All this offers a lesson for China, said Dr. Harrison, as it faces dissatisfaction from peoples in the vast border regions of Tibet and Xinjiang.

“Somehow the Chinese need to let the Tibetans and Uighurs feel they are Chinese, they need to rethink their identity in a way that makes that possible, and I think the Taiwanese show how it can be done,” he said. “But the Chinese government doesn’t even begin to think in those terms. They take a colonial view, ‘We’re doing so much for these people, why aren’t they satisfied?”’

“For the Chinese, being Chinese is an objective fact. You can’t become Chinese. You are born it. But for the Taiwanese there’s the possibility of choosing to be Taiwanese,” a process that allows meaningful cultural differences while being a part of the nation, he said.

“Their attitude is, ‘We’re all here now on this island, we have to learn to live together, we must all be Taiwanese,”’ he said. “It’s a postcolonial identity. Inclusive. Open.” He calls it the Formosan voice, after the Portuguese name for the island of Taiwan.

Things weren’t always like that here. For decades after 1949, the Nationalists, who harked back to their mainland China roots, ruled with an iron fist. Yet the process of identity-building was fermenting below the surface. It gathered speed after the lifting of martial law in 1987 and for the past 20 years has been in high gear.

For sure, Dr. Harrison added, “There are a lot of other voices that are yet to be really heard, including migrant workers and expatriates. But it’s being shaped.”

No one is expecting China to start listening to Taiwan anytime soon. After trying military threats to intimidate the island into reunification, for the past decade under President Hu Jintao, China has offered financial incentives and increased trade to encouraged re-unification, dubbed by some “hongbao” diplomacy, a reference to the Chinese custom of giving red packets with money on special occasions like weddings.