Row over Taiwan’s genetic makeup - January 03, 2008
Here is the Great Beyond’s prediction for 2008: the more human genomes we get, the more arguments we’re going to get. Here’s an example...
Back in November the Taipei Times published an article entitled Most Hoklo, Hakka have Aboriginal genes, study finds. This claimed DNA testing showed 85% of non-aboriginal Taiwanese people (Hoklo and Hakka) have aboriginal ancestry.
The first stage of the project consisted of analyzing the DNA of 100 Hoklo and Hakka - 58 men and 42 women. Of these, 67 percent were found to have Aboriginal ancestry through DNA comparison techniques. An additional 18 percent were found to have Aboriginal ancestry through HLA chromosome typing, bringing the total to 85 percent.
Then in December politician Ma Ying-jeou made some disparaging remarks to some aboriginal Taiwanese (see China Post, Taipei Times) and it all kicked off...
At the end of the month a letter appeared in the Times from Professor Francis Lai, of Lowell, Massachusetts. He said:
Scientists have reached the conclusion that 85 percent of the critical part of the genome that Hoklo and Hakka-speaking Taiwanese possess comes from Formosan Aborigines. ...
The ‘immigration and settlement en masse’ onto the island and the replacement of Formosans by Han Chinese is a hoax and a myth. It is a story invented to lure naive Taiwanese into believing the fiction of Han Chinese ancestry.
We, Formosans, are all Aborigines.
As a follow up letter from Associate Professor Jakob Dempsey, of the Department of Foreign Languages and Applied Linguistics at Yuan-ze University, points out Lai appears to have confused 85% of people in a population with 85% of those people’s DNA.
If the DNA of Hoklo and Hakka speakers were 85 percent Aboriginal, then the vast majority of Taiwanese would look nearly the same as the Aborigines. In fact, they look very much like the people across the Strait in Fujian and other places.Dempsey goes on:
Lai's letter ends with ‘We, Formosans, are all Aborigines.’ When US president John F. Kennedy went to Berlin, he proclaimed, in incorrect German, ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ (I am a Berliner). His statement was 100 percent politics, zero percent science. The same goes for Lai’s words.
Image: Taiwan via NASA’s Visible Earth / Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC
Comments
It's been over a year since this post, but recent discovery of a series of racist publications by Kuo Kuan-Ying, an official working in Taiwan's foreign ministry is making it relevant again. About 10% of Taiwan's population identifies as "Mainlander" or descendants of those that came with a defeated Nationalist government to Taiwan in 1945. They had the guns and the US support and were in power for 50 years before democracy saw the election of "locals" at all levels of power. The official's sense of superiority comes from being a Mainlander and his scorn was directed at the "locals".
It's funny how the same genetic evidence to justify a Taiwanese identity over a Chinese one is taken by Chinese nationalists and used to deride Taiwanese for mixed heritage.
Professor Lai certainly gets his data mixed up, but his mistake shouldn't obscure the value the study had in clearing up other political misconceptions.
First, whether the aboriginal DNA and "Han" DNA was mixed in Fujian or in Taiwan, it throws a wrench in the idea of a homogeneous race of Han Chinese people. Other genetic studies of Chinese have shown other forms of diversity as well, such as differences between northern and southern China.
Second, while there shouldn't be any racism going on regardless, those in Taiwan that are commonly prejudiced against Aboriginals have to think twice as for many Hoklo and Hakka--Aboriginals are distant (or maybe not so distant) relatives.
Certainly, genetics should have nothing to do with politics, and whether Taiwan remains independent or unifies with China is a question that has nothing to do with whether Taiwanese are 100% "Han Race" or 0% "Han Race" genetically. But as long as Chinese politicians keep giving 同文同族 (being of the same language and of the same race) as a reason for why Taiwan cannot be allowed to continue as an independent country, studies like these will be of certain value for deconstructing a fallacy.
By the way...
It's interesting that a satellite picture is used from NASA's Visible Earth, which classifies Taiwan under "Countries > China". That too is unfortunately 100% politics, zero percent science.
Posted by: James | April 5, 2009 09:16 PM