The \"one China\" policy officially supported by the People\'s Republic of China, the United States, and other countries asserts that there is only one China and Taiwan is a part of it.The debate over whether the people of Taiwan are Chinese or independently Taiwanese is, Melissa J.Brown argues, a matter of identity: Han ethnic identity, Chinese national identity, and the relationship of both of these to the new Taiwanese identity forged in the 1990s.In a unique comparison of ethnographic and historical case studies drawn from both Taiwan and China, Brown\'s book shows how identity is shaped by social experience-not culture and ancestry, as is commonly claimed in political rhetoric.