invites you to US Cities and States in Taiwan’s Quest for International Space on Tuesday, February 7, 2023 from 4:00 pm - 5:15 pm PT. Register at the event page.
While Taiwan’s struggles to retain its shrinking list of diplomatic allies are well documented, its attempts to strengthen its international position via paradiplomacy—formal diplomacy with states, cities, and other subnational governments—have received less attention. Taiwanese officials are adept at forging such paradiplomatic agreements, and Taiwan represents a disproportionately large share of instances of paradiplomacy involving US cities and states. This talk describes the primary forms that US-Taiwan subnational diplomacy has taken since the 1970s, the reasons why cities and states engage with Taiwan, and the ways in which US-Taiwan subnational diplomacy is being challenged by pressure from the PRC.
Sara Newland is assistant professor of government at Smith College. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She conducts research on local governance in mainland China and Taiwan and on subnational diplomacy between the US, China, and Taiwan. Her work has been published in Governance, Pacific Review, China Quarterly, and the Journal of Political Science Education. She is a fellow in the Public Intellectuals Program of the National Committee on US-China Relations and a member of the US-Taiwan Next Generation Working Group.