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Alternative food networks are embedded in sociocultural contexts and have developed distinctive features in different regions, but the literature has generally overlooked how AFNs interact and build networks across countries. This paper fills this gap by analyzing how consumer cooperatives in Taiwan have been inspired by pioneers in Japan, and how Taiwan AFNs now influence their counterparts in China. It shows that specific social material arrangements consist of translated books, the intermediary organizations and mutual visits facilitating a sequence of influence among consumer cooperatives across national borders. These social material arrangements disseminate a specific morality of consumption, teiki , that has reframed the food consumer as a 'life person', designed solidarity economies for 'collective purchasing', and established local distribution stations for agrifood education or policy advocacy. The paper illustrates how AFNs in East Asia share similar moralities of consumption, but have also adapted teiki to different social contexts and developed different imaginations of consumer citizen. • Examines the interactions and learning among consumer cooperatives and CSAs across countries. • Highlights how specific social material arrangements supported interactions and help disseminate specific discourses and practices. • Advances understanding of the characteristics of East Asian AFNs that share a similar morality of consumption. • Argues that it is useful to analyze the morality of consumption to understand consumer-farmer relations and political agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Taiwan and China have a long history of sharing marine resources in the China Seas. However, due to political issues, the two sides have yet to formalize collaboration and interaction despite such a close geographical relationship. The lack of formal collaboration means they cannot manage fisheries or conserve resources as a team. The lack of collaboration in the regional fisheries management organizations also means a mutually beneficial situation for the two sides is yet to be achieved. Recognizing this, the two sides began negotiations in 2008 and have since signed agreements on fisheries co-operation projects. This paper discusses the unique fisheries relationship between Taiwan and China, and the characteristics of their fishing industries. The paper also presents the latest update on the collaboration between the two sides. Finally, this paper proposes practical solutions for resolving outstanding issues between the two sides’ fishing industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The offshore islands of Taiwan (Republic of China) are dynamic examples of contested metageographies, island spaces caught in between competing and opposing interpretations of their identities, relativities, notions of sustainability and futures. Three cases – (1) population growth, land use conflict, a switch from a military to a tourism economy, and ever closer links between mainland China and Kinmen Island; (2) the rejection of a move to establish a casino economy on the Penghu archipelago; and (3) protests against the storage of spent nuclear waste on Orchid Island – are presented as illustrative of such changing topographies, themselves reflective of a transition to a more democratic and pluralist society in Taiwan. The paper hints at an evolving shift in both vertical (top/down) and horizontal (island-to-island) relations in the construction of development paths and futures for Taiwan's de facto archipelago. This re-territorialization offers a fresh, archipelagic repivoting of political geography for and beyond Taiwan. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper compares the structure of inter-industrial and extra-industrial innovation networks in the innovation systems of Taiwan and China. First, we examine patterns of product R&D diffusion in each system using the input–output approach and conducting a structural comparison based on network analysis. Second, we investigate the innovative interactions among the industrial, institutional, and foreign sub-systems of each national system to explore their substitutability or complementarity relationships. Analysis results show that China''s innovation system is stimulated through the public sectors, so the influence of institutional sub-systems exceeds that of industrial sub-systems. In contrast, inter-industrial innovation flows in Taiwan are more efficient than those in China, making Taiwan''s interfaces between industrial and institutional sub-systems quite restricted. These two results demonstrate that a substitutability relationship exists between industrial and institutional sub-systems. Moreover, both countries, but especially China, have an inward imbalance of technological payments, which relates their international orientation to their internal connectivity in a substitutability relationship. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]