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Based on a project on Chinese Malaysians' educational mobility across the Chinese-speaking world, this paper highlights their reasons for attending university in Taiwan while examining their subjective formations as ethnic Chinese vis-à-vis transnational processes. Resulting from ethnographic and interview-based research conducted in 2019–2021, the findings demonstrate that the students' choices for higher education are, to a great extent, culturally driven and historically contingent. Thus they provide an alternative view to the dominant paradigm of international student mobility that emphasises economic and future career incentives. By focusing on three factors—state racism, historical connections, and Sinophone cultural consumption—that motivated them to leave Malaysia and go to Taiwan, this paper moreover draws attention to the transnational infrastructures (e.g. policy, media, interpersonal networks) that have continually reproduced and transformed a long-existing migration pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taiwan was one of the places most affected by SARS in 2003—but one of the least affected by COVID-19 in the first year of the pandemic. Taiwan deployed a centralised approach and has been able to effectively eliminate the threat of the spread of COVID-19 through swift decisions and effective action. This paper compares and evaluates the Taiwanese government's emergency responses to two health crises: SARS in 2003 and COVID-19 in 2020. The policy responses to both are mapped out on easily comprehensible timelines. The study also explores how one crisis governance influences another—how the mishandling of the SARS outbreak influenced early governmental responses to COVID-19. These are described in more detail, divided into thematic sections, and accompanied by illustrative images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do Taiwanese officials view democracy and culture and how do they plan to utilise these two soft power resources as part of advancing the island's international position? Based primarily on interviews conducted with state officials in Taiwan, this paper analyses Taiwan's soft power repositioning in the regional and global soft power competition and examines its advantages and disadvantages. It discusses the institutional and geopolitical constraints Taiwan faces when trying to implement its soft power policy and addresses the internal disagreements over utilising its cultural and democratic achievements. It concludes that despite the utility of soft power in pursuing its foreign policy agenda, Taiwan faces a few major institutional and conceptual obstacles, keeping Taiwanese diplomacy in a transitional period from old thinking about culture and diplomacy while hesitantly evaluating its soft power resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, many of Taiwan's New Southbound Policy reports show that Taiwan's primary motivations are to cooperate with Southeast Asia, the Asia-Pacific, and South Asia to decrease their dependence on mainland China. Taiwan's government aims to leverage Taiwan's assets to enhance regional integration with these countries. However, there is still a lack of research on the purpose behind the policy. Why is Taiwan now seemingly using a policy of confrontation instead of avoidance? This paper argues that the policy intent behind the New Southbound Policy is not to directly confront mainland China, despite Beijing's pressure on Taiwan. This hypothesis will be explored by analysing and comparing the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road and the New Southbound Policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the utility of membership in international organisations for states with specific status within the international community, focusing on Taiwan's surprisingly neglected involvement in the World Organisation for Animal Health or OIE (Office International des Épizooties). The paper shows that in addition to its contribution to the legitimisation of Taiwan's identities, such participation has also enabled Taiwan to shape international norms in the field of animal health, increase international cooperation opportunities, strengthen domestic and global health security, and facilitate the trade of animal health-related products. Additionally, it has contributed to the domestic implementation of international animal health norms and helped increase the accountability of Taiwanese authorities in the domain of animal health management. Despite tremendous challenges, Taiwan still has plenty of opportunities to enhance its participation in global health governance through its membership in OIE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Articulating and implementing national development plans (NDP s) has been a popular approach taken by most governments in the world in response to the opportunities and challenges occurring in domestic and international spheres. Since the 2000s the Taiwanese government has launched a series of NDP s with different goals, foci, and tactical approaches. This paper adopts a retrospective lens to examine how English language education has been strategically situated in the NDP s of Taiwan and reflects on both the alignments and misalignments between the unveiled goals of the NDP s and the policies pertaining to English language education of the nation over the last two decades. In the pursuit of the goals of the contemporary NDP of the nation, strategic remodelling of teacher education programmes is needed through: (1) expanding bilingual/all-English programmes within departments; (2) advocating departmental interaction within/across teacher training institutes; and (3) optimising training and teaching opportunities for foreign students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report highlights and offers reflections on three unique features of the fourth World Congress of Taiwan Studies (WCTS4) held in Seattle in June 2022. First, following the COVID-19 pandemic, WCTS4 was one of the first large-scale conferences in the field of Taiwan studies to be held in hybrid mode. Second, although three previous editions have taken place since 2012, WCTS4 was the first to be held in the United States. Third, it is the first Congress to launch a major new publication, the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Taiwan Studies. Most media coverage of WCTS4 has emphasised only that it was held in the United States. This report goes further, focusing on why it was held in the US, and why Seattle in particular, and on the Congress's importance more generally to the global field of Taiwan studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay reviews the influential work of a group of Leftist 'sex liberation' scholars who pioneered queer sexuality studies in Taiwan in the 1990s. In doing so, it focuses on their post-2000 political rift with the mainstream Taiwanese LGBT (tongzhi) rights movement. What ostensibly began as a split over views of same-sex marriage has developed into a contentious politics of Chinese versus Taiwanese national identity and what I call ' tongzhi sovereignty'. In bringing together both national identity and sexual politics in Taiwan as increasingly intertwined sites of contestation, I argue that the two must be theorised in tandem. As a fertile site for unpacking this contentious divergence, I examine and problematise the way that cultural theorist Jasbir Puar's popular concept of homonationalism has circulated in scholarship of cultural/sexuality studies about Taiwan as a slanted and largely unchecked analytic to criticise LGBT sociolegal progress and, for some scholars, obscures a pro-unification agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I examine performances of Indigeneity in encounters between Indigenous people and the Taiwan legal system. Studying displays of Indigenous identities reveals the processes through which individuals and communities draw upon histories and practices to fashion themselves as Indigenous and engage with wider publics through performances and performative acts. Focusing on three encounters between Indigenous people and the Taiwan legal system, displays of Indigeneity in these encounters were multivalent and involved a repertoire of creative performative acts as Indigenous actors used court spaces, like the new ad hoc Chamber of Indigenous Courts, to perform identities that confounded essentialist conceptions of Indigeneity, introduced alternative ontological parameters, and assumed state governance responsibilities. These performances suggest a contextually situated engagement with the postcolonial state where Indigenous identities are anchored in the past and forward-looking, reinforce or challenge the category of Indigeneity, and themselves operate as techniques of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains why some countries recognise Taiwan despite attempts by the People's Republic of China to pressure some to switch recognition? We argue for moving beyond 'dollar diplomacy' claims to unpack additional economic influences that might help explain why some states favour Taiwan. Using cross-national evidence from all countries (1950–2016), we find multiple economic factors influencing recognition and conclude that Taiwan's comparative success in certain regions cannot be explained by broad structural factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay reports on a Taiwan studies conference that did not take place in April 2020 in Europe. Recalling what has replaced this disrupted conference, this report provides a sketch of how the Taiwan studies community responded to the unprecedented challenges of the global pandemic by organising online events. It concludes by calling for comparative research where the experiences of Taiwan can be juxtaposed with underlying issues that have deepened the divide between those who have and those who have not during the Covid-19 pandemic. It also calls for solidarity among academics within and beyond the Taiwan studies community and for a more sustainable academic infrastructure constituted by universities, research institutions, funding agencies, and academics themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains Taiwan's vacillating support for same-sex marriage? Despite earlier favourable public opinion and a Constitutional Court decision in 2017 in favour of legalisation, anti-LGBT referendums in 2018 found overwhelming support. We argue that the framing of same-sex marriage as undermining traditional family structures allowed opponents to shift the national discussion on legalisation. Our results suggest that supporters and the Tsai administration may have overestimated the extent to which opinions on legalisation were firm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s, Taiwan has achieved an impressive democratisation that has made it one of the most vibrant democratic societies in Asia. Most of the existing research about Taiwan's foreign policy and cross-strait relations neglects how Taiwan's identity and role as a democratic and pluralistic state influences the island's external relations. This article analyses how Taiwan's achievements in the field of democracy and human rights affect Taiwan's foreign policy and its identity in world politics, and why democracy and human rights are important for it and its external relations. The analysis uses role theory and the three roles of normative power, civilian power, and Global Good Samaritan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]