On June 6 every year since the end of the World War II, ceremonies have been held on the beaches of Normandy, where heads of state and war veterans gather and mourn the thousands of soldiers who fell on that fateful day in 1944 and during the entire war. In similar ceremonies the Japanese cities …
A number of realist international relations scholars in recent years have argued for the U.S. to abandon its already ambiguous security commitment to Taiwan. Academics such as Charles Glaser have argued that doing so would remove a flashpoint for potential conflict with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) while at the same time improving the …
With the May 20 inauguration approaching, it’s increasingly safe to say that the analysts who were predicting a rapid souring of cross-strait relations or punitive action by Beijing following Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) landslide victory in the Jan. 16 elections were too alarmist. Both sides have demonstrated an ability to act pragmatically, and even though the …
U.S. policy toward China has been consistently shortsighted. The geostrategic argument for relations with China as leverage against Moscow collapsed with the Soviet Union, and today China and Russia are close strategic partners. Concrete U.S. policy benefits of cooperation with China are hard to find, and arguments that trade with China would bring about political …
The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) resounding victories in the joint presidential and legislative elections on Jan. 16 are both a signal of strength as well as a mild disappointment, falling just short of expectations of a true electoral avalanche. At first glance this was unquestionably an emphatic victory. The DPP’s presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) won …
For the first time since the creation of the People’s Republic of China after the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the leaders of Taiwan and China met in Singapore on November 7, in a summit that has been widely described as “historic.” Historic it certainly was, and this was the big news …
The bluster and inevitable scorched-earthness of the Jan. 16 elections are at long last behind us. As expected, Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has been elected president, and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has gained a majority in the Legislative Yuan, a first in Taiwan’s history. For all its impressiveness, the DPP’s decisive electoral successes last month …
For decades academics and politicians have sought to find ways to untie the Gordian Knot in the Taiwan Strait. Almost every solution proposed has at its core contained some reference, howsoever worded, to “one China.” Thinkers in China, and within both the green and blue camps in Taiwan, have toyed with variations on the theme …
The Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) government is once again facing off against a group of young protesters who oppose the government’s policies and procedures. The current protest is directed at the government’s efforts to change the content of history textbooks. This is another in a long series of protests that addressed a wide range of issues …
Timing is everything in life, and the timing of Thinking Taiwan could not be better. Like many other readers of the American press, I have long had a problem. We are seldom exposed to thoughtful commentary — or even simple news — about developments in Taiwan despite the island’s importance to international security and its …
People who despair of Taiwan’s future would do well to consider the example of late 1950s and early 1960s Singapore. Surrounded by a sea of hostile Malays, and beset by internal malaise — rampant corruption, economic backwardness and communist insurrection — the ethnic Chinese-dominated city-state seemed a good candidate to be swept into the dustbin …
The specter of Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement continues to loom large for Hong Kong’s unfinished “Umbrella Revolution.” Soon pushing into its third month, Hong Kong’s movement has out-scaled and outlasted Taiwan’s Sunflowers, and has attracted exponentially greater international attention. It has, however, been caught in something of a holding pattern, punctuated earlier this month by a …
It’s been a tough week for social scientists in Taiwan. It began with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Su Ching-chuang’s (蘇清泉) grilling of Environmental Protection Administration Minister Wei Kuo-yen (魏國彥), who was scheduled to answer questions on nuclear waste disposal, about what social scientists and the departments of sociology at universities do exactly. This was …
A migratory existence seems to be a curse that runs in our family. Sixty years ago, as a result of the Chinese Civil War, my father was forced to flee to Taiwan with the government, travelling across half of China and then through the Taiwan Strait. He eventually settled down in the Huaguang Community (華光) …
On April 9, in the midst of the Sunflower Movement’s game-changing occupation of the legislature, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) made one of his carefully choreographed video appearances before the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), arguably the most influential foreign-policy think tanks in Washington, D.C. It was a typical Ma performance, particularly given the …
For more than a decade now, most of the world has accepted the grating “inevitability” of China’s political rise. People from Boston to Bogota and well beyond have watched awestruck as the country has turned in head-spinning growth rates year after year, propelled by rapidly rising exports and non-stop investment in infrastructure. In analyzing its …
In April of 2010 I participated at a glitzy event in Hong Kong-sponsored by the investment arm of a large Australian bank. It was a day-long conference convened to discuss the lucrative opportunities created by the growing economic ties between Taiwan and China. My role was to talk about the political aspects of the process, …
Much has been said in recent years about the visits to China by retired Taiwanese generals, and for those who worry about leaks of military secrets and propaganda coups, the commentariat has not looked too kindly upon the golf rounds and fraternization. However, as the old brass from the two sides get closer to each …