TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Chinese scholar and the head of the Center for China and Globalization, Victor Gao (高志凱) has claimed that approximately 10% of Taiwan’s population is descended from the Japanese.

Following the Aug. 10 interview with Al Jazeera, officials at the Ministry of the Interior said there is no data to back up Gao’s claim. To clarify the matter, the Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) at Radio Free Asia looked into historical records to investigate the claim. 

Gao said that 10% of Taiwan’s population is descended from Japanese families who lived in Taiwan during the colonial period (1895-1945). This would suggest that about 2.3 million people of Taiwan’s current population of 23 million are Japanese-Taiwanese. 

When asked to provide data to support his assertion, Gao said that he visited Taiwan several times and held substantive discussions with leaders of political parties and the business community, who assured him of this, reported RFA. AFCL’s investigation found the number is substantially lower than 10%, with their calculations suggesting a mere 40,000 Taiwanese are estimated to be Japanese descendants. 

AFCL’s calculations

The study examined census data before and after the Japanese surrender, which ended World War II. Census data and evacuation records indicate that out of 328,332 registered Japanese nationals residing in Taiwan in early 1946, the majority, or 323,246, were repatriated to Japan by May 1947. 

A further household census in 1956, the first conducted in Taiwan since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, found that only 1,233 foreigners were registered as in Taiwan. Prior historical analysis of this data indicates that the vast majority of that number were Japanese, per RFA.

The AFCL factored this number into Taiwan’s average rate of population growth of 2% to 3% over the subsequent 77 years. Their calculations resulted in a number close to 40,000 Japanese-Taiwanese people in Taiwan today, or approximately 0.17% of the population. 

This calculation amounts to an increase of 32.4 people per each individual in the cohort of 1,233, which is a far cry from the 2.3 million Japanese-Taiwanese suggested by Gao. 

Although AFCL’s report makes it clear that 10% of Taiwan’s total population being descended from Japanese is statistically improbable, it is important to note that the true number is probably higher than 40,000 individuals. 

Issues to consider

The data reported by the AFCL investigation does not consider the near 5,000 Japanese people who were not repatriated to Japan in 1946. While it is assumed that the majority of them left Taiwan prior to the 1956 census, it is possible that some did not. Those individuals or their children may or may not have been registered as foreigners in that year. 

Another major factor that is difficult to quantify is the mixing of Japanese and Taiwanese over the course of 50 years of the colonial period. While children born of such unions may have only been a marginal component of the population, they would certainly inflate the AFCL's figure well beyond 40,000.  

The AFCL report focuses on Japanese nationals in Taiwan who were recorded as such based on Japanese government-issued documents, and later on, recognized as Japanese by the Kuomintang government. The study does not account for children born to interracial couples between 1895 and 1945, who were not registered as Japanese citizens at birth. 

The household census of Taiwan taken in 1946 recorded a total population of 6 million people in Taiwan. Between 1905 and 1945, Taiwan recorded an average annual population growth of 1% to 3% based on census data by the Japanese colonial government. 

Based on those numbers, even a conservative estimate that children born to Taiwanese-Japanese parents over a 50-year period represented 0.5% of the total population in 1945 would yield a number of 30,000 people. 

Using the same calculation based on Taiwan’s average population growth rate which AFCL used, the number of Japanese descendants in Taiwan today, could conceivably be closer to 1 million. Specifically, 30,000 hypothetical Japanese descendants (representing 0.5% of the total population) in 1945 would yield 972,000 people in 2024 based on the average growth rate used by AFCL. 

Conclusion

Gao’s assertion that those of Japanese descent amount to 10% of Taiwan’s current population is statistically improbable. However, it is also very likely that the AFCL’s calculations significantly underestimate the actual number. 

It is reasonable to estimate that the number of people with Japanese ancestry in Taiwan today could be as high as 1 million people, or nearly 4% of the population. Even if that number is inflated, which it may be, a percentage of 1% to 2% of the total population remains probable. 

The general consensus on ethnic demographics in Taiwan is that 70% are Hoklo, and 15% are Hakka, both groups with ancestors having arrived in Taiwan between the 17th and late 19th centuries. Meanwhile, the group that came to Taiwan from China after 1949 represents a little over 10% of the current population. Indigenous peoples account for almost 2.3%, while foreign residents account for almost 3.5%. 

Taiwan’s Ministry of the Interior conducts a complete population and household census every 10 years, with the last conducted in 2020. However, on issues of ethnicity, the census only includes data on Indigenous Taiwanese, with no questions posed to the broader public to determine the component of the population who identify as having mixed ethnicity.