The Hoover Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region held a Conversation with Representative Alexander Tah-Ray Yui, Taiwan’s Chief Diplomatic Officer in the United States, on Friday, February 28, 2025, at 10:00 a.m. PT.

​Representative Yui assumed his position as the head of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Washington, D.C., in December 2023. He previously served in a similar role as the Representative to the European Union and Belgium. His 35-year career in Taiwan’s Foreign Service has included appointments to posts in New York, San Salvador, and Geneva, and a three-year term as the Ambassador to Paraguay. From 2021-23, he served as Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs.  

​​On behalf of Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and its National Security Task Force the Hoover Institution held a Taiwan Roundtable Discussion on the Constitutional Court on Tuesday, February 18, 2025, from 5:00 - 6:00 pm PT.

Taiwan is facing a potential constitutional crisis. In December 2024, Taiwan’s opposition-controlled legislature voted to impose a 2/3 supermajority quorum for the Constitutional Court to hear new cases. The legislature then voted down all the new nominees to the Court, leaving it with only 8 of members and unable to meet the new quorum requirement. The government has appealed to the Court to meet anyway and rule that the new amendments are unconstitutional. In this discussion, three experts on Taiwan’s politics and judicial system discuss the factors leading up to this confrontation, the options facing the court, and the potential for deeper reforms to strengthen judicial independence in the face of a deepening confrontation between the ruling and opposition parties.

Chien-Chih Lin is an associate research professor at Institutum Iurisprudentiae, Academia Sinica and an associate professor at the Graduate Institute of National Development, National Taiwan University. He received the LLM & JSD degrees from the University of Chicago. His academic interests focus on comparative constitutional law in Asia. Lin is the coauthor ofConstitutional Convergence in East Asia (2022) and Ultimate Economic Conflict between China and Democratic Countries (2022). His articles can be found in both peer-reviewed and student-edited law journals as well as edited volumes, including Oxford Handbook of Constitutional Law in Asia, American Journal of Comparative Law, and International Journal of Constitutional Law. He is the book review editor of International Journal of Constitutional Law.

Weitseng Chen is a faculty member at the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law, specializing in law and economic development, law and politics, and legal history in the context of Greater China. He has recently published several books, including Regime Type and Beyond: The Transformation of Police in Asia (CUP, 2023), Authoritarian Legality in Asia: Formation, Development and Transition (CUP, 2019), The Beijing Consensus? How China Has Changed the Western Ideas of Law and Economic Development (CUP, 2017), Property and Trust Law: Taiwan (with Yun-Chien Chang & Y. J. Wu, Kluwer, 2017), and Law and Economic Miracle: Interaction Between Taiwan’s Development and Economic Laws After WWII (in Chinese, 2000). Weitseng Chen earned his JSD from Yale Law School. Prior to joining NUS, he served as a Hewlett Fellow at Stanford’s Center for Democracy,Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and practiced as a corporate lawyer in the Greater China region with Davis Polk & Wardwell.

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 December 20, amid shouting, shoving, fistfights, and broken furniture, Taiwan’s opposition-controlled legislature passed by a show of hands three controversial bills that threaten to kneecap its government. The first raised the threshold to recall elected officials. The second required the Constitutional Court to have a 2/3 quorum to hear constitutional cases and imposed a supermajority threshold to invalidate a law. And the third shifted the central-local revenue-sharing formula to give local governments (mostly KMT-run) 40 percent of all government revenues, up from 25 percent, at the expense of the DPP-run central government.
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Four days later, the same opposition majority in the legislature voted down all seven of President Lai’s nominees to the Constitutional Court, leaving it with only eight justices and unable to meet the new quorum requirement for hearing a case. It is now effectively paralyzed. The DPP government has nevertheless requested that the court meet and rule anyway on whether the amendments to the Constitutional Court Act are themselves unconstitutional. This increasingly destructive partisan political conflict has put Taiwan on the brink of a constitutional crisis with no obvious way to resolve it. 

This confrontation is also taking place in a democracy that Freedom House last year ranked as the second-best in Asia, behind only Japan, and significantly above the United States and most of Europe. Taiwan's political system has proven remarkably resilient to PRC influence operations over many years, and it has a capable and effective state and vibrant economy despite its diplomatic isolation. So why is it facing a political crisis now?

​The simplest answer is divided government. For the first time in 16 years (and only the second time in its democratic history), Taiwan's legislative and executive branches are controlled by different parties: the Chinese Nationalist Party or Kuomintang (KMT) and Taiwan People's Party (TPP) together hold a majority in the Legislative Yuan, and they are locked in a fierce power struggle with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government.  

This conflict was not inevitable. In the January 2024 presidential and legislative elections, the DPP's Lai Ching-te (賴清德) won the presidential election but with only 40% of the vote, and the DPP lost its majority in the legislature. The KMT ended up with 52 seats (plus two blue-leaning independents), the DPP won 51, and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je's (柯文哲) centrist TPP won eight (all via the party list vote). That left no party with a majority and made the TPP the crucial swing voting bloc in the LY. In theory, the TPP could have exploited that leverage to extract significant concessions from the ruling DPP -- on policy, legislative leadership, or cabinet positions. But instead, negotiations between the DPP and TPP went nowhere, and President Lai missed his chance to head off the last year of partisan warfare.   

The formation of battle lines first became apparent on February 1, when the new legislature was seated. Its first order of business was to elect a speaker and deputy speaker. Curiously, the TPP  ultimately decided not to support either of the major party nominees -- the party's eight legislators voted for TPP member Huang Shan-shan (黃珊珊) in the first round, and abstained in the second.  As a result, the KMT's Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) won the speaker's race, and KMT legislator Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) was elected as his deputy. Despite providing crucial help to the KMT, the TPP did not manage to win even the deputy speaker as the price for their support. Nor did they strike a deal with the DPP, either, although that should have secured at least one of the leadership positions for the party. Given that the TPP held the crucial votes that could have denied control of the legislature to either major party, this outcome seems like a major missed opportunity for both them and the DPP. 

I've heard competing explanations for this bargaining failure. One story is that the refusal came from the DPP side -- ruling party legislators were engaged in quiet conversations with the TPP about a possible power-sharing deal, but Lai Ching-te intervened to stop the negotiations. Reporting at the time suggested that the TPP's price for cooperation in the run-up to February 1 was for the DPP to support Huang Shan-shan for speaker -- a price the DPP was apparently not willing to pay, but which in hindsight they probably should have. That interpretation is also consistent with the public comments offered by party caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) that "A DPP-TPP partnership is only possible if the TPP voluntarily comes to us."​So maybe this was a strategic mistake by the DPP caucus (and ultimately, Lai himself), and they are suffering the consequences. 

But another possibility is that the TPP was just never seriously interested in cooperating with the DPP no matter what they offered -- even before  Ko Wen-je's detention in a corruption investigation several months later turbocharged the TPP's animosity toward the DPP government. Although the KMT-TPP negotiations for a joint presidential ticket broke down in spectacular public fashion in November 2023, the two parties did still enter into a pre-election coalition for the legislative races and even campaigned together, so perhaps TPP leaders had already made up their minds to team up with the KMT after the elections, too, and there really was no chance the DPP could have enticed them to defect.  

Whatever the reason, ever since the new legislature was seated on February 1, the TPP has consistently chosen to act as the KMT's junior partner and supported the opposition party's confrontational approach to the DPP government. And as the partisan divide has hardened, it has also transformed into an inter-branch conflict between the KMT-TPP majority in the legislature and the DPP in the executive. The partisan maneuvering that has followed has escalated over the last year to a level of open political warfare that is posing a severe test for Taiwan's democratic institutions. And it is a test they are failing.

The Hoover Institution Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and the Program on the US, China, and the World invite you to Guardians of Economic Sovereignty: How Taiwan and Singapore Navigate Chinese Capital Through National Security Review.

This event is free and open to the public. It will be held at the Hoover Institution in HHMB 160 on Wednesday, January 16 from 4:00-5:15pm. Register to attend in person or virtually. 

Professor Chen will discuss two distinct strategies for scrutinizing outbound investment from China, as adopted by Taiwan and Singapore—both key trade partners of China. Growing concerns over Chinese investment have led to stricter national security reviews worldwide, yet the actual enforcement of these reviews remains understudied, particularly outside the U.S. context. He contrasts Singapore's reliance on ex post monitoring with Taiwan's emphasis on ex ante screening. Additionally, he highlights how Singapore leverages privatized monitoring to reinforce investment scrutiny, while Taiwan incorporates elements of private enforcement. The discussion underscores the importance of utilizing market intermediaries as enforcement agents, serving as a crucial supplement to the traditional framework of national security reviews. Both cases demonstrate how the private sector can take a proactive role in enforcing national security reviews.

Speaker Bio
Weitseng Chen is a faculty member at the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law, specializing in law and economic development, law and politics, and legal history in the context of Greater China. He has recently published several books, including Regime Type and Beyond: The Transformation of Police in Asia (CUP, 2023), Authoritarian Legality in Asia: Formation, Development and Transition (CUP, 2019), The Beijing Consensus? How China Has Changed the Western Ideas of Law and Economic Development (CUP, 2017), Property and Trust Law: Taiwan (with Yun-Chien Chang & Y. J. Wu, Kluwer, 2017), and Law and Economic Miracle: Interaction Between Taiwan’s Development and Economic Laws After WWII (in Chinese, 2000). Weitseng Chen earned his JSD from Yale Law School. Prior to joining NUS, he served as a Hewlett Fellow at Stanford’s Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and practiced as a corporate lawyer in the Greater China region with Davis Polk & Wardwell.

The Hoover Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region  and the Stanford Taiwan Science and Technology Hub held Enhancing Energy Security in a Time of Rapid Change: Perspectives from the US and Taiwan on Wednesday, November 13th, 2024 from 4:45 pm - 7:15 pm PT.

Over the next decade, the world will face a major energy challenge. Most of the world’s advanced economies are trying to manage a transition to net-zero emissions at the same time that electricity demand is projected to surge. In particular, the recent emergence of artificial intelligence as a rapid growth industry, and its associated electricity-hungry data centers, has led many tech companies to secure long-term carbon-free sources of electricity for their activities – including nuclear power.
In this event, we will hear from people in the energy and technology fields in both the US and Taiwan about how the surge in AI-related electricity demand – and the related impacts on semiconductor manufacturing in Taiwan – is affecting energy security in both countries. We especially want to call attention to the way that new technologies may require changes in the planned transition to zero-carbon energy sources.
 
This event was hosted online and live-streamed to the public. It is co-sponsored with the Stanford Taiwan Science and Technology Hub.

Featuring
Paul Dabbar, CEO, Bohr Quantum Technology
Jared Dunnmon, Senior Advisor for Strategic Initiatives, Defense Innovation Unit
Jennifer Huffstetler, Chief Product Sustainability Officer and VP/GM of
Intel Future Platform Strategy and Sustainability
Gwenyth Wang-Reeves, Engagement Director, GE Taiwan
Kuor-hsin Chang, Independent Board Member, Sentelic, Inc. 
Tsaiying Lu, Research Fellow, Research Institute for Democracy, Society,
and Emerging Technology 

The Stanford Global Digital Policy Incubator, the Hoover Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region, the Research Institute for Democracy, Society, and Emerging Technology (DSET), and the Taiwan Science and Technology Hub invite you to an engaging discussion on generative artificial intelligence and democracy. Join us on Tuesday, October 29, 2024, from 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM (Pacific) in the Philippines Conference Room at Encina Hall. DSET is a think tank established in 2023 under the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) of Taiwan. Its future-oriented vision of science and technology policies aim to safeguard democratic values.

During this event, Dr. Kai-Shen Huang, Research Fellow at DSET, will launch their new report, "GenAI and Democracy: AI-Driven Disinformation in Taiwan’s 2024 Presidential Election and Lessons for the World." Dr. Huang will discuss Taiwan's experience using regulation to counter disinformation and he will offer technical solutions available to other democratic societies. Following the report presentation, a panel of experts from the Stanford Cyber Policy Center and the Hoover Institution will provide feedback and share their thoughts on the future of AI development and regulations globally.

Opening Remarks  
Larry Diamond,  Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Mosbacher Senior Fellow of Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies

Introduction
Jeremy Chang, Research Fellow & CEO, DSET

Report Presentation
Kai-Shen Huang, Research Fellow, DSET

Panel Discussion - Generative AI, regulation, and its impacts globally

Panelists
Kai-Shen Huang, Research Fellow, DSET
Florence G’Sell, Visiting Professor, CPC
Sergey Sanovich, Hoover Fellow
Margaret Tu, University of Washington

Moderator
Charles Mok, Research Scholar, GDPi

Participant Bios

Charles Mok is a Research Scholar at the Global Digital Policy Incubator of the Cyber Policy Center at Stanford University, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Internet Society, and a board member of the International Centre for Trade Transparency and Monitoring. Charles served as an elected member of the Legislative Council in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, representing the Information Technology functional constituency, for two terms from 2012 to 2020. In 2021, he founded Tech for Good Asia, an initiative to advocate positive use of technology for businesses and civil communities.

Kai-Shen Huang graduated from the University of Oxford and National Taiwan University, possessing interdisciplinary training in both anthropology and law. His research expertise includes China’s critical technology policies, the application of artificial intelligence in dispute resolution and public administration, and legal anthropology.

Florence G’sell is a visiting professor of private law at the Cyber Policy Center, where she leads the Program on Governance of Emerging Technologies. She also holds the Digital, Governance, and Sovereignty Chair at Sciences Po (France) and is a professor of private law at the University of Lorraine (currently on leave). G’sell began her academic career focusing on tort law, judicial systems, and comparative law. In recent years, her work has concentrated on digital law, particularly in the regulation of online platforms, the legal challenges posed by emerging technologies such as blockchain and the metaverse, and the concept of digital sovereignty.

Sergey Sanovich is a Hoover Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Before joining the Hoover Institution, Sergey Sanovich was a postdoctoral research associate at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. Sanovich received his PhD in political science from New York University and continues his affiliation with its Center for Social Media and Politics. His research is focused on disinformation and social media platform governance; online censorship and propaganda by authoritarian regimes; and elections and partisanship in information autocracies. 
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Margaret Tu also known as Nikal Kabala'an, hailing from Taiwan's Indigenous communities, is a dynamic young leader with a passion for interdisciplinary pursuits. She actively engages in Indigenous self-determination and decolonization, contributing to social justice movements and curating exhibitions at prestigious institutions like the Burke Museum and the Tateuchi East Asia Library. Margaret is an accomplished legal researcher with expertise in Intellectual Property laws and a keen interest in technology-related policies, including Artificial Intelligence and Data Governance.

On behalf of the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and The Global Policy and Strategy Initiative, the Hoover Institution invites you to Taiwan After the 2024 Elections Annual Conference, Thursday, May 23, 2024, from 8:30 AM - 5:15 PM to Friday, May 24, 2024 from 8:45 AM - 2:00 PM in HHMB 160.
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Taiwan’s next president William Lai (賴清德) takes office on May 20, 2024. His victory in the January 2024 elections ensures that the ruling Democracy Progressive Party (DPP) will hold the presidency for an unprecedented third consecutive term. But Lai won only 40 percent of the presidential vote, and the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) together now control a majority of the seats in the legislature. President-elect Lai’s new administration is also likely to face continued pressure from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and he will have to deal with an increasingly complex and uncertain international environment.  
 
Join us as we bring together a diverse group of experts to discuss the policy challenges and opportunities that the incoming Lai administration will face. It will feature panels on the 2024 election results, governance challenges, the future of Taiwan’s economy, security and defense issues, US-Taiwan-PRC relations, and perspectives of key U.S. allies and partners on the U.S.-Taiwan relationship.
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This conference will bring together a diverse group of experts to discuss the policy challenges and opportunities that the incoming Lai administration will face. It will feature panels on the 2024 election results, governance challenges, the future of Taiwan’s economy, security and defense issues, US-Taiwan-PRC relations, and perspectives of key U.S. allies and partners on the U.S.-Taiwan relationship.

On behalf of Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and its National Security Task Force the Hoover Institution held a Taiwan Roundtable Discussion On Cold War / Martial Law Formations of Taiwanese America on Monday, May 13, 2024 from 2-3:30 p.m. PT in Stauffer Auditorium. 

This event features Wendy Cheng, Professor of American Studies and core faculty in the Intercollegiate Department of Asian American Studies at Scripps College. She is the author of Island X: Taiwanese Student Migrants, Campus Spies, and Cold War Activism (University of Washington Press, 2023) and The Changs Next Door to the Díazes: Remapping Race in Suburban California (University of Minnesota Press, 2013), and coauthor of A People’s Guide to Los Angeles (University of California Press, 2012).

From the 1960s to 1980s, more than a hundred thousand Taiwanese students migrated to the US for graduate study in science, technology, engineering, and medicine fields as part of the special Cold War relationship between the US and the authoritarian Kuomintang (KMT) government in Taiwan. This same time period overlapped with a 38-year period of martial law in Taiwan, during which the KMT surveilled and terrorized Taiwanese nationals not only in Taiwan but also in the U.S., Japan, and other locations around the world. In the U.S., this occurred with the full knowledge and tacit permission of the US state.

With information drawn from extensive interviews and archival research, we'll discuss how Taiwanese students were politicized and organized themselves on U.S. university campuses under these dual conditions of selective Cold War migration and martial law, and how their politics were more heterogeneous and far-reaching than how they are typically remembered today.

My opening remarks are below: 

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On behalf of Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and its National Security Task Force the Hoover Institution invites you to a Taiwan Roundtable Discussion on Thursday, March 7, 2024 from 2-3:30 p.m. PT at Stauffer Auditorium. 

​The Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region invites you to join a private roundtable discussion with Ingrid Larson, the Managing Director of the American Institute in Taiwan - Washington office, and a 20+ year member of the U.S. Foreign Service. She previously served as Director for Taiwan Coordination at the State Department. Director Larson will speak about the current administration’s policy towards Taiwan as well as the purpose and evolution of AIT’s unique role and structure in the current era of
US-China relations. 

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.