Taiwanese Identity From Domestic Regional And Global Perspectives

As we look to enter the second decade of the 21st century, Taiwan’s quest for identity remains the most contentious issue in the domestic arena of Taiwanese politics. From here, it spills over into the cross-Strait relationship and impacts on regional and global security. Whether Taiwan is a nation state or whether Taiwan has any claim to be a nation-state and how Taiwan should relate to "China" are issues which have long been hotly debated on the island, although it seems that much of this debate is now more focused on finding an adequate strategy to deal with the Beijing government than on the legitimacy of Taiwan’s claim to sovereignty as the Republic of China. The collection of chapters in this book shed light on very different aspects of Taiwan’s current state of identity formation from historical, political, social and economic perspectives, both domestically, and globally. As such it will be invaluable reading for students and scholars of Taiwan studies, politics, history and society, as well as those interested in cross-Strait relations, Chinese politics, and Chinese international relations.

The tension between Taiwan's globalization and its ongoing identity formation is clearly visible in the economic, political and societal spheres of the island republic. Against this background, the authors of this volume deal with the following questions: To what extent has Taiwan become part of the Greater China region and - in that sense - a part of "China"? How successful have Taiwan's endeavors been to escape "China", assert its own identity and communicate this to the international community? How does Taiwanese identity connect to its integration within "Greater China" and beyond, that is, to its being part of a gobalized (transnational) world? The varied focus and range of the papers in this volume show that politically, the result of the debate on Taiwan's (national) identity is undecided; economically, however, Taiwan has become part of a Greater China region and cross-Strait integration would thus seem to be inevitable.

This book gives a deep description of a new trend in Chinese cyber-nationalism through an examination of Diba Expedition 2016. The eight chapters, written by researchers from the United States and China, touch on the topics of history, mobilization, and the organization of new cyber nationalism; the evolution of symbolic devices; and the impact of information and communications technologies (ICTs), consumerism, fans culture, and Internet subcultures on cyber-nationalism and the political consequences of it. The authors have embedded the Diba Expedition and new cyber-nationalism, which may be called fandom nationalism, in the media ecology of social media, the mobile Internet, the smartphone, and a new generation of ICTs. They also try to explain the change in the Chinese political culture from the turn of the twenty-first century up to now under the impact of official nationalistic education, commercial culture, and the grassroots Internet culture. Readers interested in political culture, Internet culture, and youth culture will find this book helpful in understanding why traditional nationalism, with hatred, anger, and actions in the real world, has evolved into fandom nationalism, with love, satire, and actions in the virtual world, as illustrated in the Diba Expedition.

The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Taiwan offers a comprehensive overview of both contemporary Taiwan and the Taiwan studies field. Each contribution summarises the major findings in the field and highlights long-term trends, recent observations and possible future developments in Taiwan. Written by an international team of experts, the chapters included in the volume form an accessible and fascinating insight into contemporary Taiwan. Up-to-date, interdisciplinary, and academically rigorous, the Handbook will be of interest to students, academics, policymakers and others in search of reliable information on Taiwanese politics, economics, culture and society.

The initiative and leadership for this edited volume came from the European Institute for Asian Studies (EIAS) based in Brussels. The book discusses questions related to the different European perspectives on Taiwan in various fields, asking, in particular: How has the European Union dealt with the unsolved status of the Republic of China on Taiwan? In which ways has Europe been seen as a model for Taiwan’s transformation, and, does the example of the EU offer any lessons for cross-Strait integration? Furthermore, the authors, well-known specialists drawn from disciplines, such as, economics, political science, international law, history, and cultural studies, are equally interested in Taiwan’s perspectives on Europe and in the historical relationship between Taiwan and Europe.

Using Taiwan as a case study, this book constructs an innovative theory of a political sociology of language. Through documentary and ethnographic data and a comparative-historical method the book illustrates how language mediates interactions between society and the state and becomes politicized as a result; how language, politics and power are intertwined processes; and how these processes are not isolated in institutions but socially embedded.

At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. China’s relation to Taiwan has been in constant contention since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in October 1949 and the creation of the defeated Kuomintang (KMT) exile regime on the island two months later. The island’s autonomous sovereignty has continually been challenged, initially because of the KMT’s insistence that it continue to represent not just Taiwan but all of China—and later because Taiwan refused to cede sovereignty to the then-dominant power that had arisen on the other side of the Taiwan Strait. One thing that makes Taiwan so politically difficult and yet so intellectually fascinating is that it ­­is not merely a security problem, but a ganglion of interrelated puzzles. The optimistic hope of the Ma Ying-jeou administration for a new era of peace and cooperation foundered on a landslide victory by the Democratic Progressive Party, which has made clear its intent to distance Taiwan from China’s political embrace. The Taiwanese are now waiting with bated breath as the relationship tautens. Why did détente fail, and what chance does Taiwan have without it? Contributors to this volume focus on three aspects of the evolving quandary: nationalistic identity, social economy, and political strategy.

This book interprets the meanings of the uses, regulations, and representations of the ocean undertaken by the state and other societal power sources in modern Taiwan between 1949 and 2016. Following Michael Mann’s historical sociology and Philip Steinberg’s political geography, the book analyses the construction of the ocean by the society of Taiwan in terms of ideological, political, military and economic sources of power. It also provides a structural foundation for creating a framework of the politics in maritime and ocean affairs through the lens of an interpretive analysis of the modern Taiwanese construction of the ocean. Moreover, it explores the social constructions of the ocean through the written works of intellectuals in natural sciences, social studies and humanities in Taiwan after the 1980s. Succinctly revealing how Taiwanese society has influenced the social construction of the ocean, this book will appeal to scholars and students interested in Taiwanese politics and history, political geography and Asian politics.