On Friday, January 27, the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific at the Hoover Institution had the privilege of hosting Taiwan's representative to the United States, Bi-khim Hsiao (蕭美琴). Amb. Hsiao joined students, faculty, and staff for a 90-minute conversation and Q&A session. The event recording is now available on the project website, and below. About the Speaker Bi-khim Hsiao assumed her position as Taiwan’s Representative to the United States in July 2020, after serving as a Senior Adviser to the President at the National Security Council of Taiwan. Representative Hsiao previously served four terms in the Taiwan Legislature, representing overseas citizens for the first term, and then the constituents of Taipei City and Hualien County through different terms. For many years she was ranking member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and previously the chair of the USA Caucus in the Legislative Yuan. |
0 Comments
On behalf of Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and its National Security Task Force the Hoover Institution invites you to Narratives of Civic Duty and Taiwan’s Democratic Trajectory on Thursday, January 26, 2023 from 12:30 - 1:45 pm PT. To attend, register at the event page. In her newly-published book Narratives of Civic Duty: How National Stories Shape Democracy in Asia, Aram Hur investigates the impulse behind a sense of civic duty in democracies. Why do some citizens feel a responsibility to vote, pay taxes, or take up arms for one's country? Civic duty is typically seen as the result of culture or character. Rather, Hur finds that it emerges from a force long seen as detrimental to democracy: strong national attachments. National stories—the folklore of the national people—embed relational legacies with the state that can harness, stunt, or even subvert the nation’s powerful pull toward civic duty. The talk focuses on the case of Taiwan and how its diverse national stories have shaped its democratic past and future. Aram Hur is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of the Institute for Korean Studies at the University of Missouri. Her research focuses on nationalism and democracy in East Asia, with special attention to issues of identity change, integration, and democratic support in the Korean peninsula and Taiwan. She is the 2021 Korea Society Sherman Emerging Scholar and a 2018-19 CSIS U.S.-Korea NextGen Scholar. She is the author of Narratives of Civic Duty: How National Stories Shape Democracy in Asia(Cornell University Press, 2022). She holds a PhD in Politics from Princeton University, MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School, and BA with honors from Stanford University. On November 29, I'm going to speak about the Taiwan local election outcomes at the Hoover Institution. The event is virtual; online attendance is free and open to the public. Register at the event page. The abstract is below. In anticipation of this talk, I've attempted to keep track of the candidates and campaigns in each county and municipality on this blog; you can find the details here: Part 1. The Six Special Municipalities Part 2. North and Central Taiwan Part 3. The South, East, and Offshore Islands Part 4. Concluding Thoughts Local Elections Update, One Month Out Update: The CEC official election results for the 2022 local elections are available here. On behalf of the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region (PTIP) and its National Security Task Force, the Hoover Institution invites you to Taiwan’s 2022 Local Election Results: What Happened and What It Means on Tuesday, November 29, 2022 from 4:00 - 5:15 PT. On November 26, 2022, Taiwan's electorate will go to the polls to select 22 mayors and county executives, several hundred council members, and thousands of other local offices. Voters will also decide on a constitutional amendment to lower the voting age from 20 to 18. This talk will cover the results of the elections and discuss the implications for Taiwan's future, including cross-Strait relations, local governance, party politics, President Tsai Ing-wen’s last 18 months in office, and the race to succeed her in 2024.
On behalf of The Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region (PTIP) and its National Security Task Force, the Hoover Institution invites you to Taiwanese at the UN: The Use and Abuse of UN Resolution 2758 on Tuesday, May 31, 2022 from 11:30am-12:45pm PDT. In 1971, UN Resolution 2758 granted the seat occupied by the Republic of China in the General Assembly and the Security Council to the People's Republic of China (PRC). In recent years, the PRC has attempted to reinterpret this resolution as an endorsement of its "One China Principle," and it has promoted the fallacy that UN member states came to a determination that Taiwan was a part of the PRC. Yet, as the historical official records show, member states made no such determination about Taiwan's international status. This effort around Resolution 2758 is part of a broader campaign by the PRC to expand its influence in UN-affiliated bodies. Taiwan remains the foremost target of this campaign. Since 2016, at Beijing's behest, Taiwanese representatives have been blocked from participating even as observers in international organizations such as the World Health Assembly (WHA) and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The PRC has institutionalized and normalized its stance on Taiwan within these organizations by signing secret agreements, restricting the access of Taiwan nationals to the UN and its facilities, and embedding PRC nationals across various levels of UN staff. The UN and its specialized agencies have not made the texts of these agreements available to the public or to any entity beyond the main signatories, though leaked guidance memos provide insights into the scope of MOU contents. In this event, Jessica Drun will discuss Beijing’s efforts to “internationalize” its “One China Principle" and to conflate it with UN Resolution 2758. Her remarks will draw on a recent report, co-authored with Bonnie Glaser of the German Marshall Fund, that documents Beijing’s expanding influence in UN-linked organizations. She will be joined by Chih-Fu Yeh, a PhD candidate in biology at Stanford University, who in December 2020 was improperly barred from joining a UNESCO-backed winter school session because of his Taiwanese nationality. Mr. Yeh will describe his own experience and highlight how overly strict interpretations of UN regulations and guidelines continue to impose real costs on Taiwanese citizens. Jessica Drun is a Nonresident Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub. She has also held positions in the defense contracting space and the National Bureau of Asian Research. Ms. Drun specializes in cross-Strait relations, Taiwan politics, and U.S.-Taiwan relations and regularly provides commentary on these issues. She is fluent in Mandarin Chinese. Chih-Fu Yeh is a PhD candidate studying microbial community ecology and evolution in Department of Biology at Stanford University. He was born and raised in Taiwan. In Winter 2020, Chih-Fu applied to a ICTP/UNESCO winter school session on quantitative systems biology, and was denied permission to attend the event because of his Taiwanese nationality. Tuesday, May 3, 2022 from 4:30 - 5:45 pm PT, the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific (PTIP) at the Hoover Institution will host a special event examining Taiwan's acute dependence on foreign energy imports. The event will be online and is free and open to the public. Please register at the event page. In 2020, 93 percent of the energy consumed in Taiwan came from imported fossil fuels: oil, coal, and liquid natural gas. Taiwan’s government is also phasing out nuclear power, with the last nuclear generation unit scheduled to be shut down in 2025. This overwhelming reliance on imports is at odds with Taiwan’s pledges to reduce its carbon emissions to net-zero by 2050. It also presents a serious security vulnerability: a prolonged disruption of energy supplies could quickly bring Taiwan’s economy to a halt, including its strategically important semiconductor industry. In this event, three experts on Taiwan’s energy policies will discuss Taiwan’s changing energy mix, its ambitious plans for developing renewable energy sources and lessening dependence on imports, and how Taiwan’s exclusion from important international energy bodies such as the International Energy Agency adds to its energy security challenges. Speaker BiosKer-hsuan Chien is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Technology Management at National Tsing Hua University. Her research focuses on the socio-technical aspects of the energy transition in Taiwan. She is particularly interested in how the state’s industrial policies, the pressures from international corporate governance, and the materiality of the electric power system co-shape the path of Taiwan’s energy transition. Kuan-Ting Chen (he/him) is currently the Chief Executive Officer of the Taiwan NextGen Foundation, a Taipei and Chiayi-based think tank working to make Taiwan more sustainable, diverse, and inclusive. Previously, he served as the Deputy Spokesperson and Chief Research Officer at Taipei City Government. In this position, he worked to strengthen Taipei's national and international standing, formulated methods to realize public policy objectives, researched and generated activism for new policy directions, and initiated the Taipei City Government’s international internship program. Marcin Jerzewski (he/him) currently serves as the Taipei Office Analyst at the European Values Center for Security Policy and Research Fellow at the Taiwan NextGen Foundation. Committed to public scholarship, Marcin is also a contributor to the China Observers in Central and Eastern Europe platform of the Czech Association for International Affairs and a fellow of the BEBESEA (Building Better Connections between East and Southeast Asia) collective. As a scholar of Taiwan-Europe relations, he is a frequent commentator in Taiwanese and international media, including the BBC, Focus Taiwan, The Guardian, RTÉ, and Voice of America. On April 6, Phillip Saunders of National Defense University spoke about PLA modernization and its implications for Taiwan's defense strategy and U.S.-Taiwan security cooperation. The talk abstract is below; the video is now available at the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific event page. Drawing upon the new book Crossing the Strait: China’s Military Prepares for War with Taiwan, Dr. Saunders will discuss China’s available military options, how organizational reforms and new capabilities have improved the PLA’s ability to execute these options, the current cross-strait military balance, the challenges China would face in trying to resolve the Taiwan issue by force, and how Beijing weighs military, economic, and political factors in its evolving Taiwan policy calculus. His presentation will draw upon extensive open-source analysis of PLA efforts to build the necessary power projection capabilities and discuss how lessons learned from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may affect thinking in China, Taiwan, and the United States. Featuring Phillip C. Saunders Director, Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs National Defense University, followed by conversation with Kharis Templeman, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution. On February 7, Wendy Cutler spoke about the prospects for strengthening U.S.-Taiwan economic ties. Abstract is below; video is now available at the Hoover Institution Program on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific (PTIP) event page. U.S.-Taiwan economic ties are at a crossroads. In 2020, President Tsai Ing-wen lifted a ban on U.S. pork imports containing the feed additive ractopamine, removing a long-standing irritant in trade relations with the United States. Last summer, the Biden administration held bilateral talks with their Taiwan counterparts under the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) for the first time since 2016. In more recent months, the two sides have begun additional discussions about strengthening the resilience of global supply chains, including the supply of one of Taiwan’s most strategically important exports: semiconductors. In this discussion, Wendy Cutler of the Asia Society will comment on these developments and the prospects for deepening U.S.-Taiwan economic relations in a moderated conversation with Hoover Research Fellow Kharis Templeman. On March 18, the Hoover Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific will host an event examining the state of and challenges to Taiwan's media freedom. In December 2020, Taiwan’s National Communications Commission (國家通訊傳播委員會) voted to deny a broadcast license to CTiTV (中天電視), a pro-China news channel that had been highly critical of the Taiwanese government and ruling party, the DPP. This decision marks the first time a TV channel has been forced off the air for violation of the terms of its license since Taiwan became a democracy. CTiTV is part of the Want Want China Times media group, a media conglomerate owned and run by the pro-unification snack foods magnate Tsai Eng-meng, and it has been accused of coordinating its reporting with the Taiwan Affairs Office in Beijing. However, until being forced off the air, it was also a popular source of news among supporters of the opposition KMT and an important voice in Taiwan’s diverse and critical TV landscape.
In this moderated discussion, three panelists from Taiwan will consider the complex issues this decision raises and debate when -- and if -- it is ever appropriate for government to regulate media content and limit access to the broadcast spectrum in a liberal democracy. Registration is free and open to the public. Some additional somewhat disjointed thoughts follow... The Hoover Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region will host a virtual event tomorrow (register at the link), Tuesday, December 8 at 4pm, the Dynamics of Democracy in Taiwan: The Ma Ying-jeou Era.This event will cover some of the findings from a recent new book that I have co-edited with Yun-han Chu and Larry Diamond. We're fortunate to have three of the contributors to the book able to join us for the discussion. They are: Szu-yin Ho, Professor of Strategic and International Affairs at Tamkang University, Danshui, Taiwan, and the former deputy secretary-general of the National Security Council during the Ma Ying-jeou presidency. He'll be speaking about the legacies of President Ma's cross-Strait policies. Austin Horng-en Wang, Assistant Professor of Political Science at UNLV. He'll provide some remarks about the emergence of Tsai Ing-wen as the unquestioned leader of the DPP during the Ma era. Shih-hao Huang, Post-Doctoral Fellow in political science at National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan. He'll present data that show the challenges the Ma administration had getting priority legislation approved by the Taiwan's Legislative Yuan, despite enjoying a large KMT majority there for both his terms. He will also compare legislative success rates under Ma to the Tsai Ing-wen era, and reflect a bit on what the differences can tell us about executive-legislative relations in Taiwan. For more on the book, and a link to the first chapter, see this previous blog post. This will be the last event of the calendar year for PTIP. Keep an eye out for announcements about our 2021 activities, coming soon. Finally, on a personal note, this event is my first as the Program Manger of the Hoover Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific. After being out of that role for over a year, as of November 1 I've stepped back in to take over the day-to-day management of the current incarnation of the Taiwan program at its new home at the Hoover Institution. Many thanks to Glenn Tiffert for his great stewardship of PTIP over the past year while juggling many other responsibilities--including, not coincidentally, the China Global Sharp Power project.
The Taiwan Democracy and Security Project at Stanford University is hosting a presentation today by Gary Hamilton, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Washington. Prof. Hamilton will speak about his new book from Stanford University Press, Making Money: How Taiwanese Industrialists Embraced the Global Economy. The talk is free and open to the public. Additional details can be found at the official event page. Abstract
Making Money: How Taiwanese Industrialists Embraced the Global Economy is a record of a thirty-year research project that Gary G. Hamilton and Kao Cheng-shu began in 1987. A distinguished sociologist and university administrator in Taiwan, Kao and his research team (which included Prof. Hamilton during his frequent visits to Taiwan) interviewed over 800 owners and managers of Taiwanese firms in Taiwan, China, and Vietnam. Some were re-interviewed over ten times during this period. The length of this project allows them a vantage point to challenge the conventional interpretations of Asian industrialization and to present a new interpretation of the global economy that features an enduring alliance between, on the one hand, American and European retailers and merchandisers and, on the other hand, Asian contract manufacturers, with Taiwanese industrialists becoming the most prominent contract manufacturers in the past forty years. Bio Gary G. Hamilton is a Professor Emeritus of International Studies and Sociology at the University of Washington. He specializes in historical/comparative sociology, economic sociology, with a special emphasis on Asian societies. He is an author of numerous articles and books, including most recently Emergent Economies, Divergent Paths, Economic Organization and International Trade in South Korea and Taiwan (with Robert Feenstra) (Cambridge University Press, 2006), Commerce and Capitalism in Chinese Societies (London: Routledge, 2006), The Market Makers: How Retailers Are Changing the Global Economy (co-editor and contributor, Oxford University Press, 2011; paperback 2012), and Making Money: How Taiwanese Industrialists Embraced the Global Economy (with Kao Cheng-shu, Stanford University Press, 2018). |
About MeI am a political scientist with research interests in democratization, elections and election management, parties and party system development, one-party dominance, and the links between domestic politics and external security issues. My regional expertise is in East Asia, with special focus on Taiwan. Archives
January 2024
Categories
All
|