China: An International Journal

Is the shift in regime identification from the Chinese government to the Taiwanese government a universal phenomenon among Chinese students in Taiwan? This article examines and finds evidence of Chinese students’ political attitudes by conducting a two-wave survey based on the political socialisation approach. The results indicated that the regime identification of Chinese students on a scale of –10 to 10 was, on average, 0.68 higher four months after their arrival in Taiwan than when they first arrived. The regression model developed in this study accounted for 34.37 per cent of the variance in the degree of shift in students’ regime identification. Seven of the eight formulated hypotheses were also supported.