Chapter 4: Is the Flame Dying? Taiwan’s Cultural Identity and Eroding Sense of Agency
Culture can also be an invisible line of defense. — The argument of this essay
As high technology and geopolitics repeatedly make international headlines, another invisible fracture is widening within Taiwan: a weakening cultural identity and sense of agency. As TSMC becomes central to the global semiconductor struggle, society seems less able to answer “Who are we?” Identity, language, values and visions of the future flicker like embers before a fire goes out.
This chapter aims to move beyond slogans and emotional criticism. Through structural evidence and cultural observation, it explores an unseen crisis: a fading flame that signifies not only institutional retreat, but a weakening collective will to sustain a civilization.
1. Language, culture and a sense of place: from “Who are we?” to “I do not care”
Consider possible everyday situations: a child understands an elder’s Hokkien but is reluctant to use it publicly; a student completes language classes but rarely speaks the language outside them. These are illustrative situations, not survey findings presented here. They raise a question: when a language recedes from daily conversation, can classes and festivals alone sustain its transmission?
Assessing language transmission requires looking at family use, schooling and public expression together. A young person who understands but no longer uses a language represents a different stage from its complete disappearance. Cultural policy should recognize such distinctions rather than merely count participation in activities.
This is not a victory for linguistic freedom; it is the result of a thinning sense of place—a risk I call the interruption of shared value and memory.
Language encodes culture. When its transmission between generations stops, the issue extends beyond mother-tongue education: collective experience is being recoded through commercial communication. Under capital’s influence, YouTube, TikTok and Netflix define the mainstream through global aesthetics, while local culture risks being reduced to festivals and occasional local-interest stories.
I am also concerned that cultural policy remains trapped in symbolic localism, promoting creative merchandise and local intellectual property without systematically developing cultural agency. Taiwan has many exhibitions and performances, but insufficient renewal of deeper memory. In my view, some investment in events has not become a lasting cultural vision. This criticism concerns policy priorities; it does not deny Taiwan’s philosophical debate or substantial creative work.
2. Uncertain identity: islanders, nationals, citizens—who are we becoming?
Taiwan’s identity debate has long occupied an ambiguous space between peace and war. People call repeatedly to be seen, while institutional and political language avoids a clear answer to who “we” are.
National Chengchi University’s Election Study Center tracks Taiwanese/Chinese identity separately from positions on unification and independence. Emotional identity, institutional arrangements and future preferences are not the same question. My concern is not why someone chooses a particular response, but whether public discussion explains the conditions and costs of the different choices.
My criticism targets insufficient explanation in public discourse, rather than labeling a particular survey response lazy or evasive. Rejecting Chinese identity while hesitating to articulate independence leaves some young people moving between emotional and institutional positions, with a civic identity detached from clear nationhood.
Politicians meanwhile deploy “Republic of China,” “Taiwan,” “nation” and “local” with strategic ambiguity. What can be political prudence has, in my view, become a refuge for political indolence.
3. Demographic pressure: low fertility and the outward movement of talent
If culture is a flame, people are its fuel. Taiwan faces not only cultural dispersal but a shrinking population to carry it forward.
Consider the demographic and employment statistics:
• National Development Council materials put the total fertility rate for 2023 at approximately 0.865 children per woman. This is calculated using that year’s age-specific fertility rates. It is neither the crude birth rate nor births per thousand residents.
• The total fertility rate should not be described as the number of children each couple actually has. It differs from completed fertility for a particular generation.
• The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics counted about 473,000 registered residents working overseas in 2022, up 48.4% from 2021. This covers overseas workers of different ages, not annual emigrants or permanently lost young talent. The recovery of cross-border movement after the pandemic matters too.
These are not merely numbers. They raise questions about a society’s confidence in its future. When young people see no prospects and older people see no continuity, the foundations for sustaining culture weaken as well.
4. The mirror of globalization: is Taiwan’s culture being seen or dissolved?
Taiwanese works such as Incantation, Copycat Killer and Your Name Engraved Herein have reached audiences across borders through Netflix. That is an achievement in creation and distribution. My question is whether viewers also understand the history, language and local experiences within them—or consume them only as a recognizable style.
Beyond its rich creativity, has Taiwan developed a sufficiently compelling account of its place in civilization? Put simply, we know how to tell stories, but may not know why those stories matter. I see a society comfortable with its creativity yet insufficiently concerned about cultural continuity.
5. Cultural depletion and political short-termism: institutions running in place
An increase in cultural spending is not itself evidence of policy success. Allocation, the ability of creators to sustain their work and preservation of local memory deserve more attention than the total budget alone.
My concern is the incentive structure: if evaluation rewards attendance, exposure and short-term traffic, long-term research, traditional arts and local archives are easily relegated to second place. Effective policy must also provide stable support for these slower forms of work.
Meanwhile, parties treat culture as a tool in ideological competition rather than a long-term public undertaking. Textbook review, historical narratives and mother-tongue education repeatedly become political battlegrounds. Culture turns into an election issue, leaving little room for patient cultivation.
Conclusion: a dying flame means dispersed memory, not a light bulb switched off
Taiwan’s culture is not disappearing all at once. It is depleted incrementally whenever policy is casually rewritten, a cultural practitioner leaves, or a young person chooses silence.
We think it remains because festivals, films, embroidery and old houses remain. We sense it fading when the next generation no longer watches, tells the stories or protects them.
A flame does not go out all at once. But when it no longer warms us, something essential has already been lost.
Will Taiwan still be able to say “This is who I am”? That question may matter more to its survival than TSMC’s supply chain, presidential bodyguards or the underground shelter at the Heng Shan command center.