Taiwan's Unification-Independence Spectrum: Four Positions Plus the Status Quo, and an Identity Map Quietly Redrawn over Thirty Years

On May 13, 2026, the Trump-Xi meeting took place. During his visit to Beijing, Trump was asked about Taiwan and left behind a line that would later be cited repeatedly: Taiwan is "a place — no one knows how to define it."¹

Lai Ching-te responded twice within seven days.

On May 17, he listed five points on social media. The first sentence read: "Defend the status quo of the Republic of China; there is no Taiwan independence issue."² Three days later, on May 20, at the Democratic Progressive Party's Central Standing Committee meeting, he made a longer statement: "Whether the name is the Republic of China, the Republic of China Taiwan, or Taiwan, it is already a sovereign and independent country."³

The same passage placed three names side by side: the Republic of China (used by the deep-blue camp), the Republic of China Taiwan (Tsai Ing-wen's working concept after 2020), and Taiwan (the target state name of the Taiwan independence camp). Within seven days, a president compressed these three names into the same sentence: "all are sovereign and independent." From the outside, this looks like political rhetoric. But from the perspective of the unification-independence spectrum, it is the most honest miniature of contemporary Taiwan: no single name is sufficient on its own.

30-second overview: Taiwan's contemporary unification-independence positions have long since ceased to be a binary of "unification vs independence." Scholars have organized them into four positions (Taiwan independence / ROC independence / ROC unification / unification under the PRC) plus one fallback (maintaining the status quo). In the Election Study Center at National Chengchi University's survey, "maintain the status quo forever" was 9.8% in 1994 and rose to 33.2% in December 2023, a new thirty-year high; over the same period, "unify as soon as possible" slid from around 5% to 1.2%. The weight on the spectrum has migrated from the two poles toward the middle, and the largest portion is not any active position but "do not move for now." Lai's May 20 statement compressing three names into the same sentence is the version of this spectrum spoken from a president's mouth.

Why "Unification vs Independence" Cannot Describe Today's Taiwan

"Are you pro-unification or pro-independence?" In the 1990s, that question worked. Back then, the populations giving the two answers together accounted for nearly the entire electorate. Ask the same question today, and the most common answer is: "neither."

The Election Study Center at National Chengchi University has tracked the public's unification-independence preferences since 1994. It is Taiwan's longest-running longitudinal dataset on this spectrum.⁴ The most dramatic change over thirty-one years has not occurred at the two poles, but in the middle:

"Maintain the status quo forever" rose from 9.8% in 1994 to 33.2% in December 2023, a 3.4-fold increase and a new high in this thirty-year survey. If "maintain the status quo and decide later," at 27.9%, is added, the category of "maintaining the status quo" alone accounts for 61.1%.

The two ends have continued to shrink. "Unify as soon as possible" has slid from a historical high of about 5% to 1.2% in 2023, less than one-quarter of its original level; "declare independence as soon as possible" has remained around 3.8%. The remaining "lean toward unification" and "lean toward independence" categories together account for less than 30%. The flesh in the center of this spectrum keeps growing, while the bones at the two poles become thinner and thinner.

But inside the "maintain the status quo" category, another, more complex axis has in fact split out: identity.

The Election Study Center's survey over the same period asked a more fundamental question: do you see yourself as Taiwanese, Chinese, or both? In 1994, the answers were nearly evenly divided; "Chinese" and "dual identity" together exceeded 40%, while "Taiwanese only" was about 20%. In February 2024, in the same survey, "Taiwanese only" exceeded 60%, while "Chinese only" fell below 5%, a historical low.⁵

Placing the two 60% figures side by side reveals a gap that the binary framework struggles to explain:

📝 Curator's note: "I am Taiwanese" is above 60%; "maintain the status quo" is 61.1%. If the question were really "unification vs independence," then the 60%-plus who identify as Taiwanese should choose independence. But they have not. The gap is not a lack of conviction, but a position on this spectrum that the old framework never described: ontological identity (who I am) has separated from strategic preference (but I choose not to move for now). This is precisely where Lai's May 20 sentence lives.

Lai's placement of three names in his May 20 statement was deliberate. The Republic of China corresponds to the home of the traditional ROC camp; the Republic of China Taiwan corresponds to the working concept Tsai Ing-wen proposed in 2020; Taiwan is the target state name of the Taiwan independence camp. A single sentence that avoids running any category aground did not exist in the era of the binary framework. But in a spectrum of four positions plus one status quo, it is a viable path.

The Academic Origins of the Four Positions

Breaking "unification vs independence" into the four positions of "Taiwan independence / ROC independence / ROC unification / unification under the PRC" is now a common classification on political talk shows, but this framework did not appear suddenly one day.

The decisive academic synthesis came from Fang-yu Chen. Chen, who holds a PhD in political science from National Chengchi University and is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Soochow University, published "What Is Taiwan Independence? How Should Different Unification-Independence Positions Be Classified?" in Who Governs TW on October 20, 2017. Using a tree diagram, he divided positions into a "factual-recognition layer" (whether Taiwan's current status is already independent) and a "normative layer" (which path the state should take).⁶ This article became the canonical reference most frequently cited in later academic and political commentary; the same year, it was also published in a more widely circulated version in UDN Opinion.

The mainstreaming of the four-position framework in public political language was largely completed around 2022-2024. Political commentator Huang Wei-han, in a June 27, 2024 interview with Newtalk, explicitly distinguished four camps: Taiwan independence, ROC independence, ROC unification, and unification under the PRC, and identified himself as ROC independence.⁷ He said this framework had "already been proposed two years earlier," pointing to its circulation in political-commentary circles around 2022.

The higher-level academic origins can be traced to Taiwan nationalism studies in the late 1990s. Shelley Rigger's 1999/2000 work systematically described the rise of postwar Taiwanese identity; Wu Yu-shan of Academia Sinica's Institute of Political Science used the "strategic triangle" framework to separate identity, legality, and economics into three dimensions of analysis. The accumulated field of Taiwanese national-identity studies is the foundation on which the four-position classification stands.

The evolution of the framework can be read as a timeline: in the early 1990s, it was still the binary of "unification vs independence"; after the first direct presidential election in 1996, the Election Study Center at NCCU separated "maintaining the status quo" into a third option; after the 1999 Resolution on Taiwan's Future, "ROC independence" began to take shape as a distinct discourse; after Hung Hsiu-chu proposed "one China, same interpretation" in 2015, the ROC unification camp split internally into radical and moderate wings; in 2017, Fang-yu Chen produced the canonical academic synthesis; in 2020, Tsai Ing-wen's inaugural address with "the Republic of China Taiwan" incorporated ROC-independence discourse into the DPP mainstream; in 2024, Huang Wei-han brought the four-camp classification into public political language. Over thirty years, a binary stretched into five categories, each with its own history and representative figures.

The framework itself has also accumulated academic criticism. Hsiao Yi-ching and Yu Ching-hsin questioned the reliability and validity of the six-category unification-independence scale in the Taiwanese Political Science Review;⁸ EOISS (Wang Li's Second Institute of Strategic Studies) argues that a one-dimensional classification oversimplifies, and that the actual unification-independence spectrum also layers multiple axes, including "economic and trade dependence on China," "cultural identity," and "generational differences," before it can offer explanatory power.⁹ This article adopts the four positions plus maintaining the status quo as a canonical academic framework, but not as a closed descriptive tool.

Taiwan Independence: State-Building, Not Just an Idea

The core claim of the Taiwan independence camp is direct: Taiwan should be an independent state, and its state name should not be "the Republic of China." The ROC constitution, institutions, and state name are legacies of a government-in-exile and should be replaced through constitution-making and state-building, with the state renamed "the Republic of Taiwan" or "Taiwan."

But under the single term "Taiwan independence," there are in fact three different paths. The de jure state-building camp advocates establishing a new state through constitution-making and a referendum; this is the most classical version of Taiwan-independence discourse. The name-rectification camp advocates retaining the existing institutions but changing the state name, most commonly to "Taiwan" or "the Republic of Taiwan." Natural independence is the position that gradually became the default among younger generations after the 2014 Sunflower Movement: "Taiwan is already independent" is a default understanding, not something that needs to be acted on again.

This path can be traced back to the 1960s. In 1964, Peng Ming-min and two students published the Declaration of Formosan Self-Salvation, advocating the overthrow of one-party dictatorship and the establishment of a new state; all three were soon arrested.¹⁰ In the 1970s and 1980s, Su Beng wrote Taiwan's 400 Year History overseas, narrating Taiwanese history as independent from Chinese history. On October 13, 1991, at the DPP's first National Party Congress of its fifth term, the party adopted the Taiwan independence party platform, formally advocating the "establishment of a sovereign, independent, and self-governing Republic of Taiwan." Its drafter was Lin Cho-shui.¹¹

1996 was the deepest setback for the Taiwan independence camp. The DPP nominated "godfather of Taiwan independence" Peng Ming-min for president. He won 21.13% of the vote, the party's greatest defeat in a national election since its founding. Post-election reflection directly led to a route shift. Three years later, in 1999, the party adopted the Resolution on Taiwan's Future, and the party mainstream accepted the ROC-independence discourse that "Taiwan is already independent, and its name is the Republic of China."

The 2014 Sunflower Movement reignited a generational turn. Post-movement surveys showed that among young people, the proportion identifying as Taiwanese exceeded 80%, and "Taiwan is already an independent country" became common sense rather than a claim for the generation in its twenties.¹² This generation does not need to take to the streets for Taiwan independence; its default is already there.

Representative contemporary advocates include the Taiwan Republic Office, the Taiwan Association of University Professors, the Taiwan Solidarity Union, and Lai Ching-te's earlier phrasing, when he was premier, that he was a "Taiwan independence worker." The academic version consists of Chen Lung-chu's international-law path from Yale and Lin Cho-shui's policy discourse. The Taiwan independence party platform has still not been frozen, canceled, or amended; it has merely been covered over by the 1999 Resolution on Taiwan's Future.

ROC Independence: Defaulted, Incorporated, Treated as the Baseline

The thesis of the ROC independence camp is almost a mirror image of the Taiwan independence camp: the Republic of China is already a sovereign and independent state; after 1949, it continued in Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu, and it is not subordinate to the People's Republic of China. There is no need to declare independence again; the task is to defend the Republic of China's factual independence.

There are three important sub-positions on this path. The traditional ROC camp legally retains the 1947 Republic of China Constitution's begonia-shaped territorial map, but in fact exercises jurisdiction only over Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu. The ROC Taiwan camp was articulated by Tsai Ing-wen in her 2020 second-term inaugural address, which proposed "the Republic of China Taiwan" as a working concept: the state name does not change, but its substance is reoriented around Taiwan. The mutual non-subordination camp was extended by Lai Ching-te in 2024: "the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China are not subordinate to each other," a more legally explicit account of cross-Strait relations than any of his predecessors had offered. This discursive path can be traced to his predecessor's "Four Commitments" framework and continues the line, since Chen Shui-bian and Tsai Ing-wen, of "not additionally declaring Taiwan independence."¹³

The decisive academic anchor of the ROC-independence camp is the Resolution on Taiwan's Future, passed by the DPP on May 8, 1999. One of its drafters, Lin Cho-shui, inserted the two words "currently" before "the state name is the Republic of China," allowing independence supporters to feel that "there may be a chance to change it in the future," while allowing centrist voters to feel that "the DPP has finally become pragmatic." In July of the same year, Lee Teng-hui proposed "special state-to-state relations" in an interview with Deutsche Welle, another cornerstone of ROC-independence discourse.¹⁴

More than twenty years later, this path has incorporated the DPP mainstream. In her 2021 National Day address, Tsai Ing-wen organized it into the "Four Commitments": commitment to a free and democratic constitutional system, commitment that the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China should not be subordinate to each other, commitment that sovereignty cannot be violated or annexed, and commitment that the future of the Republic of China Taiwan must be decided by all the people of Taiwan.¹⁵ Lai's 2024 inaugural address continued the same axis. His five-point statement after the Trump-Xi meeting on May 17, 2026, and his May 20 statement at the DPP Central Standing Committee that "all three names are sovereign and independent," are contemporary variations on this ROC-independence discourse.

📝 Curator's note: The order of the three names in Lai's May 20 sentence was deliberate: "the Republic of China, the Republic of China Taiwan, or Taiwan." The first name reassures the deep-blue camp and the United States; the second corresponds to the working concept Tsai Ing-wen left behind in 2020; the third opens a door toward the target state name of the Taiwan independence camp. The sentence pattern "whether the name is X" is itself an expanded version of Lin Cho-shui's two words "currently" in 1999: the same strategy of ambiguity, grown from one word into an entire sentence.

The defining feature of the ROC-independence camp is not how radical it is, but that it allows most people not to choose sides. Deep-blue voters can say "the Republic of China"; light-green voters can say "the Republic of China Taiwan"; deep-green voters can say "Taiwan." All three are covered. The fact that contemporary Taiwan's political language can operate is, to a considerable degree, because this path has loosened the correspondence between name and position.

ROC Unification: Thirty Years of Shrinkage in the Blue Camp Mainstream

The ROC unification camp argues that the two sides of the Strait should unify, but that unification should occur under the banner of the Republic of China (ROC), not the People's Republic of China (PRC). The ideal scenario is Taiwan leading China toward democratization, while constitutionally retaining the begonia-shaped national territory.

This path also has two branches. Traditional ROC unification / one China, different interpretations was the mainstream version in the blue camp in the 2000s. It accepted the literal wording of "one China," but retained room for "respective interpretations": the Republic of China says it is China; the People's Republic of China says it is China; both sides avoid puncturing this ambiguity. In 1991, the Kuomintang adopted the Guidelines for National Unification, writing the goal of unification into a policy document. In later interpretation, the blue camp positioned the 1992 Consensus as the concretization of one China, different interpretations (Beijing interprets the same meeting differently).¹⁶ During Ma Ying-jeou's 2008-2016 presidency, this discourse was the mainstream framework of governing language.

Radical ROC unification / one China, same interpretation / rapid unification is the version Hung Hsiu-chu proposed in 2015 when seeking the Kuomintang's presidential nomination. Hung argued that the two sides should adopt "one China, same interpretation" (both sides reaching consensus that "one China" is the same China), and advocated "ultimate unification."¹⁷ Many commentators directly classified her position as "rapid unification," a gray area between ROC unification and unification under the PRC.

📝 Curator's note: In public language, Hung Hsiu-chu's position is often directly called "unification under the PRC" or "pro-China." But in academic classification, most place it under "the radical wing of ROC unification / rapid unification," because she still advocates unification within the ROC framework rather than accepting a PRC framework for taking over Taiwan. This gap is itself worth remembering: when the mainstream ROC-unification camp has shrunk to the point where only 1.2% want to "unify as soon as possible," radical ROC unification will be pushed further toward the far end in public opinion. But classification is classification, and mainstream perception is mainstream perception; both should be seen.

The true characteristic of the contemporary ROC unification camp is shrinkage. After the 2020s, most deep-blue voters shifted toward ROC independence (the Republic of China camp), while the number explicitly advocating "unification as soon as possible" was only 1.2% in the Election Study Center's December 2023 survey. Thirty years ago, ROC unification was still the blue camp's mainstream framework. Today, those who advocate "unification" (under any banner) account for less than 8% combined.

Unification Under the PRC: Smallest in Scale, Largest in Transparency Controversy

The core claim of the camp favoring unification under the PRC (also often called "red unification") is acceptance of cross-Strait unification under the framework of the People's Republic of China, or acknowledgment that the PRC has sovereignty over Taiwan.

In scale, this path is the smallest part of contemporary Taiwan. Even if the Election Study Center's December 2023 figures for "lean toward unification" at 6.2% and "unify as soon as possible" at 1.2% are combined into 7.4%, that 7.4% still mixes ROC-unification and PRC-unification positions. Those explicitly supporting a PRC framework are estimated at under 3%.

But this path has the greatest transparency controversy. The Chinese Unification Promotion Party, founded by Chang An-lo, is the most visible pro-unification organization under a PRC framework and has repeatedly faced questions about its relationship with PRC funding.¹⁸ Later-stage New Party groups, the Unionist Party, and the New Alliance Association are also placed on this spectrum. Over the past decade, Taiwan's judicial system has repeatedly prosecuted cases involving "local collaborators," with defendants having varying degrees of connection to PRC-unification groups. Legally, these organizations still exist, but the transparency of their external funding sources has long been questioned.

There is one structural difference between the PRC-unification camp and the other three positions. The core disputes among the first three camps all concern "interpretations of the status quo" (already independent vs not yet independent / whether independence should be declared / whether the state name should be changed). The PRC-unification camp crosses a larger red line: it accepts absorption by another political entity. On contemporary Taiwan's political map, this path has very few supporters, but its existence is an indispensable category on the spectrum.

Maintaining the Status Quo: Fallback or Stance?

Ranked by population, "maintaining the status quo" is the largest segment in contemporary Taiwan. But "largest" does not mean it is a position. It is more like a default behavior.

"Maintain the status quo forever" at 33.2%, plus "maintain the status quo and decide later" at 27.9%, totals 61.1%. These are the December 2023 figures from the Election Study Center at NCCU. What this 61.1% contains is an accumulation of the choice "do not move." Most people have not actively voted for either unification or independence. Further classification research by the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, carried out by the Election Study Center, divides the public into three types: Taiwanese nationalism at 26.5%, pragmatism at 13.1%, and Chinese nationalism at 18.7%.¹⁹ The sum of the three categories is far smaller than the 61.1% for "maintaining the status quo," because most people do not place themselves under any "ism."

The internal structure of maintaining the status quo can be divided into four layers:

• Cognitive layer: the understanding that "Taiwan (the Republic of China) is an already independent country" exceeds 70% in most polls
• Preference layer: "maintaining the status quo," with 61.1% choosing no active change
• Action layer: "not actively changing the status quo," meaning voters do not make unification-independence the main issue when voting
• Identity layer: "identifying as Taiwanese" exceeds 60%, which is an identity rather than a political option

Together, the four layers describe the same phenomenon: Taiwanese people have chosen a side in identity, but have chosen not to move strategically. This highly overlaps with the ROC-independence camp's claim. The only difference is that ROC independence is an active stance, while maintaining the status quo is a passive preference.

📝 Curator's note: "Maintaining the status quo" is often criticized as "having no position," but that criticism misreads strategic preference as ontological identity. Interviews show that most people who choose "maintaining the status quo" are not people who have not figured out who they are; most are quite clear that they are Taiwanese. They are choosing the strategy of "do not move for now," which is a different position from "I also do not know who I am." Confusing the two layers misreads where the muscle of the entire spectrum lies.

Scotland, Catalonia, Northern Ireland, Quebec: Four Comparators

Placing Taiwan's unification-independence spectrum beside independence/integration disputes in other countries reveals a larger picture.

Scotland 2014: The independence referendum was held on September 18, with 55% voting No and 45% Yes. The SNP's position resembles Taiwan's de jure Taiwan-independence camp: constitution-making, state-building, and a new state name. The British Labour and Conservative parties resemble the ROC-independence / status-quo camp, advocating deeper devolution but not independence.²⁰ The biggest difference from Taiwan is institutional: Scotland had a legal framework in which the UK central government agreed to hold a referendum. Taiwan has no corresponding arrangement.

Catalonia 2017: When Catalonia held its independence referendum on October 1, Spain's Constitutional Court ruled it unconstitutional, but the Catalan autonomous government proceeded anyway, and Spain's central government used police force to suppress polling stations. Support for independence has long remained in the 40-50% range. What makes Catalonia similar to Taiwan is the structural situation in which an independence referendum is deemed unconstitutional by the sovereign state and met with confrontational measures.

Northern Ireland 1998: The Good Friday Agreement established a long-term framework of "shared governance plus the consent of the people of Northern Ireland to determine integration." If a future majority in Northern Ireland chooses unification with Ireland, the United Kingdom agrees to accept it. This design contains an element crucial for Taiwan: reciprocal commitment. The People's Republic of China's stance toward Taiwan has no corresponding design.

Quebec 1995: The independence referendum was extremely close, 49.4% to 50.6%. Canada's central government later enacted the Clarity Act, stipulating that an independence referendum must have a "clear question plus a clear majority" to be recognized. This is a procedural solution by a mature democracy for handling secession disputes.

The four comparators together show one thing: the core difficulty for contemporary democracies handling independence/integration disputes is procedural legitimacy and mutual commitment. The difficulty on Taiwan's spectrum is not at the level of "which category is correct," but in the fact that the positions of four things beneath it remain unresolved in Taiwan: a legal referendum framework, reciprocal commitment, legal recognition by the sovereign state, and procedural clarity.

The Power of "Currently"

Return to the opening sentence.

Lai Ching-te's May 20 statement, "Whether the name is the Republic of China, the Republic of China Taiwan, or Taiwan, it is already a sovereign and independent country," and Lin Cho-shui's insertion of the two words "currently" before "the state name is the Republic of China" in the 1999 Resolution on Taiwan's Future, are the same kind of technique. Placing three names in parallel in one sentence, and inserting two words into a short phrase, are both aimed not at definition but at preserving ambiguity so that people across the entire spectrum can remain standing.

Twenty-seven years ago, Lin Cho-shui added two words to support a resolution. Twenty-seven years later, Lai Ching-te used an entire sentence to support two statements made within seven days. What happened in between was that the people on this spectrum stretched from a binary into four categories, and then from those four categories grew, in the middle, a segment of "maintaining the status quo" larger than all four categories combined.

The spectrum has been redrawn, but no one has formally announced its redrawing. No representative figure in any category will say they have stepped into another category, and not every voter is necessarily aware that they have already walked out of the question of "unification vs independence." The change was never completed through a document, a party congress, or a referendum. It is the shape that has slowly grown over thirty years, segment by segment, among polling curves, speech drafts, a party platform that was never fully revised, and a resolution that was never canceled.

What will the next version grow into? Does Taiwan's unification-independence dispute need a new document, a new dialogue, to weave the four positions and one status quo into a sentence clearer than "currently"? How much longer will this spectrum continue to be quietly redrawn?

References

Further Reading

• Resolution on Taiwan's Future — the decisive academic anchor of ROC-independence discourse in 1999, and the starting point of Lin Cho-shui's two words "currently"
• Tsai Ing-wen — proposer of the "Republic of China Taiwan" working concept and representative of the ROC Taiwan sub-spectrum within the ROC-independence camp
• Lai Ching-te — executor of the contemporary ROC-independence discourse of "mutual non-subordination across the Strait" and the main figure in the May 20 three-name statement
• Taiwan's Elections and Party Politics — the broader context of how the unification-independence spectrum reshaped blue-green party lines through elections
• Taiwan's Democratic Transition — the historical background to the birth of the unification-independence spectrum: from one-party dictatorship to competitive elections
• Taiwan Strait Crises and the Development of Cross-Strait Relations — the long-term trajectory of the unification-independence spectrum under continuous external pressure