The Paranoid Taiwanese

For the Chinese in Taiwan, the story is a little different. A large number of mainlanders, about 2 million in total, fled to the island after the Communist victory in 1949, comprising 25% of the island's population of 8 million. Many of these mainlanders were government officials or worked with the government. They brought financial capital and management expertise and set up business enterprises on the island.

The Taiwanese are still very entrepreneurial: one company for every 18 people, which is probably one of the highest company-per-capita densities in the world. There is a Chinese expression that captures this entrepreneurial spirit, "People would rather be the head of a cock than the tail of a bull." The motivation for such strong entrepreneurial spirit is similar to the Chinese Diaspora in Southeast Asia. Since the retreat of the Kuomintang to the island, the Chinese Communists have been trying their best to reunify the island as part of greater China. As a result, Taiwanese tend to feel psychologically insecure ; their only source of security is money, which provides portability and options. When they have made enough money, they will acquire the citizenship of another country, preferably the U.S. or Canada, or in some desperate cases, Latin American or African states.

The following story demonstrates how widespread the phenomenon of dual citizenship is. Recently there was a controversy over the dual nationality of Ms. Hsiao Bi Khim, one of Taiwan President Chen Shui Bian's interpreters. Apparently, Ms. Hsiao held a foreign passport. The opposition legislators were questioning the loyalty of the interpreter. They argued that if the interpreter had pledged loyalty to a country other than Taiwan, she should not have been appointed as the president's interpreter, a position that allows access to most of the nation's classified information.