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The People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC) (Taiwan) have taken divergent paths in the area of human rights. Since the two leaders Xi Jinping and Tsai Ing-wen came to power, the differences in the area of human rights have further increased. The paper analyses and compares their external human rights strategies based on realist assumptions and the soft and hard power resources of the PRC and the ROC. The PRC's objectives are to deflect international criticism of its human rights situation and to weaken the global human rights system and its underlying human rights norms. Taiwan's objective is to use its record as a human rights leader in Asia to expand its limited international space and to strengthen its ties with other consolidated democracies and the global civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on community energy have generated many useful insights concerning its potentials and challenges in facilitating energy transitions. However, this line of inquiry tends to overlook the crucial significance of site-specific contexts, concerns, and needs beyond the energy system and often generalizes these under a "civil society" umbrella. To study community energy on its own terms, this paper proposes a more grounded approach based on the relational place-making framework. It draws upon the case of the Taihsi Green Energy and Health Community Initiative in Taiwan to investigate how the emergence, development, and framing of this initiative are entangled with geo-historically produced concerns about the village's socio-economic marginalization and suffering from petrochemical pollution. The findings suggest that community energy in this context was a proactive continuation of place-based activism for environmental justice; its value to this damaged community lied in its potential to create self-reliant socio-material relations alternative to those relied on the patronage of petrochemical interests. However, this justice-oriented aspiration tended to be discounted in national-level energy transitions agenda, revealing a tension between citizen-oriented and community-based energy projects. The paper argues that a relational place-based analysis is crucial in recognizing the grounded meanings and values of a community energy initiative, which can address the decontextualizing tendency in many community energy studies to better help policymakers and advocates enhance energy justice in disadvantaged communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent cultural studies scholarship, native terms have been used to understand the affective state of a society. Accordingly, this paper focuses on the term "spicy Taiwanese sister," regarding its derogatory gender implications in the context of Taiwan's popular culture. Then, it discloses the strategic appropriation of the gendered term in the presidential campaign from 2019 to 2020. This analysis reveals why the affective campaigning led to a triumph of Taiwan's democracy. The affect and effect of this presidential campaign could not have been fulfilled without the China factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Republic of China on the mainland (1912–1949) was hardly a unified nationstate. During times of division, however, China's state building continued, and a case in point is the increasing capacity of the Guomindang (GMD) state to impose and collect new taxes under difficult circumstances. This paper identifies three themes that emerge in some recent studies on the taxation initiatives taken by the GMD state, in the context of its differentiation from and competition with other subnational power-holders. International standing and state legitimacy (and capacity), ideological justification for taxation and institutional growth in taxation, and the negotiations and compromises between the state and society over taxes were some of the crucial elements in the unfolding of state building under the GMD state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This focus review summarizes climate politics in Taiwan at the global, the national, and the local level. The article begins with an introduction to Taiwan's emission profile, major actors, and recent policy development. At the global level, Taiwan's unique international status has limited its responses to climate change as mostly gesture policies, but recently corporate climate actions bloomed due to pressures from the supply chains. At the national level, Taiwan's developmental state legacy has locked the country in a "high‐carbon regime" and struggled with the debate on nuclear power. Finally, at the local level, Taiwan seeks to facilitate climate actions with the principle of energy democracy, yet public participation still falls short and local land use conflicts will present enormous challenges. The article ends with a discussion on current knowledge gaps and invites future research to put Taiwan into comparative perspectives. This article is categorized under:Policy and Governance > National Climate Change Policy [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The field of queer/sexuality studies in Taiwan was pioneered in the 1990s by a group of mainly second‐generation descendants of Chinese civil war migrants (waishengren) who have problematised and disparaged the post‐martial law Taiwanisation of identity and politics. Despite the seminal nature of their 'sex positive' work that challenged many cultural orthodoxies, subsequent sociopolitical developments strengthening civil society, visibility of and human rights protections for tongzhi (LGBTQ) citizens, the consolidation of Taiwanese identity, and the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) acceleration of revanchist hostility towards Taiwan over the past two decades have coalesced to forge unequivocal rifts between them and a new generation of Taiwanese sexuality scholars and activists. This rupture highlights how "Taiwan's sex/gender/sexualities knowledge production and reproduction have long been intertwined with the [contentious] politics of nationhood, nation‐building, and nationalism" (Kao, 2019). In probing these interstices, this article proposes a decolonial approach to tongzhi identity politics in Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present, there is a wide divergence in attitudes toward free speech in countries strongly influenced by Confucianism. Japan, Korea, and Taiwan have fairly robust rights of free expression. Mainland China does not, strongly restricting speech that the government judges threatens State interests. I argue that although traditional Confucian scholars supported many restrictions on expression, Confucian philosophers actually have good reason to want to protect expression about values. Subsequently, I consider how to address the problem of disinformation while preserving this Confucian right to free expression. I focus on the case of Taiwan, as the Confucian state facing the most serious disinformation campaigns from China. The goal of government and civil society actors has been to focus on correcting disinformation while preserving free access to information, though laws do provide for civil and even criminal penalties for intentional spread of false information. As many democratic societies are facing the problem of concerted disinformation campaigns that aim to sow confusion and increase discord among the populace, Taiwan's successes here are worth studying. Yet the Confucian cultural background means people accept more government involvement in defining what is true and false than may be the case elsewhere, and the right to free speech is less absolute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In May 2019, Taiwan became the first country in Asia to introduce same-sex marriage. This article compares the path to same-sex marriage in Taiwan with the situation in three of its neighbours – Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea – where similar debates have proceeded without yet achieving marriage equality. Advocates for marriage equality in Taiwan's neighbours can learn some lessons from the experience of the island democracy. First, the struggle for marriage equality is a long-term effort that is built on progress in LGBTQ rights in general and on a broad coalition of supporters from civil society and political parties. Taiwan was already home to Asia's most vibrant LGBTQ community and movement, and has enacted anti-discrimination legislation. Second, the island has introduced gender education in schools, and this shaped the younger generation's positive attitude towards marriage equality. Third, discourses on rights need to be adapted to a country's culture and values. Taiwanese advocates for marriage equality not only talked about marriage equality as a fundamental human right but also stressed values such as mutual respect and a stable partnership and family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taiwan and Estonia are known as digital democracies facing threats from neighbors exploiting the vulnerabilities stemming from their degree of digitalization. Nevertheless, in their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, Taiwan and Estonia have highlighted the strengths of digital democracy in combating a non-traditional security threat without employing the strong-arm tactics of authoritarian states. The goal of the article is to distinguish between vulnerability in cyberspace and digital power and put forward a conception of digital power to explain how Estonia and Taiwan were using their digital prowess to combat COVID-19. We argue that on one hand, their reliance on cybertechnology makes them particularly vulnerable to cyberattacks, but on the other their digital power enhances their global stature and domestic capacity to address threats such as COVID-19. The article starts by engaging with the ongoing academic debate on the concept of digital power and its political core. In the next section we adapt this concept to the policy practices of digital governance in Estonia and Taiwan. Lastly, we look more specifically at how investments in the IT sphere and e-governance were helpful for the two countries during the initial stage of the COVID-19 crisis. In conclusion, we highlight the paradox of two democracies choosing to extend the reach of the state into society through the use of digital tools to combat COVID-19. We further note that the pandemic provides a new biopolitical understanding of vulnerability and power in the digital realm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]