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In the increasingly volatile global political order, national economic structures and international relations, integrated as they are, are showing concerning signs of strain. Taiwan, whose world-leading semiconductor industry is indispensable in Global Supply Chains and whose economic prosperity and security are critical to a stable global economic system, has received much research interest since the late 1980s. Against the background of a slowing Taiwanese economy, starting in the 2000s, this paper seeks to investigate the causes of Taiwan's challenges and the linkages to the global economy vis-à-vis China. Based on previous research from different social science disciplines, this paper shows that Taiwan's economic performance has been undermined by the declining effectiveness of its industrial policy and the general state intervention in the country, which is in turn caused by deep socio-political divisions on issues of national identity and Taiwan-China relations. The paper reveals the dilemma, which results from this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the theory of social construction of reality deriving from the writings of Max Weber, Alfred Schutz, Thomas Luckmann and Peter Berger to explain the origin of national identity and hence the emergence of a nation. It argues that social construction of national reality originates from everyday life experience taken for granted during the process of socialization. Individuals make sense out of the external world. Experiences taken for granted become actor's stock of knowledge. A common scheme of knowledge shared by the community serves to differentiate in-group (nationals) and out-group (foreigners). Collective consciousness thus defines national identity and hence a nation. Unless people (both in-group and out-group) interact with and learn from each other, different stocks of knowledge taken for granted will create political tension. This theory will be applied to understand the tensions in Tibet and along the Taiwan Strait. The paper further argues that Taiwan can hardly separate from mainland China in the future, while strong Tibetan consciousness continues to defy against powerful Chineseness, resulting in endless upheavals in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines two Taiwan projects: the National Palace Museum (1965) in Taipei (NPM) and the NPM Southern Branch (NPMSB) in Chiayi (2003). The NPMSB targeted the liberalisation of the NPM from the stained political connotation of Chinese nationalism and constructs anew Taiwan's autonomous national identity. This paper argues that the construction of NPM/NPMSB in Taiwan is a cultural and colonial traumatism of national identity, and a struggle between official Chinese nationalism and rising prior Taiwanese subjectivity in a postcolonial context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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By tracing the origin and evolution of Chinese nationalism, this paper finds that the dialectical relationship between the Chinese "self and the foreign "other" has provided the cultural-institutional context for the construction of its national identity. The positional change of the Chinese actor in the self-other interaction--resulting from the institutional shift from the tianxia order to the Westphalian system--and the consequent national humiliation have been embedded in the Chinese collective memory and given rise to the consensual norms ingrained in the national identity. Viewed through the lens of political sociology and identity politics, China's tenacious struggle for national rejuvenation can be construed as a social practice guided by these memory-encoded social norms. Due to the protracted and ambivalent nature of the state's purposive action in attaining great-power status on the international stage, the confidence of the resurgent state is compromised by an acute sense of frustration. This identity predicament has engendered a peculiar Chinese state emotion, which has profoundly influenced the in-group members' evaluation and perception of out-group entities and their behavior in the antagonistic intergroup relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses national identity in Taiwan as of September 2012, focusing on an analysis of the nation's identity politics and democratization process which reportedly began in 1987. The institution of general political elections in Taiwan is addressed, along with an examination of the cross-Strait relations between mainland China and Taiwan. The cultural origins of China are assessed, as well as the evolution of socio-political developments in both Taiwan and China. Former Chinese President Lee Teng-hui is also mentioned.