Ethnic Chinese, Taiwanese oppose Bush re-election (note

The New California Media held a debate between the three liberal-bots Cruz Bustamante, Arianna Huffington, and Peter Camejo during last fall's Recall campaign. No Republicans were there.

I'm not sure what the definitions of "ethnic Chinese" or "ethnic Taiwanese" are, but the independence of Taiwan is best decided by its citizens who actually live there.

Can people who are of Asian descent ever shed the label "Asian-American" that the Asian special interest groups say they represent? Same for Hispanic-Americans with MALDEF/Raza or Black-Americans with NAACP/Jackson/Sharpton or any other group.

The far majority of Taiwanese are ethnically Chinese. The Taiwanese dialects (there are two of them, I believe) are similar to Cantonese and Chinese dialect from Fujin province.

The 14% you mentioned may be the new Chinese immigrants who moved to Taiwan after the 1949 communist victory on mainland China.

I think you and the other poster are using different definitions of "ethnic." Linguistically and culturally, the people whose ancestors came to Taiwan 200-400 years ago are slightly different from people in China, and many people in Taiwan do not consider themselves Chinese.

People in America whose ancestors came 200-300 years ago don't usually identify themselves as ethnic xxx-Americans, where xxx=British or other ethnic source of Pilgrims and settlers. After a sufficiently long time, a group of people develop their own ethnic identity, such as French, German, etc. even if their ancestors may have come from a different part of their continent.

Main Entry: eth·nic
Pronunciation: 'eth-nik
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Late Latin ethnicus, from Greek ethnikos national, gentile, from ethnos nation, people; akin to Greek Ethos custom -- more at SIB
1 : HEATHEN
2 a : of or relating to large groups of people classed according to common racial, national, tribal, religious, linguistic, or cultural origin or background b : being a member of an ethnic group c : of, relating to, or characteristic of ethnics

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