Why has the PRC been so determined that Taiwan be part of China? Why, since the 1990s, has Beijing been feverishly developing means to prevail in combat with the U.S. over Taiwan's status? Why is Taiwan worth fighting for? To answer, this book focuses on the territorial dimension of the Taiwan issue and highlights arguments made by PRC analysts about the geostrategic significance of Taiwan, rather than emphasizing the political dispute between Beijing and Taipei. It considers Beijing's quest for Taiwan since 1949 against the backdrop of recurring Chinese anxieties about the island's status since the seventeenth century.
Relations among the United States, Taiwan, and China challenge policymakers, international relations specialists, and a concerned public to examine their assumptions about security, sovereignty, and peace. Only a Taiwan Straits conflict could plunge Americans into war with a nuclear-armed great power. In a timely and deeply informed book, Nancy Bernkopf Tucker traces the thorny relationship between the United States and Taiwan as both watch ChinaÕs power grow. Although TaiwanÐU.S. security has been intertwined since the 1950s, neither Taipei nor Washington ever fully embraced the other. Differences in priorities and perspectives repeatedly raised questions about the wisdom of the alignment. Tucker discusses the nature of U.S. commitments to Taiwan; the intricacies of policy decisions; the intentions of critical actors; the impact of TaiwanÕs democratization; the role of lobbying; and the accelerating difficulty of balancing Taiwan against China. In particular, she examines the destructive mistrust that undermines U.S. cooperation with Taiwan, stymieing efforts to resolve cross-Strait tensions. Strait Talk offers valuable historical context for understanding U.S.ÐTaiwan ties and is essential reading for anyone interested in international relations and security issues today.
Taiwan's relationship with mainland China is one of the most fraught in East Asia, a key issue in the island's domestic politics, and a major obstacle in Sino-American relations. Between Assimilation and Independence explores the roots of this conflict in the immediate postwar period, when the Nationalist government led by Jiang Jieshi took control of the island after fifty years of Japanese rule. It is the first in-depth examination of how the Nationalists consolidated their rule over Taiwan even as they collapsed on the mainland. During the 1945-50 period, the Taiwanese experienced disappointment with Nationalist misrule; struggles over decolonization and the Japanese legacy; a violent uprising and brutal government response; and the chaos surrounding Jiang Jieshi's retreat with his mainlander-dominated authoritarian regime. This book, based on archival materials newly available in Taiwan and the United States, shows how the Taiwanese sought to place the island between independence--becoming a sovereign nation--and assimilation into China as a province.
Ever since Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang evacuated to Taiwan at the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, China and Taiwan have been divided by a fundamental and irreconcilable sovereignty dispute over Taiwan’s international status. In addition, the United States has played a central role in the rivalry between Beijing and Taipei. Despite the immutable nature of this sovereignty dispute between China and Taiwan, the triangular relations among Beijing, Taipei, and Washington have changed quite considerably over time. Over the last three decades, for example, relations in the Taiwan Strait were fairly tranquil during the 1980s and early 1990s, became much tenser from 1995 to 2008, and then reverted to amicable relations among China, Taiwan, and the United States after the election of a new Taiwanese President in 2008. This book seeks to understand and analyze the relations among China, Taiwan, and the United States in the early twenty-first century. In particular, it explores what causes change in the relations among Beijing, Taipei, and Washington and how stable the new era is likely to be. Consequently, special emphasis is placed on the factors promoting change or stability in the interactions among these three countries and upon the policy choices facing their governments. The major topics include the dynamics of the “strategic triangle” that defines cross-Strait relations (Chapters 2 to 4 and 8), the domestic politics and policies of Taiwan and China (Chapters 3 to 8), and the growing economic integration across the Taiwan Strait (Chapters 9 to 12). Overall, the future of this trilateral relationship appears to be fairly open-ended. Despite the current rapprochement, the ultimate goals of China and Taiwan remain incompatible; cross-Strait relations remain a viciously polarizing issue in Taiwan’s domestic politics; and there is profound scholarly disagreement over the broader implications of the growing economic ties across the Strait.
This book project studies the variation of sovereignty in international order by analysing how the general model of sovereignty is localised in the political practice of two major non-Western rising powers, namely China and India. It aims to investigate how the sovereignty of these states is constituted, which includes the question of how sovereignty works and becomes constituted in specific contexts and cases that fall outside the discourses and positions of the so-called Westphalian (conservative, absolutist) sovereignty that is dominantly advocated by these two states on a global level. The core of this project explores specific contested cases and situates them vis-à-vis the broader approaches of China and India to sovereignty. I specifically analyse four particular cases: China’s approach to sovereignty in relation to Hong Kong and Taiwan and India’s approach to sovereignty in relation to Bhutan and Kashmir. In doing so, I will illustrate that sovereignty is a flexible and plastic phenomenon which can be intertwined with principles, models or practices that are usually seen as divergent from or contradicting sovereignty; for example, those that derive from China’s and India’s imperial and colonial history.
This book unravels Taiwan's anomalous place in the international community. While it is for all intents and purposes treated as a sovereign state by most members of the international community, it is recognized by only twenty-three of them. The book explains how Taiwan's handling of its foreign relations is affected by the yearning of its people to express their own sense of national identity and to see Taiwan being accepted by the international community as a normal state. The book further examines how Taiwan's diplomatic isolation has caused it to focus on developing soft power based on its democratic credentials and economic vibrancy, and how its government under President Chen Shui-bian nevertheless failed to project soft power effectively. In addition to surveying Taiwan's relations with the international community, the book examines Taiwan's relations with the United States, Japan, the European Union, South East Asia, and its remaining twenty-three diplomatic allies, and discusses how Taiwan can manage its foreign policy more effectively.
This edited volume investigates and evaluates the context, causes, and consequences of various essential issues in Taiwanese domestic politics and external relations before and after the regime change in 2016. It offers theoretical interpretation and temporal delineation of recent electoral shifts, party realignment, identity reformulation, and subsequent foreign policy adaptation in the 2010s. Contributors address these issues in three sections—“Democracy and New Political Landscape,” “The China Factor and Cross-Strait Dilemma,” and “Taiwan’s International Way-out”—to advance conclusions about Taiwan’s political transformation from both comparative and international perspectives.
This book explores U.S.-Taiwan-China relations during both the Trump and Biden administrations, revealing how policy changes under both presidents have impacted Washington’s decades-long strategic policy framework for Cross-Strait Relations. By tracing the continuities and changes of U.S. Strategic ambiguity and One-China Policy framework between the Trump and Biden administrations, the book assesses how the foreign policy prism, through which U.S. leaders view China and Taiwan, has experienced a distinct alteration and subsequently led to a policy adjustment. Utilising a wide range of documents and primary material, such as White House documents (ranging from the Clinton to the Biden administrations) in conjunction with interviews with Taiwan officials, this volume brings a detailed portrait of past, present, and potential future U.S.-Taiwan-China relations. Moreover, it provides a succinct examination of U.S. foreign policy traditions such as internationalism, nationalism, and multilateral nationalism (providing a study of U.S.-China relations and policies from Nixon to Biden) and the resulting influence of such traditions on recent U.S. Cross-Strait policy. Presenting a comprehensive study of both the Trump and Biden administrations approach to Taiwan, this will be a valuable resource for any scholar or student of U.S. Foreign Policy, U.S.-Taiwan-China Relations and Cross-Strait Relations.
