Published on
Image description
On Wednesday, April 9, 2014, the Taiwan Democracy Project at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) will host a special event featuring President Ma Ying-jeou of the Republic of China on Taiwan.  Co-sponsored with the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office of San Francisco and the Office of the President of the Republic of China, the event will feature a pre-recorded video address by President Ma on U.S.-Taiwan economic and trade relations.

The address will be followed by a panel discussion featuring leading Stanford faculty and fellows, including Thomas Fingar, the Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, and Larry Diamond, director of CDDRL. The panelists will respond to President Ma's remarks and comment on the recent dramatic events in Taiwan, including the ongoing occupation of the Legislative Yuan by students opposed to the cross-Strait services trade agreement.

The event will take place from 12-1:30pm in the East Room of the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University, 616 Serra Street.  It is free and open to the public, and a light lunch will be served.  However, due to space limitations, RSVP is required and will be enforced at the door, and as of now the event is fully subscribed.  If you wish to be added to the wait list, you are encouraged to email Alice Carter at alice.carter@stanford.edu. 
UPDATE: The video of this event is now available online, here.
Published on
Image description
National Central University in Chungli, Taiwan, is hosting a short summer language immersion program, August 11-29, 2014.  More details can be found here

This is a good opportunity for students with some Chinese language background already who would like to spend some time in Taiwan. There are internship opportunities as well.  The official announcement is below.
Warm greetings from National Central University, Taiwan.

NCU is very glad to announce the 2014 Chinese Language & Culture Immersion in Taiwan to you.  This program will take place from August 11-29, 2014 The application deadline will be April 30, 2014. 

The objective of this program is to develop basic and advanced communication skills for the learners whose native language is not Chinese. In 2014, we will combine the internship in the specific fields at NCU.  This is the application information below. 

 ■Chinese Language & Culture Immersion in Taiwan
1. Fee: Early Bird USD1200 / Normal Price USD1500
2. Credit: 3 Credits with a certificate 
3. Duration: August 11–29, 2014

 ■Optional Internship Offerings 
Fee: Early Bird USD 200 / Normal Price USD300
Students who would like to participate in Internship program need to be arranged individually by OIA. This opportunity will be available by the professor's approval.

 ◎This is URL for register online: http://oia.ncu.edu.tw/culturalImmersion/register.html

 We welcome your students who are interested in learning Chinese to take this program in 2014 summer.  It will full of much fun and attractive activities.  Students will not only learn professional language, but also learn more Taiwanese culture.  Please find more detail in the poster.  If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.  
Thank you very much!

Published on
Image description
On February 28, the Taiwan Democracy Project hosted a talk by Dean Chen, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Salameno School of Humanities and Global Studies, Ramapo College of New Jersey. Prof. Chen's talk was entitled "The Origins and Development of Taiwan's Policies toward Overseas Citizens' Participation in Homeland Governance and Policymaking." The event page can be found here.

Prof. Chen's expertise is in international politics, U.S.-China-Taiwan trilateral relations, and governance and institutions of China and Taiwan. His most recent publications include Sustaining the Triangular Balance: The Taiwan Strait Policy of Barack Obama, Xi Jinping, and Ma Ying-jeou (Univ. of Maryland School of Law, 2013), U.S. Taiwan Strait Policy: The Origins of Strategic Ambiguity (Lynne Rienner, 2012), and "The Evolution of Taiwan's Policies toward the Political Participation of Citizens Abroad in Homeland Governance," with Pei-te Lin.
The Origins and Development of Taiwan’s Policies toward Overseas Citizens’ Participation in Homeland Governance and Policymaking

This presentation traces the origins and evolution of the Republic of China (ROC)’s Policies toward its overseas constituents since the ROC’s founding in 1912 and its transfer to Taiwan after 1949. While discussing the ideological and legal principles underpinning the ROC’s policies toward the overseas community, the talk also focuses on how the changing international and domestic political circumstances have affected the degree and nature of involvement of overseas citizens in homeland political and economic decision-making. More essentially, democratization and the rise of Taiwanese-centered identity and consciousness have, since the mid-1990s, driven the ROC government to re-define and reconceptualize its relations to Taiwan as well as to its overseas citizens, thus resulting in the transformation of the political and legal policies toward the overseas compatriot community. The implications of these changes on the future of Taiwan’s domestic politics and foreign relations will also be examined.
Published on
Image description
On February 7, the Taiwan Democracy Project will host a talk by Scott L. Kastner, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Maryland.  Professor Kastner's talk is entitled "A Relationship Transformed: Rethinking the Prospects for Conflict and Peace in the Taiwan Strait."  The talk is free and open to the public, although you are encouraged to RSVP at the official event page here.

Professor Kastner’s research interests include China’s foreign relations, the international politics of East Asia, and international political economy. His book, Political Conflict and Economic Interdependence across the Taiwan Strait and Beyond, was published in the Studies in Asian Security series by Stanford University Press (2009). His work has also appeared in journals such as International Security, Journal of Conflict Resolution, International Studies Quarterly, Comparative Political Studies, Security Studies, and Journal of Peace Research. Kastner received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego. 
A Relationship Transformed: Rethinking the Prospects for Conflict and Peace in the Taiwan Strait
After long being viewed as a potential flashpoint, relations across the Taiwan Strait have stabilized tremendously in recent years, reflecting moderation in the approaches both Beijing and Taipei have taken with regard to the cross-Strait sovereignty dispute. In my presentation, I consider whether this new-found stability in the Taiwan Strait is likely to persist. In particular, I consider how fundamental trends in cross-Strait relations—such as rapidly growing Chinese military power and deepening cross-Strait economic exchange—are affecting the likelihood that the conflict scenarios which worried analysts prior to the current détente will re-emerge as future concerns. My analysis suggests that the relationship across the Taiwan Strait is likely to be more stable in the years ahead than was the case in the years preceding 2008; this conclusion holds even if there is a change in ruling party in Taiwan. But I also emphasize that the cross-Strait relationship has not been fundamentally transformed, and that the potential for serious conflict remains. 
Published on
Image description
The Taiwan Democracy Project is hosting Benjamin L. Read, Associate Professor of Political Science at UC Santa Cruz, today from 12-1:30pm in the Okimoto Conference Room, Encina Hall 3rd Floor, Stanford University.  Professor Read will be speaking on his research examining Taiwan's neighborhood-level political networks.  The full title and abstract are below.  The event page is here

Professor Read's book, Roots of the State: Neighborhood Organization and Social Networks in Beijing and Taipei (Stanford University Press, 2012) uses surveys, interviews, and participant observation to compare the ways in which constituents perceive and interact with the urban administrative structures found in China, Taiwan, and elsewhere in the region. He edited Local Organizations and Urban Governance in East and Southeast Asia: Straddling State and Society (Routledge, 2009), also on the role of state-sponsored organizations, and has published research on civil society groups as well, particularly China's nascent homeowner associations. Read's next book, Field Research in Political Science: Practices and Principles, co-authored with Diana Kapiszewski and Lauren Morris MacLean, will be published in 2014 by Cambridge University Press. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Comparative Political Studies, the China Journal, the China Quarterly, the Washington Quarterly, and several edited books. He earned his Ph.D. in Government at Harvard University in 2003.
Urban Taiwan’s State-Structured Neighborhood Governance: Deepening Democracy, Partisan Civic Engagement, Inverted Class Bias

Taiwan's system of neighborhood-level governance has origins in institutions of local control employed by both the Republican-era Kuomintang and the Japanese colonizers. In more recent times, the neighborhood wardens (lizhang, 里長) have come to play a complex set of roles, including state agent, political party operative, and community representative. Wardens of a new generation, with more women in their ranks than ever before, have adopted new practices and built different relationships with their communities, parties, and city governments compared to those of the older, often clan-based bosses.

Focusing on Taipei with glances at other locales, this paper draws on ethnographic research, interviews, surveys, public records, and other sources. It explores the particular kind of political and civic engagement that the neighborhood governance system elicits. It is statist; though independent in many respects, wardens have government-mandated duties and work closely with city and district officials. Community development associations (shequ fazhan xiehui), as well as other neighborhood groups and wardens themselves, compete for and receive government funding. Warden elections are also deeply democratic in ways that, in global perspective, are unusual for such ultra-local urban offices. Over the past 25 years, elections have become hotly contested, voter turnout has risen to remarkably high rates, and KMT dominance has partially given way to political pluralization. Citizens’ participation in this setting, like others, often shows deep divisions along partisan lines, with wardens and local associations split by party loyalties. Finally, civic engagement with the neighborhood system shows an inverted class bias. Residents with less education, for example, are more likely to know their wardens and vote in warden elections. Politics in Taiwan’s li thus has evolved substantially over time, and also contrasts in multiple ways with Western images of neighborhood politics.


Published on
The Taiwan Democracy Project last week hosted Ronald Heiferman, Professor of History and Director of the East Asian Studies program at Quinnipiac University, for a presentation on the Cairo Conference of 1943.  The Cairo Conference was a key moment in Taiwan's history, even though no Taiwanese were present and it was held on the other side of the world, as it effectively determined that Taiwan would be handed over to Chinese Nationalist authorities after the defeat and surrender of Japan in World War II.  Professor Heiferman shared some of the findings from his recent book, The Cairo Conference of 1943: Roosevelt, Churchill, Chiang Kai-shek, and Madame Chiang.  The official event page can be found here.
Image description
A Postscript to the 1943 Cairo Conference: Churchill, Roosevelt, and the Chinese Dilemma.  

That the Cairo Conference has been overshadowed by the wartime summits at Teheran and Yalta is understandable given the start of the Cold War in Europe almost immediately after the German surrender in May 1945. To understand the collapse of relations between the Anglo-American allies on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other, it is important to look at the conferences at Teheran and Yalta, the interactions between Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin, the understandings they reached, and their misunderstandings. That said, the Cairo Conference also marked an important turning point in the relations between the allies in the war against Japan: China, Great Britain, and the United States, the consequences of which were critical to the defeat of Japan and the post-war order in East Asia.

The interaction of Churchill, Roosevelt, and Chiang in Cairo is every bit as compelling from a human interest perspective as the interplay between Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin at Teheran and Yalta, albeit less studied, and offers a sobering reminder of what can happen when policy is made at the very highest level by individuals who know relatively little about the culture of their partners and are not able to separate myths and stereotypes from realities. Summit conferences may make for good theater, but do not necessarily result in good policies as an examination of the Cairo Conference reveals.

Each of the parties at the Cairo Conference came with their own agendas, frequently contradictory. Generalissimo and Madame Chiang hoped to obtain a commitment to make the China-Burma-India theater of war the focal point in the war against Japan, a matter not only of strategic importance to them but also of poetic justice. They also sought to redress grievances against Japan and Great Britain in the post-war era. Roosevelt hoped to buoy the ego and spirits of Chiang and to insure that the Kuomintang regime would not make a separate peace with Japan thus allowing the Japanese to redeploy the nearly one million troops they had stationed in China. Churchill had no real interest in meeting with Chiang and his wife at Cairo at all, but felt obliged to humor Roosevelt and to make sure that no agreements would be reached in Cairo that would in any way prejudice British colonial interests in Southeast Asia in the post-war era. Given these conflicting agendas, it is no wonder that none of the participants would be satisfied with the results of their labors in Cairo.

Published on
The American Political Science Association includes a Conference Group on Taiwan Studies (CGOTS).  Paper proposals are reviewed and panels organized separately from the regular paper submission process.  Anyone interested in presenting a paper on any aspect of Taiwanese politics is encouraged to submit a proposal by the deadline of December 15th.  The official call for papers is below.  Papers from this past year's panels can be found here and here.
Image description
The 2014 American Political Science Association (APSA) Annual Meeting will be held from August 28 - 31 in Washington DC. The conference theme is “Politics after the Digital Revolution.”

CGOTS invites paper and panel proposals on Taiwan’s domestic politics and international relations that are consistent with the conference theme of “politics after the digital revolution.”  For instance, how has the evolution of Taiwan's democracy been enhanced and/or stymied by the use of the internet or social media?  How are Taiwan’s democratic institutions impacted by and/or reflect the ever increasing utilization of digital communications?  Do current technologies enhance or restrain the ability of majority and minority parties and social groups to engage in the democratic process?  Which emerging technologies hold the prospect for empowerment or repression?  Applicable to each of the above are proposals that also address cross-disciplinary and methodological approaches to questions of democracy and the information highway.  We especially welcome proposals that address the contribution of Taiwan Studies to the broader political science literature, use Taiwan as a case for theory development, or compare Taiwan with other countries.

Please send proposals through the APSA website www.apsanet.org/2014. If the website is not accessible to you, you may send proposals to Professor Hans Stockton (stockton@stthom.edu), CGOTS Coordinator. The deadline for proposals is December 15, 2012. Decisions on the proposals will be communicated to you in February 2013. Travel support for CGOTS panelists is subject to the availability of external funding.



Published on
The Taiwan Democracy Project hosted Thomas Gold, Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley, on Friday, November 8, at Stanford.  The official event page is here.  The title and abstract of the talk are below.
Image description
The Changing Field of Power in Post-Martial Law Taiwan

Professor Gold will make a presentation that is part of a larger book project that applies the theory of fields as elaborated by Pierre Bourdieu, Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam to the remaking of Taiwan since the end of martial law in 1987. He argues that political democratization is only one part of the larger dispersal of all forms of power (what Bourdieuterms “capital”) away from the tight centralized control of the mainlander—dominated KMT to broader segments of Taiwan’s society. This talk will look at this process of the breakdown and reconstruction of the old order of various fields, in particular the political, economic and cultural fields, and the effect of this on the overarching field of power.

Published on
Call for papers, "The Zeitgeists of Taiwan: Looking Back, Moving Forward".  The North American Taiwan Studies Association, or NATSA, has set a date for next year's annual conference: June 20-21, 2014, at the University of Wisconsin:  
In honor of the 20th anniversary of the North American Taiwan Studies Association (NATSA), we invite paper proposals from scholars in the humanities and social sciences for our June 20-21 anniversary conference to be held at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Sponsored by Academia Sinica’s Institute of Taiwan History and Institute of Sociology and by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s East Asian Legal Studies Center and Center for East Asian Studies, the theme for our 2014 conference will be “The Zeitgeists of Taiwan: Looking Back, Moving Forward.” We are calling for papers on the main theme or any of our seven sub themes outlined below from a broad range of social science and humanities disciplines. We are especially excited to offer a new Publication Peer-Review Option to participating junior scholars who may be interested in honing their original articles on Taiwan for publication.
The full description of the conference main theme is here; suggested sub-themes are discussed here; and submission guidelines are here. The NATSA website has more information on the organization and this past year's conference.
Published on
On October 11 and 12th, the Taiwan Democracy Project at the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, in cooperation with the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, will hold its 8th annual conference, on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).  The conference is open to the public.  Further details and a place to RSVP are here.  The event description is below.
The TPP is a free trade agreement currently being negotiated by twelve Pacific Rim countries that has the potential to re-shape economic relations in the region for the coming decades. This conference will bring together policymakers and scholars from Taiwan with leading specialists from other Asian countries and the U.S. to examine the evolution, geopolitics and future of the TPP, and also to consider how Taiwan is responding to the challenge of freer trade and what its strategy for deepening its trade relations and maintaining its economic development should be.

Among the issues to be addressed are:

  • How the economic and trading environment of East Asia is evolving, and what Taiwan’s future place will be in that regional environment.
  • The development of the Trans-Pacific Partnership as a potentially far-reaching new economic and strategic framework for the region, including the origins and evolution of the TPP, US participation and China’s response, and the implications for the balance of power in East Asia.
  • Taiwan’s response to the challenge of freer trade to date, including the impact on US-Taiwan relations and domestic constituencies for free trade in Taiwan.
  • The perspectives of other key countries in the region toward the TPP, including Japan, Korea, Singapore, and the People’s Republic of China.

This event is co-sponsored by The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

About Me

I 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.

Posting on Bluesky @kharist.bsky.social

Archives

Categories