Waishengren

The term is often seen in contrast with benshengren,[b] which refers to Hoklo and Hakka people in Taiwan who arrived prior to 1945 who had lived under Japanese rule.

Due to significant intermarriage between waishengren and benshengren families, it is difficult to precisely define the distinction in later generations.

[2] Newly declassified archival data yielded a population of 1,024,233 mainland Chinese immigrants in Taiwan and the Kinmen-Matsu military zones on September 16, 1956.

[4] Another significant category consisted of military personnel and their families, as well as soldiers who were press ganged or forcibly conscripted by the Kuomintang.

This exclusion often came in the form of preventing waishengren from using local facilities and purchasing from Taiwanese shops through acts of discrimination.

Although no longer dominating the government, waishengren elites still make up a large fraction of bureaucrats and military officers.

[8] The influx of poor waishengren also put enormous pressure on housing, and resulted in the illegal construction of a large number of shantytowns in Taipei.

On the other hand, waishengren elites with political connections could often obtain formerly Japanese-owned properties, sometimes at the expense of evicted benshengren who already lived there.

[citation needed] Intermarriage and a new generation raised under the same environment has largely blurred the distinction between waishengren and benshengren.

In the late 1990s, the concept of "the New Taiwanese" became popular both among supporters of Taiwan independence and Chinese unification in order to advocate a more tolerant proposition that waishengren, who sided with the Allies against the reluctant Japanese colony in Taiwan during World War II, are no less Taiwanese than benshengren.