On behalf of Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and its National Security Task Force the Hoover Institution invites you to Taiwan’s 2024 Presidential and Legislative Elections: What Happened and What It Means on Thursday, January 25, 2024 from 4:00 - 5:30 PM PT. 

On January 13, the Taiwan voters delivered a split verdict: the DPP’s Lai Ching-te won the presidential election and secured an unprecedented third consecutive term for the ruling party. But 60 percent of voters cast ballots for someone else, and the DPP lost its majority in the legislature. The biggest shift in voting patterns was the rise of third-party candidate Ko Wen-je, the former mayor of Taipei, who received 26 percent of the vote and did especially well among young voters. Ko’s Taiwan People’s Party will also hold the balance of power in a closely divided legislature.

In this event, three panelists discuss what happened, why it happened, and what it means for Taiwan’s domestic politics, cross-Strait relations, and the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific region. 
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ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS
Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor, by courtesy, of political science and sociology at Stanford. He co-chairs the Hoover Institution’s programs on China’s Global Sharp Power and on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region.  
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Kharis Templeman is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and part of the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific. Templeman is a political scientist (Ph.D. 2012, Michigan) with research interests in Taiwan politics, democratization, elections and election management, party system development, and politics and security issues in Pacific Asia.

Stephen Tan is Managing Director of International Policy Advisory Group, a Taipei-based consulting firm, providing corporate clients with solutions to issues relating to geopolitical risks, strategic planning on supply chain, regulatory policy and government relations matters. Stephen was President of Cross-Strait Policy Association in 2016-2022, Visiting Fellow of Brookings Institute in 2018-2019, and Partner of Baker McKenzie from 2004 to 2016. He previously served as a board member of American Chamber of Commerce Taiwan for more than a decade, and is currently sitting on the board of directors of a handful of non-profit organizations as well as listed companies based in Taiwan.  Stephen frequently appears on Taiwan’s television, radio and other programs as a political commentator, and shares his perspectives on issues including Taiwan-US relations, cross-strait relations and Taiwan’s domestic policy issues. He is a graduate of National Taiwan University, University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and Carnegie Mellon University School of Business.

Tiffany (Chun-An) Wang is a fourth-year PhD candidate in Applied Physics at Stanford University. Her research interests focus on novel material synthesis for electronics and energy applications. She currently serves on the board of directors at the North America Taiwanese Engineering and Science Association (NATEA) (2022–present) and was the president of the Stanford Taiwanese Student Association (STSA) (2021–2022). She founded Stanford Salon PSI and has organized g0v Silicon Valley civil-tech hackathons since 2023.

As we wait for the votes to roll in here, I'll highlight five races that I think are likely to tel lthe story of the election for the legislature. 
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1. New Taipei 7. Lo Chih-cheng vs Yeh Yuan-chih. If the DPP has any chance of holding their majority in this election, they need to win this race. Lo Chih-cheng is vulnerable in a district he won with only 47% in 2020, and he's been the target of a rumor campaign and an apparent deepfake video. But the district is a little greener than Taiwan as a whole: Tsai Ing-wen won 59% here in 2020 and 58% in 2016. If the DPP can't hold on in this kind of marginal district it bodes poorly for their overall chances.  

2. New Taipei 12. Lai Pin-yu vs. Liao Hsien-hsiang. This district is the NPP member Huang Kuo-chang's old constituency; he won here when the DPP yielded the seat to him in 2016. In 2020, the DPP's Lai Pin-yu won a wild, close race here 45-44%, with an NPP candidate pulling 7%. This time around the campaign appears to be a straight-up green-blue race, with Lai facing off against the KMT's Liao Hsien-hsiang. The outcome will tell us something about which party is better able to win cross-over voters.   

3. Taichung 2. Lin Ching-yi vs. Yen Kuan-heng. This district has been a constant battlefield over the last 8 years: the KMT's Yen Kuan-heng, son of the notorious gangster-politician Yen Ching-piao, won it in 2016, then was upset in 2020 in the biggest shocker of the cycle by the Taiwan Statebuilding Party candidate Chen Po-wei. Chen was then recalled in 2021, but Yen lost the by-election to the DPP's Lin Ching-yi. Now Lin is facing off against Yen again, except it's a general election with much higher turnout. The result will say something about the declining effectiveness of factional "black gold" politics in one of its remaining bastions in central Taiwan. 

4. Kaohsiung 6. Huang Jie vs Chen Mei-ya vs Kuo Pei-hung. This district looked to be a safe hold for the DPP--until legislator Chao Tien-lin was exposed as having a mainland Chinese mistress. Chao dropped out of the race, and the DPP then nominated the former NPP councilor Huang Jie to step in, angering the deep green former chairman of FTV Kuo Pei-hung, who had his eyes on the seat. So now there's a pan-green split in the district, with the KMT candidate Chen Mei-ya well-positioned to win if green voters divide along the traditional progressive-conservative divide within the DPP.  

5. Highlands Indigenous Constituency. Saidhai Tahovecahe​ vs many others. These special indigenous seats always get overlooked in narratives about the campaign, but they're competitive and potentially important to the balance of power in the LY this time around. In 2020, the DPP candidate Saidhai Tahovecahe won in a stunning upset, becoming the first DPP member ever to hold a seat in that constituency. If she can hold on for a second term, that would be especially valuable to the DPP this cycle, and it would break with past precedent. In the plains constituency, the DPP representative Chen Ying is in a similar situation. 

I've been in Taiwan now for almost three weeks, first with a group of Stanford students on a study trip and then as part of the North American Fulbright observation tour. These groups have both met with all the campaigns and a huge number of people, and it's been a firehose of information. Now that the campaign is officially over (as of midnight Jan 12 Taiwan time), I have some jumbled thoughts on what just transpired.

This campaign seems pretty subdued. i was also here in 2020, when Han Kuo-yu was the KMT nominee. He was an exceptionally polarizing candidate -- the deep blue KMT base loved him and many of them were convinced he was going to win. The green camp saw him as an existential threat to Taiwan. That campaign featured Lai Ching-te challenging Tsai Ing-wen for the DPP nomination, and the eruption of protests in Hong Kong. By the end of the campaign, most of the swing voters made up their minds for Tsai. Turnout jumped 9 points from 66-75% and she won easily. 

In contrast, this time around the election campaign cycle was rather quiet for months -- one might even say boring. The polls showed little movement after Hou and Lai were formally nominated in June. There was a spike in interest when Terry Gou (remember him?) registered for a signature drive to run as an independent. And there was another in the run-up to November 24, when the prospect of Blue-White KMT-TPP cooperation on a joint presidential ticket got real, and then the deal fell apart, and then all three candidates announced their VP nominees and Gou declined to run (and now, to endorse anyone -- he's completely dropped out of sight!) The last month has felt more amped up, but the policy rollouts, debates, late breaking scandals, and insults have all felt very...normal...for a Taiwan presidential election campaign. There's just not the same sense of existential threat or inspiration that we saw in 2020 or 2016. 

On Cross-Strait and US-Taiwan relations, there really isn't much difference between the three presidential candidates. The distinctions between them are harder to parse out than they were in past elections. Hou has tacked the KMT to the center, especially on defense policy and relations with the U.S.; Lai promises to continue Tsai's approach and shake off the accusation he's deeper green than she is; and to the extent Ko can be pinned down at all he's tried to squeeze himself somewhere in the constricting space between the two, supporting the call for defense budget increases while also embracing the KMT's call to revive the Cross-Strait Services Trade Agreement (CSSTA) with Beijing. 

The stakes look very different to international audiences. The gap between the general domestic vibe and the framing of this race in many international media outlets has become a chasm. Read the English-language press and the headlines framed this as the election that could change the world. Meanwhile, the reaction of young voters, especially, that we've talked to has been a collective shrug. All three candidates are flawed in their own ways, and even people from their own campaigns will admit it privately. Nor do most people expect fundamental changes to come about as a result of this election. Add it all up and it's a recipe for low turnout. 

The legislative races are once again overshadowed, but quite important. The conventional wisdom we're heard is that the DPP will lose its majority -- it has 63 seats right now but is likely to lose at least 10, putting it below the 57/113 it needs. The KMT will be the main beneficiary -- possibly picking up 10 seats or more in the districts. And the TPP is likely to increase its seat share mostly via the party list vote -- last time it won five seats on 11.7% of the vote, and if it doubles that (23-4%) it would have 10 seats. The KMT has also yielded four districts to the TPP but they're all quite green, so I'd be surprised if the TPP has a single district legislator next month. 

So, what we're looking at most likely is a split legislature, with both the DPP and KMT at roughly 48-53, and the TPP in the middle with 9-11. It's even possible that 2-5 independents could win and collectively be crucial to the legislative majority. Whoever wins the presidency is going to have to deal with multi-party politics and do coalition-building issue by issue in the LY. 

In the interest of intellectual honesty, let me put down a few expectations for today's results. 

Turnout will be down. My prior here is that it will be close to the 2016 level, at say 66-69%. The weather is good but, again, subdued campaign with flawed candidates.  

The TPP's party list vote will be close to Ko's vote share. For once, the party list, which is decided by voters' second vote, is potentially crucial to determining the balance of power in the LY. In the absence of other information I'm guessing the TPP's list will do about as well as Ko does in the presidential race. 

The KMT comes close but does not surpass the DPP as the largest party in the Legislative Yuan. The electoral system has a slight (2-5 seats) bias in favor of the KMT, and at this point I think we can say the party's candidates typically do better in the district races, where family legacy, constituent service, factional ties, and other things that localize voting patterns matter more than in the presidential election. Going through district by district, my best guess is that the KMT picks up a net of 5 seats in the greater Taipei area (Taipei, New Taipei, and Keelung [UPDATE: and Taoyuan]), holds in Hsinchu and Miaoli, nets 4 seats in central Taiwan (Taichung, Nantou, Changhua), and flips 2 elsewhere (Tainan, Kaohsiung, Pingtung, Taitung, Yilan, etc. [UPDATE: and Yunlin, Chiayi]) KMT candidates will probably also win back at least one of the two seats in the indigenous districts (1 highland, 1 lowland) that the DPP holds now. That would net the party 12 seats, putting them at 50. The DPP drop in this scenario is around the same which would put them at 51 seats.   

It's also not fully appreciated how close they were in the PR list last election: the DPP won 34% and the KMT 33% there (both got 13 seats). If both parties are mostly relying on core supporters to cast a party vote, as they did last time, then I'd expect them to look similar again, maybe down a seat or two from 2020. Let's call it 1 seat down for each.

Add that up and we've got KMT 49, DPP 50, TPP 10, and others 4.  

​And finally...

I think Lai wins the presidential race, but it's pretty close. He's been ahead in the polls all year, by a little to a lot; not one reliable polling company ever found Hou in the lead. I expected dissatisfaction with the DPP government to manifest in soft numbers for Lai, which it did -- he's rarely if ever broken 40% in polls over the last six months, and clear majorities support a change in ruling party in this election. But I also expected eventually anti-DPP voters would finally converge around Hou, and that doesn't appear to have happened. Instead they have remained divided on who they would prefer to see instead, and even on who is the strongest candidate (Ko or Hou) if they are to vote strategically. In the end this probably dooms Hou's chances of pulling the upset. Ko's enduring strength has surprised me, but his chances depend greatly on support from the most fickle potential voters: those in the youngest cohorts (below roughly 28yo), and I still expect him to finish a clear third.

With Ko soaking up a lot of the disaffected voters, and with both parties turning out their bases and not attracting much beyond, I expect the larger generic size of the green camp to be decisive. I'll predict: Lai wins with about 40%, Hou with 35%, and Ko with 25%. I'm not going to venture a guess about the final raw vote tallies but I will go out on a limb and predict Hou won't hit Han Kuo-yu's 5.5 million in 2020; and Lai will fall short of the 6 million mark that Tsai hit in all three of her campaigns.  

Taiwan will hold its presidential and legislative elections on January 13, 2024. That's only 15 days away! Over the coming days I will have a few posts on the state of the race, including a deep dive into the legislative elections (spoiler alert: it looks like no party is going to win a majority).

I'm also in Taiwan for this cycle and will be posting regularly on Bluesky -- I have left behind the decrepit remains of Twitter for good, I hope -- and can be found at: @kharist.bsky.social. Bluesky finally opened posts to public viewing without requiring a Bluesky account, so I'm going to direct interested readers there for quick reactions on the campaign and breaking news. Also, for any Taiwan tweeps interested in making a similar migration, I have a few Bluesky access codes available -- hit me up on email and I'm happy to share. 

I'll also highlight a couple of resources here on Taiwan elections.

• The Central Election Commission has a decent English-language version of their website, and will report results in real time here on January 13. 
• MyFormosa (美麗島電子報) is the polling company with the best combination of a long track record of good survey work, frequent polls, and a detailed breakdown of their methodology. They may have a slightly green house effect but it's far less problematic than many of the other polling companies in this space. 
• TaiwanPlus is covering the campaign in depth and will have three hours of live English-language coverage on election day. 
• The Central News Agency's English-language site is Focus Taiwan, which also offers quality non-partisan news coverage. 
• The Taipei Times is the English paper of record for Taiwan. It's a sister paper of the green (i.e. DPP friendly) Liberty Times newspaper. 

Finally, for electoral rules geeks like myself, there are several laws that govern how these elections will be conducted. The key ones: 

• Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act (for the presidential election) 
• Public Officials Election and Recall Act (for the Legislative Yuan elections)
• The Organic Law of the Central Election Commission
• Political Parties Act (passed in 2017, tightens requirements to start a political party and maintain one in good standing)
• Political Donations Act (passed in 2018, limits amounts and times for donations to candidates)
• Anti-Infiltration Act (passed in 2019, aimed at combatting PRC influence in Taiwan elections)

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Finally, for those readers interested in a deeper look at Taiwan's electoral management practices, I have a recent book chapter laying out the rules from beginning to end of the electoral process. It covers questions like "Does Taiwan allow absentee voting?" (No) and "Can candidates withdraw from the presidential race now?" (also no). 

This chapter is drawn from Electoral Malpractice in Asia: Bending the Rules, co-edited with Netina Tan and available from Lynne Rienner Publishing. It covers election regulations, rules, and their problems in 11 countries in the region: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Mongolia, the Philippines, Cambodia, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Myanmar/Burma.

The big takeaway from that comparative study is that Taiwan is now top of the pack in Asia for professional non-partisan electoral management, and the kinds of shenanigans that bedevil elections in much of the rest of the region have mostly been eliminated in Taiwan. Expect this year to be no different -- Taiwan's election day system of voting and counting is exceptionally fast, efficient, low-tech, and transparent, and much of the rest of the democratic world could learn a thing or two from how Taiwan conducts elections. 

On behalf of Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region, the Hoover Institution held Taiwan's 2024 General Elections: The Campaign So Far on Wednesday, November 29, 2023. The recording of this event is now available at the PTIP program website. 

On January 13, 2024, Taiwan voters will go to the polls to elect a new president and legislature. The results could have major implications for Taiwan’s relationship with the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), as well as the peace and stability of the Indo-Pacific.

​In this event, three experts on Taiwan’s domestic politics weigh in on the state of the race, including the leading presidential candidates and parties, the messages of each campaign, and the issues animating the race so far. As the campaign enters the home stretch, they discuss the role of the PRC and the United States in the election, the most likely outcomes, and the consequences for the trilateral U.S.-Taiwan-PRC relationship. 

Chiaoning Su is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, Journalism, and Public Relations at Oakland University, where she also serves as the Director of the Barry M. Klein Center for Culture and Globalization. Su is a communication scholar (Ph.D., 2015, Temple University) with a dual focus on two interrelated strands: the journalism of crisis and journalism in crisis. Her first line of inquiry delves into the representation and production of crisis news, while her second line of research centers on the role of journalism in the context of diminishing democracy. Her work has been published in Media, Culture, and Society, International Journal of Communication, Asian Journal of Communication, Taiwan Journal of Democracy, and Communication Review. Prior to her academic career, Su gained valuable professional experience as a communication specialist at Ogilvy Public Relations and worked on several political campaigns in Taiwan.

Dennis Lu-Chung Weng is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Sam Houston State University and the founding Director of the Asia Pacific Peace Research Institute (APPRI). He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2014. Dr. Weng has formerly taught at institutions including Wesleyan University and SUNY-Cortland. He currently holds research fellowships at Stellenbosch University and National Chengchi University, Taiwan. His research centers on comparative politics, international relations, and the dynamics between domestic political behavior and international politics, particularly in the US and Asia-Pacific regions. A recognized expert in his field, Dr. Weng's insights have been featured in scholarly publications, op-eds, and various media outlets. He is a noted commentator on US China-Taiwan relations and political events in both the US and Asia.

MODERATOR
Kharis Templeman is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and part of the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific. Templeman is a political scientist (Ph.D. 2012, Michigan) with research interests in Taiwan politics, democratization, elections and election management, party system development, and politics and security issues in Pacific Asia.
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INTRODUCTION BY
Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor, by courtesy, of political science and sociology at Stanford. He co-chairs the Hoover Institution’s programs on China’s Global Sharp Power and on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region.  

On behalf of Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and its National Security Task Force, the Hoover Institution held The World’s Most Dangerous Place? Assessing the Prospects for War and Peace in the Taiwan Strait on Tuesday, November 14, 2023 at 12:00 PM PT. 
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In recent years, numerous analysts have warned of an increasing risk of war in the Taiwan Strait. Others, however, have argued that military conflict remains unlikely, and that the risk of war should not be over-hyped. Drawing from his recent book, Scott Kastner outlines a framework through which to assess the prospects for military conflict between China and Taiwan. Drawing on international relations theory, Kastner outlines several causal pathways through which a Taiwan Strait conflict could occur, and assesses how broad trends in China-Taiwan-US relations are affecting the likelihood of these different scenarios. He concludes with policy suggestions for how actors in Beijing, Taipei and Washington could mitigate the risks of a war in the Taiwan Strait.

Scott L. Kastner is a professor in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park. He graduated from Cornell University and received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego. His books include Political Conflict and Economic Interdependence across the Taiwan Strait and Beyond (Stanford University Press, 2009); China’s Strategic Multilateralism: Investing in Global Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2019; with Margaret Pearson and Chad Rector); and War and Peace in the Taiwan Strait (Columbia University Press, 2022).
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Kharis Templeman is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and part of the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific. Templeman is a political scientist (Ph.D. 2012, Michigan) with research interests in Taiwan politics, democratization, elections and election management, party system development, and politics and security issues in Pacific Asia.

On November 2, the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region, the Center for East Asian Studies, and the Stanford Taiwan Science and Technology Hub co-sponsored a film screening of the documentary Invisible Nation, a poignant examination of Taiwan's contested status during the era of Tsai Ing-wen, the current President of the Republic of China (Taiwan). 

This Stanford Democracy Day 2023 event featured a Q&A with director Vanessa Hope and a pre-recorded introduction from Taiwan’s Digital Minister Audrey Tang.

Synopsis
With unprecedented access to Taiwan’s sitting head of state, director Vanessa Hope investigates the election and tenure of Tsai Ing-wen, the first female president of Taiwan. Thorough, incisive and bristling with tension, Invisible Nation is a living account of Tsai’s tightrope walk as she balances the hopes and dreams of her nation between the colossal geopolitical forces of the U.S. and China. Hope’s restrained observational style captures Tsai at work in her country’s vibrant democracy at home, while seeking full international recognition of Taiwan’s right to exist. At a time when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has demonstrated the ever-present threat of authoritarian aggression, Invisible Nation brings punctual focus to the struggle of Taiwan as it fights for autonomy and freedom from fear.​​

Director Biography
Vanessa Hope is an award-winning producer and director. Vanessa has produced multiple acclaimed films in China including Berlin International Film Festival selection, Wang Quanan's The Story Of Ermei and Cannes Film Festival selection, Chantal Akerman's Tombee De Nuit Sur Shanghai, part of an omnibus of films, The State Of The World. She has also produced her own short films, including China In Three Words, an official selection at DOC NYC. Hope’s additional producing credits include Zeina Durra’s The Imperialists Are Still Alive! and Sarah and Emily Kunstler's feature documentary, William Kunstler: Disturbing The Universe and the award-winning film, Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America. She served as Executive Producer of Paula James-Martinez’s Born Free.
Hope made her directorial debut with the documentary All Eyes and Ears, an exploration of the complex links between the U.S. and China told through the stories of U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman, his adopted daughter Gracie Mei, and civil advocate Chen Guangcheng. Hope’s latest film, Invisible Nation, is about the first female president of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, and the story of Taiwan’s geopolitical predicament, with dangerous parallels to Ukraine. Vanessa and her husband, Ted Hope, share a company, Double Hope Films, with many independent fiction and documentary features and series in development. Vanessa is on the advisory board of the Equal Rights Amendment Coalition and the Fund for Women’s Equality.

On October 19, the Hoover Institution's Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region held a joint event with National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu, Taiwan, to discuss how to deepen U.S.-Taiwan cooperation in semiconductors.  

Taiwan is one of Asia’s most prosperous and successful liberal democracies, the world’s leading innovator in and producer of semiconductors, and a trusted partner in critical supply chains. While Taiwan stands at the center of the global semiconductor economy, its lack of diplomatic recognition and formal alliances contributes to its existential vulnerability to being invaded or otherwise involuntarily absorbed into the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

This event brought together participants from the Hoover Institution to discuss these issues with Taiwan counterparts, and to consider the recommendations of a new Hoover Institution report entitled “Silicon Shield: US- Silicon Triangle: The United States, Taiwan, China, and Global Semiconductor Security.” The report is available for free download at the project website. 

For more on this topic, see the Hoover Institution's Working Group on Semiconductors and the Security of the United States and Taiwan. Some of the report chapter authors have also participated in podcasts about the report, which you can listen to here: 

Matt Turpin, on mitigating China's non-market behavior in semiconductors
Chris Ford, on how the United States can reduce vulnerabilities in semiconductor supply chains 
Mary Kay Magistad, on the future of U.S.-China competition
Glenn Tiffert, on why China struggles to produce advanced semiconductors

In addition, in July 2023, the report's editors appeared in Washington DC for a launch event. 

Participants
Terry Tsao is a seasoned executive and industry leader, currently serving as the Global Chief Marketing Officer and President of Taiwan at SEMI. In his current capacity, Terry Tsao assumes the responsibility of directing corporate marketing strategies of SEMI, encompassing various critical areas such as strategy formulation, association operations, product marketing, and market communications. Moreover, he leads the SEMI Market Intelligence Team, driving data-driven insights and actionable intelligence within the organization. In his leadership position for SEMI Taiwan, Tsao oversees all aspects of activity planning, product offerings, and service content. With over 16 years of experience at SEMI, Tsao has significantly advanced Taiwan's semiconductor community and spearheaded crucial policy initiatives within the global semiconductor industry. Prior to his current position, Tsao held dual roles as the President of SEMI Taiwan and the President of SEMI Southeast Asia, leveraging his extensive experience to drive advancements in the semiconductor industry across multiple regions.

Tain-Jy Chen is a senior professor of economics at TSE, and also a professor emeritus of National Taiwan University. In addition to teaching, he has previously served as the president of Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research, a think tank specializing in economic policy studies, and also in the Taiwan government, as the minister for Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) and National Development Council (NDC). This experience gives him wide exposures to policy formations and implementations. As an economist, his research interests are in economic development and trade policies. He earned a Ph.D. degree in economics in 1983 from Pennsylvania State University. He has published extensively in academic journals, mostly in the fields of trade, investment, and industrial development. His recent work focuses on industrial development of China and the US-China trade war.

Kuo-Chun Yeh is a professor at the Graduate Institute of National Development, a researcher at Center for China Studies, and Coordinator of China Research Program, National Taiwan University.  He is Secretary-general of the Chinese Association of Political Science (CAPS Taipei).  Since 2021 he has been an EU Jean Monnet Chair focusing on the EU-China industrial competition.

Burn-Jeng Lin is a Distinguished Senior Professor at National Tsing Hua University, a position he has held since retiring as Vice President of TSMC in 2016. He joined TSMC as a senior director in 2000 and became Vice President in 2011. Prior to that, he founded and led Linnovation, Inc. From 1970 to 1992, Dr. Lin worked at IBM, where he held various technical and managerial positions and was the first person to propose immersion lithography, a technique that eventually became viable in the 1980s. Dr. Lin is an IEEE Life Fellow and SPIE Fellow and was elected to the membership of the United States National Academy of Engineering in 2008 and as an Academician of Academia Sinica in 2014. He received a B.S. from National Taiwan University and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Ohio State University.

FEATURING:
Larry Diamond - Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
James O. Ellis - Annenberg Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Kharis Templeman - Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution
H.-S. Philip Wong - Willard R. and Inez Kerr Bell Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University

Come work with me! The Hoover Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region has an opening for a student research fellow for the 2023-24 academic year (Fall, Winter, Spring quarters) at Stanford.

​The Hoover Student Fellowship Program (HSFP) offers Stanford students a competitive opportunity to participate in important work at the Hoover Institution across both key research initiatives and organizational areas. The program is a 3-quarter-long paid fellowship in which students will be paired in topical areas of their preference with Hoover fellows or staff members.

Students in the fellowship will provide research and operational support, while also benefiting from mentorship and partaking in exclusive programming for the fellowship cohort. Students should expect not only guidance from their mentors and research supervisors, but also a chance to learn more about research, policy, and public affairs from influential leaders at Hoover and beyond. The fellowship will take place in-person throughout the academic year.

Applications due: Thursday, August 31, 2023 @ 11:59 PM.

Apply here. (You will need a valid Stanford email address to apply). Note that this is one of many possible research opportunities listed on the program website. The Taiwan project description is below: 

​Governing Taiwan: Making Democracy Work
The student fellow will provide research assistance on a book-length project to examine the evolution of Taiwan’s political institutions after its transition to democracy. The project seeks applicants with an interest in Taiwanese politics, East Asian Studies, political institutions, or the Taiwanese legal system. The successful candidate will have near-native reading proficiency in Chinese and some prior familiarity with Taiwan’s political history and institutions. A background in legal or political studies is a plus.

On behalf of Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and its National Security Task Force the Hoover Institution invites you to a book talk on Divided Allies: Taiwan, the United States, and the Hidden History of the Cold War in Asia, with Hsiao-ting Lin on Thursday, June 1, 2023 from 4:00 - 5:00 PM PT.

Register here to attend this virtual talk. 
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Professor Lin’s book explores the challenges which faced the United States and Taiwanese alliance during the Cold War, addressing a wide range of events and influences of the period between the 1950s and 1970s. Tackling seven main topics to outline the fluctuations of the U.S.–Taiwan relationship, this volume highlights the impact of the mainland counteroffensive, the offshore islands, Tibet, Taiwan’s secret operations in Asia, Taiwan’s Soviet and nuclear gambits, Chinese representation in the United Nations, and the Vietnam War. Utilizing multinational archival research, particularly the newly available materials from Taiwan and the United States, it reevaluates Taiwan’s foreign policy during the Cold War, revealing a pragmatic and opportunistic foreign policy disguised in nationalistic rhetoric.

About the Speaker
Hsiao-ting Lin is a research fellow and curator of the Modern China and Taiwan collection at the Hoover Institution, for which he collects material on China and Taiwan, as well as China-related materials in other East Asian countries. He holds a BA in political science from National Taiwan University (1994) and an MA in international law and diplomacy from National Chengchi University in Taiwan (1997). He received his DPhil in oriental studies in 2003 from the University of Oxford. He has published extensively on modern Chinese and Taiwanese politics, history, and ethnic minorities, including Accidental State: Chiang Kai-shek, the United States, and the Making of Taiwan (2016); Modern China’s Ethnic Frontiers: A Journey to the West (2011); and Tibet and Nationalist China’s Frontier: Intrigues and Ethnopolitics, 1928–49 (2006).