Waishengren predominance even applies to Taiwan’s expats, as they made up the majority of Taiwan’s (back then considered officially China’s) emigrants to the US In the three decades after World War II. They had the means and connections to get visas and were already rootless, after all. Former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao’s (趙小蘭) father was a shipping magnate who assisted the ROC military in the 1949 Battle of Guningtou in Kinmen. Michael Chang (張德培) is the grandson of a former ROC diplomat. Jeremy Lin’s (林書豪) mother’s family was from Zhejiang. That Eddie Huang’s (黃頤銘) family identifying as Chinese in Fresh Off the Boat should have come as no surprise: that’s where his parents’ family were from. The ROC used its overseas organs to keep connections with its expats—and keep tabs on them.

What’s true of entertainment is even truer of the government and military, of course. Every premier until Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) (1997-2000) was born in China, for example. Today, besides Hau Pei-tsun (郝柏村) and the other veterans, the first-generation waishengren (whose formative years were spent in China) have now left public life (and this mortal coil), but the parameters of blue politics are defined by the second generation. This group, which grew up in Taiwan but under the KMT party-state, identifying as Chinese in a milieu that strongly affirmed that choice, includes James Soong (宋楚瑜) (born in 1942), Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) (1948), Jason Hu (胡志強) (1948), Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) (1950), Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) (1952), Ting Shou-chung (丁守中) (1954), Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) (1958), and Eric Chu (朱立倫) (1961).

In the 1980s and 90s, Presidents Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) and especially Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) sought to “Taiwanize” the KMT by giving power to members of other ethnic groups, but President Ma has reversed that current. Four of his five premiers have been waishengren. The current one, Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國), was born in Fenghua County, Zhejiang Province, just like Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and Chiang Ching-kuo. One can guess from his first name (治國, literally “govern the nation”) that his parents somehow had plans for him to someday hold the post he does now. What goes for the premier also goes for the ministers. Eight of the past nine winners of the Executive Yuan’s National Cultural Award were born in mainland China. And Ma is thought to have led the campaign to block Wang’s presidential nomination.

But the Ma administration has performed poorly, and a big reason is his blockading the talent pool of an already small country by limiting leadership positions to the remaining members of the old ethnic networks. The instinctive affinity for China that officials possess also explains the lack of balance and rationality of some current policies.

The future is now narrowing quickly for the Chiang-era networks. The elites have already sent their children to America: Ma’s and Soong’s children are citizens there, for example, and giving up one’s green card is now a rite of passage for those who do come back to enter Taiwanese politics. The second generation has already spent most of its political capital, and the third is so far defined by national punch-line Sean Lien (連勝文) (1970) (by waishengren standards the Lien family is Taiwanese, but the clan spent the ROC’s formative years in China). In the latest city council elections, the DPP had 18 candidates elected who were born in 1980 or later, and the KMT just five; the deep-blue New Party made a point of running four men born in the 1980s or later but all of them lost.

Even more importantly than the erosion of the top waishengren ranks, the political unity of the waishengren base—the less-privileged, iron-blue voters who have controlled the KMT by abandoning it whenever it strayed too far from their Chinese nationalist identity—is becoming a thing of the past. Most of the third generation have practically assimilated, and they call themselves Taiwanese. Few of the fourth generation will identify as waishengren at all.

For the first- and second-generation waishengren, voting is an expression of personal identity, because in an alien and often hostile society, the KMT and Chinese nationalism united them, looked out for them, and gave them an identity. One would assume Chen Shui-bian was the politician they’d hate most, but no: Lee Teng-hui was worse for temporarily taking the whole party away from them, and then there are the “race traitors” like Ko campaign director Yao Li-ming (姚立明) and New Power Party legislative candidate Neil Peng (馮光遠).