Taiwan’s Rules Include One Country, One Passport : Asia: Law bars public servants from holding dual nationalities. That slams door on many emigrants.

After 28 years in the United States, economist David Hong came home hoping to put his skills to use in the service of his native Taiwan.

On Dec. 25, his goal seemed achieved when he was appointed finance chief of the Taipei municipality. Then an awkward fact emerged: He is an American citizen.

Taiwan law bars public servants from holding dual nationality, and Hong promptly resigned.

In a way, the 56-year-old Hong had fallen victim to the very changes that drew him back to Taiwan: the island’s rapid democratization and the newly won freedoms that allow critics to probe into details of officials’ personal lives, such as what passports they possess.

The affair also highlights Taiwan’s growing preoccupation with its identity. It is emerging from the mainland Chinese culture imposed after Nationalist Chinese leaders fled their defeat by the Communists in 1949 and imposed an authoritarian grip on the island.

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No longer is it taboo to expound Taiwanese nationalism, and dual nationals are suddenly facing allegations of divided loyalties. Hong is not the only victim. Taipei transport chief David Poo also had to resign for holding U.S. citizenship.

The Hong affair was especially embarrassing for newly elected Mayor Chen Shui-bian, who picked Hong for the job. As a legislator for the opposition Democratic Progressive Party, he frequently denounced officials with dual nationality as traitors.

The governing Nationalist Party is gleeful at the mayor’s discomfiture. “He who criticized dual nationality most severely was caught condoning it,” said Liao Feng-teh, a Nationalist official.

The government is investigating how many other civil servants hold foreign passports.

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“I violated the law so I resigned,” said Hong, who has kept his U.S. passport and joined a private economic institute.

“But I was deeply hurt by those who questioned my loyalty. I have always felt more of a Taiwanese than an American.”

Like many Taiwanese, Hong went to the West for graduate studies. After earning a doctorate in economics at the University of Minnesota, he settled in Minneapolis and worked for a utilities board and a power company.

Although he became a U.S. citizen, he says he never forgot his roots, recalling how he would join other Taiwanese to sing folk songs and perform puppet shows that he had learned in his boyhood village.

Dual nationality was more tolerated in the past. Taiwan was under military threat from China, which claims the island, and many senior officials were said to have obtained foreign passports or sent their families abroad in case China attacked.

Also, given Taiwan’s international isolation, it is easier for Taiwanese to travel abroad on a foreign passport.

But as democracy and economic growth foster Taiwan’s self-esteem, it is becoming less permissive about dual citizenship.

“Politicians now talk about making Taiwan our primary home, and people won’t tolerate those who say one thing and do another,” said Chiang Peng-chian, an opposition lawmaker.

But he argues for tolerance, saying many returning Taiwanese hold foreign passports because they were driven abroad by repressive governments.

There are concerns that the drive against dual nationality will slow Taiwan’s campaign to persuade skilled emigrants to return.

Lee Yuan-tseh, head of Academia Sinica, Taiwan’s top research institute, said five of the center’s 22 directors hold foreign passports and are being asked to give them up.

Lee, co-winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in chemistry, surrendered his U.S. citizenship two years ago before returning to head the institute.