the New Generation: Migrant Youth Initiative Front expressed disappointment with the election results. Almost all of them voted for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), while the rest voted for the Era Force, the Greens and other small parties. More attuned to new residents’ rights, these smaller parties did not pass the 5% vote threshold and failed to secure legislative seats.
Lin, a member of the Gramophone team, maintained a facade of celebration but carried a deep-seated disappointment. In front of the foreign media, he and his friends loudly sang the DPP’s two campaign songs, “Stand for Taiwan” and “The Road” and chanted “We are Taiwanese”. At 8:30 p.m., Lai Ching-te and Hsiao Bi-khim were announced the winners of the presidential race.
Lin said the phrase “We are Taiwanese” really touched a sore point for him.
“Not Taiwanese enough”
Lin’s personal journey reflects the struggles of the new second generation. Raised in Taichung by an Indonesian-Chinese mother, Sunny, his early life was marred by financial hardships and societal prejudice due to Indonesia’s exclusionary policy and Taiwan’s discrimination.
His mother’s life in Taiwan was difficult. His father earned low pay as a construction worker, but he spent a lot on drinking and prostitution, and he neglected his family.
Sunny was treated badly by her husband’s relatives, who called her a foreign domestic helper, and by her husband, who considered her a “bought wife”.
“They used my second-generation identity to deny my life experience in Taiwan.”
As a child, Lin’s friends and relatives did not treat him differently. “I looked just like any other Taiwanese, and you couldn’t tell by my accent,” he said. But in high school, his classmates began to taunt him about his second-generation Indonesian identity. At university, he participated in the student government. Curious about politics and finance, he did part-time work in election-related jobs for more than three years. Yet people still mocked him.
“I’ve always been confused, what does it mean to not be Taiwanese enough? They used my second generation identity to deny my life experience in Taiwan,” Lin said. The question of “being Taiwanese enough” is a difficult one for many new second generation Taiwanese.
Always a foreigner
Fellow Gramophone member Liu Junliang lives in Tainan. His mother Belinda is from Chongqing, China and came to Taiwan with her husband.
Friends and family would warn Liu’s father, “Watch out for your wife”, and remind the family to be careful of money being stolen by their Chinese daughter-in-law. At work, some colleagues would tell Belinda to “Call Xi Jinping and tell him not to hit us”.
When Liu was a child, he was proud of his “mixed race” identity and would say that his mother was from China. But after the 2008 Chinese milk scandal, he began to experience Taiwanese unkindness toward China. He wished that his mother would not show up at school and expose his identity, so he could remain invisible as a Taiwanese.
A native of Taiwan, Liu said, “Sometimes I even forget that I am not a ‘pure Taiwanese’. Still, society reminds me again and again that I’m a foreigner.”
Liu thinks the government has failed to listen to new residents’ voices.
In university, he wanted to make some changes by introducing his classmates to his mother’s culture through food. He served chicken and snacks, but his classmates weren’t used to the spicy flavors of Chongqing. They also thought that Chinese food might be unsafe to eat. “They joked that Chinese snacks were full of the periodic table of elements,” Liu said.
The 2024 vote was the second time Liu had participated in presidential and legislative elections. Although he grew up in a pan-Blue-leaning family, he rejected the KMT’s arguments and President Tsai Ing-wen’s “Resisting China and Protecting Taiwan” slogan. He voted for James Soong (People First Party) the first time he cast his ballot. This January, he planned to cast a negative vote to show his dissatisfaction with the three groups of candidates, believing that none could meet his expectations for the new resident policy. But he later decided to vote for Lai, fearing that the other two groups of candidates would be elected.
In the legislative election, Liu voted for the Era Force, “a political party that has risen from the Sunflower Movement, and evolved from civil society into a substantial display of political power. It meets young people’s imaginations of politics, coupled with their long-standing concern for the rights and interests of minorities.” Liu thinks the government has failed to listen to new residents’ voices. He says people do not care about their rights and interests. Lin was disappointed by the party’s lack of legislative seats.
Confused identity
Li Yijing, a political science student, has participated in many deliberative democracy camps and served as a moderator. A DPP legislator in Tainan City recognized Li’s public affairs experience and invited her to join the legislator’s administrative team, to which Li says she replied, “But my mom is Chinese, won’t you mind?”
Li’s mother, Meng Di, who is from Guizhou, China, married a Taiwanese man and came to Taiwan in 2001 after giving birth to her daughter.
Life in Taiwan was very different from what Meng had imagined, as she had no work permit for the first two years. Then she was limited by her academic qualifications and was only able to find part-time low-paying jobs. Eventually, Meng chose to live between Taiwan and China, often staying in Guizhou for several months at a time.
In her mother’s absence, Li had to learn to be independent, and often walked to and from school alone. She envied her classmates and complained about her mother. Since she was a child, Li Yijing has actively learned Taiwanese and participated in Taiwanese and Mandarin speech contests, saying that she wanted to “turn herself Taiwanese”.
At university, Li said she had to work twice as hard to prove she was good enough.
It wasn’t until Li saw her mother’s diary that she understood Meng’s sacrifice and pain and that her mother was happy in Guizhou with her own job, her loving family and the house she had earned on her own.
“I realized that I didn’t have a choice, China didn’t want me.”
Li often traveled to Guizhou with her mother and always thought she could choose between the two countries. But during the 2019 Hong Kong protests, she often reposted information about the events on social media. When she entered China from Macau, she was stopped and questioned by customs officials. They asked her to fill out a very detailed form, and in the nationality section, Li hesitated when writing “Taiwan”, not knowing how they would react.
Meng said Li must have gotten into trouble for forwarding political information. The experience scared Li’s parents and friends in China, who urged her to stay out of politics during big events or elections.
“If a war happens, because of my good feelings toward my family in China, I might choose to flee China.” Li Yijing said, “But after that check, I realized that I didn’t have a choice, China didn’t want me.”
Since then, Li Yijing, who cares about and is actively engaged in politics reminds herself not to be on the front line. “The cross-strait relationship has confused my identity,” she said.
What to expect from the new government?
President-elect Lai has not proposed any groundbreaking new resident policy. He is expected largely maintain current policies and focus on amendments, such as strengthening the special unit for new residents and expanding the use of the New Resident Development Fund. The New Southbound Policy, promoted by the Tsai government, is also expected to continue.
The new second generation has opinions on the New Southbound Policy, including the foreign interview system. Lin Tingyu said that because it is promoting the New Southbound Policy, “Taiwan should abolish foreign interviews” which cause problems with businesses. He also said the country should stop suspecting that foreigners who want to marry Taiwanese people only do so under false pretenses or with bad intentions.
In the January 2024 election, four new residents, nominated by three different parties, were on their legislative lists. Two were were elected: Luo Meiling (DPP), who was re-elected, and Mai Nguyen (CPP). That means that new residents have one more seat than in the previous two terms. The two unsuccessful nominees Li Zhenxiu (PPP) and Li Xia (KMT), were both of Chinese origin.
Malaysian-Chinese Luo Meiling was the only new resident legislator in 2020. After growing up in Malaysia, she attended university in Taiwan, where she then worked as a teacher and a civic organization cadre. She served two terms as a member of the Nantou County Legislature before becoming an unaffiliated legislator in 2020. She founded the Alliance for the Development of the Rights and Interests of Taiwan’s New Residents, which gained cross-party support. She has advocated for a greater proportion of new residents in central government ministries, and is also concerned about bills related to them. However, her status as an overseas student has been questioned by outsiders as to whether she is qualified to represent new residents.
The newly-elected Mai Nguyen was born in Vietnam, married and lived in Taiwan for 20 years. Her family, work experience and personal experience with domestic violence helped her understand the plight of new residents in Taiwan. She has set up two political associations for new residents, and she founded the New Residents’ Party in the hope of planning a complete national policy for new residents. In 2023, she was recruited by the People’s Party (PPP) and nominated for the unrestricted legislature, and was successfully elected.
Slow progress
A majority of new residents feel their status has been elevated, thanks to a growing population of new residents and second-generations as well as eight years of the New Southbound Policy. Positive media reports and various incentives offered by the private sector and the government seem to show growing respect toward these populations. But social discrimination and stereotypes in society have not disappeared.
Progress is slow. New residents still hear officials at government meetings, for example, call them “foreign brides” — a discriminatory term they have been protesting for years — which shows that officials’ awareness has not really progressed.
Although they recognize themselves as Taiwanese citizens, many new residents still don’t feel that they are treated as a part of Taiwanese society. “It doesn’t matter that you have an ID card, if you have a different skin color or accent, you’re a foreigner,” one source said, adding that over the past 20 years, she is still asked the same questions: “How much money do you send home? Are you cheating Taiwanese people of their money? How much money were you bought for?” She used to get angry at these rude questions, but after getting used to Taiwanese society’s misunderstanding of immigrants, she now laughs it off.
