The Politics of Percentage: Aboriginal Blood and Taiwanese Origin and Identity

• In Event: Biomedicine and Difference

Abstract

In the global era, a “biopolitical paradigm” has been shaping not only the development of genetic science and technology but also the cultural politics of many countries. The scientific research regarding the rediscovery of Taiwanese ancestry and the genetic attributes of the Taiwanese began to emerge since the late 1980s, when Taiwan underwent a democratic transition from authoritarian rule. The intimate link between the development of biomedicine and identity politics in Taiwan has caused serious concern among political and cultural activists about racial/ethnic classification and national identity.

Since the 1990s, Professor Marie Lin, M.D., among others, has devoted herself to unveiling the mystery of the origins of the ethnic groups in Taiwan by finding scientific evidences of blood attributes and genes. Based on the research findings of her team over the recent two decades, Lin, widely known as “the mother of the research of Taiwanese blood,” argues that 1) 85 percent of Taiwanese have aboriginal genes; 2) the Han Taiwanese people (Hoklo and Hakka ethnic groups) are mainly the descendants of the Yue people from southern China; 3) a major part of blood attributes of the Han Taiwanese people is derived from plain aboriginal people; and 4) aboriginal peoples in Taiwan have multiple origins. These arguments pose a radical challenge to the dominant Chinese nationalist ideology of the period of the authoritarian rule, which is still lingering on now. My article analyzes how Lin and her team’s genetic research on Taiwanese origin in general and their investigation about the percentage of aboriginal blood the Taiwanese have in particular have been shaped by social, political, and cultural factors in the context of democratization and ethnic identity. My analysis also shows clearly how genetic science and identity politics are mutually constitutive and co-produced.

Author

• Yuyueh Tsai, Academia Sinica