Taiwan Insight
Articles about Taiwan Insight
A Taiwan School of Music? Rethinking Identity, Politics, and Aesthetics
Written by Min-Erh Wang. This article examines the conceptualisation of a "Taiwan School of Music" within contemporary musicology. Exploring the intersection of music, postcolonial agency, and identity, the author critiques state-driven cultural hegemony while advocating for a bottom-up, pluralistic framework. Using strategic essentialism, the project offers an open acoustic space to express Taiwan's distinct democratic identity.Continue reading
From compassion to liberation: Animal advocacy, veganism, and sustainability in Taiwan
Written by Gina Song Lopez. This article explores the rise of Taiwan’s modern vegan movement, examining its transition from traditional religious vegetarianism to a youth-driven advocacy centered on animal ethics, climate action, and identity. Through NGOs, digital platforms, and policy engagement, local advocates are redefining meatless diets while shaping Taiwan’s dynamic plant-based foodscape and advancing national sustainability goals on the global stage.Continue reading
How to Explain Cross-strait Relations
Written by Frédéric Krumbein. This article introduces a five-theory framework to analyse cross-strait relations. By evaluating historical decisions, economic integration, identity shifts, and security dynamics, the author provides a comprehensive analytical toolkit to map future trajectories for Taiwan-China relations across varying degrees of political salience.Continue reading
From ‘Compatriots’ to Coercion: How Cross-Strait Relations Have Changed
Written by Simona A. Grano. The author explores the shifting dynamics of cross-Strait relations, tracing Beijing’s strategy from historical "letters to compatriots" to modern grey-zone coercion. She highlights how China’s unification rhetoric increasingly clashes with Taiwan's democratic identity, creating an environment where political messaging, military posture, and strategic coercion closely align.Continue reading
Legal Indigeneities: Identity, Authenticity, and Power in Taiwan’s Indigenous Courts
Written by J. Christopher Upton. The author explores Taiwan’s specialised Indigenous court units, established in 2013 to bridge cultural differences within the national judiciary. Examining ethnographic courtroom observations, he details how Indigenous litigants actively perform identity through language, attire, legal knowledge, and advocacy. These "boundary institutions" reveal how Indigenous communities creatively navigate, contest, and reshape state legal spaces.Continue reading
Introduction: From Award-Winning Research to New Conversations in Taiwan Studies
Written by Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley. This special issue of Taiwan Insight highlights five award-winning scholars recognised by the International Journal of Taiwan Studies Research Article Competition. Spanning Indigenous justice, vegan activism, cross-Strait relations, political communication, and music history, their essays showcase how Taiwan-focused research transcends a single discipline. Together, they demonstrate how studying Taiwan enriches global academic and public debates.Continue reading
Taiwan Is Not a Bargaining Chip: Agency and Deterrence after the Donald Trump – Xi Jinping Summit
Written by Wai Yan Phyo Naing. The latest Trump-Xi summit highlights the risks of treating Taiwan as a bargaining chip amid shifting US-China relations. This article argues that Taiwan should avoid romanticising Taiwan-US relations and assess commitments through concrete actions, strengthen asymmetric defence and societal resilience, and deepen cooperation with regional partners to preserve deterrence and regional stability.Continue reading
Lithuania’s Taiwan Balancing Act Tests Europe’s Resolve
Written by Jozef Huljak. This article discusses how Lithuania is resuming economic cooperation talks with Taiwan despite internal political pressure to reset relations with Beijing. This strategy aims to shift the relationship from symbolic solidarity to durable economic interest, testing Europe's resolve against Chinese coercion while proving that a resilient, mutually beneficial partnership can withstand domestic political cycles. Continue reading
Beyond debunking: Taiwan needs a systemic strategy to counter energy misinformation
Written by Ming-tse Hung. Taiwan’s renewable energy transition is increasingly threatened by misinformation. This article argues that reactive fact-checking is no longer sufficient. Instead, Taiwan needs a proactive strategy that understands the wider information ecosystem and builds sustained collaboration among government, civil society, media, academia, businesses, and local communities to protect information integrity and support climate action.Continue reading
China’s Ethnic-Unity Law Tests Taiwan’s Intelligence Strategy towards Chinese
Written by Cho-han Hsiung. This article looks at how China’s new Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law could reshape Taiwan’s intelligence strategy. As Beijing tightens its reach over Chinese citizens at home and abroad, Taiwan faces both new risks and opportunities. The article argues that stronger asylum protections and secure reporting channels are crucial for distinguishing state operatives from immigrants, dissidents, and others facing political pressure.Continue reading
Reflection on connectivity between high politics and low politics of Taiwan Studies in Europe
Written by Ting-Sian Liu. The author reflects on the annual ERCCT Taiwan-Europe Connectivity Workshop, exploring how Taiwan Studies favours high-politics and geopolitics over low-politics grassroots perspectives. She argues that bridging these competing epistemologies by integrating civil defence, minoritised communities, and feminist perspectives into mainstream security frameworks creates a vital site of productive tension for envisioning Taiwan’s future beyond Western-centric, state-level narratives.Continue reading
Beyond the Normative Surface: The Role of Connectivity in Taiwan’s Fishery Governance Reforms
Written by Hao-Hsiang Hsieh. This article examines Taiwan’s fisheries governance reforms through the lens of Taiwan–Europe connectivity. Challenging the assumption that EU market pressure alone drives regulatory change, he shows how normative power operates through institutional dialogue, supply chains, and civil society networks. Taiwan’s response to the EU’s IUU fishing framework reveals connectivity as a multi-layered process linking regulation, markets, and societal actors.Continue reading
When Questions Travel: Lived Geopolitics, Intellectual Circulation, and Return
Written by Ai Ke. This article reflects on how questions of mobility, identity, and geopolitics travel across ethnographic and academic settings. Following younger Taiwanese professionals working in mainland China, she develops the idea of “contested proximity” to examine how geopolitical tensions permeate ordinary life. Her return to Tübingen shows how intellectual connectivity emerges through ideas that circulate, transform, and return through dialogue.Continue reading
One Week of Connectivity: Reflections from a Vietnamese PhD Student in Taiwan Studies
Written by Vo Thanh Hien. In this reflective essay, a Vietnamese doctoral student based in Taiwan shares how attending a week-long workshop in Tübingen, Germany, redefined their understanding of "connectivity." Moving beyond formal International Relations theory, he describes how shared logistics, interdisciplinary feedback, and spontaneous moments transformed a room of researchers into a supportive academic community.Continue reading
Taiwan Beer: Tradition, Trade, and Lager
Written by Jordan Laramore. This article explores how Taiwan Beer reflects the island’s turbulent political and economic history. Originating under Japanese colonial rule in 1919 and later shaped by ROC government agricultural policies, most notably incorporating local Ponlai rice, the brand evolved into a cultural icon.
Data is not a decision: Taiwan’s whole-of-society resilience and the procurement gap
Written by Al Vigier. Taiwan’s resilience exercises in August reveal a critical gap: Taiwan is rapidly acquiring sensors, drones and communications infrastructure but lacks a trusted decision layer for crises when networks fail. This article argues that Taiwan should procure explainable, auditable, and human-controlled decision-support systems, thereby transforming AI principles into enforceable procurement requirements.Continue reading
Rehearsing the First Hour
Written By Meng Kit Tang. This article examines what Taiwan’s Han Kuang 42 exercise and China’s expanding mock-Taipei training facilities reveal about how both sides are preparing for the opening hours of a Taiwan Strait conflict. It argues that both sides are preparing for the same strategic problem from opposite directions: Taiwan is trying to preserve time and China is preparing to compress that window.Continue reading
Geopolitical Anxiety Factors in Czech Republic-Taiwan Relations
Written by Wei-Chung Chen. This article examines Taiwan-Czech relations through the lens of geopolitical anxiety, identifying five periods in Czech political discourse on Taiwan. Taiwan has become a political symbol through which Czech actors negotiate tensions between liberal and authoritarian identities. The relationship’s future, however, remains uncertain amid renewed political divisions.Continue reading
Taiwan and global heritage frameworks: Assessing ‘authenticity’ value at Taoyuan Martyrs’ Shrine
Written by Amelia Antolini. This article argues that Taoyuan Martyrs' Shrine questions 'authenticity' as the universal standard for heritage conservation. Its successive layers of political and social meaning, accumulated through history, are themselves part of its heritage. Fieldwork further shows that visitors engage with the site in diverse ways, challenging rigid, material-based approaches to authenticity.Continue reading
Fluid flows: phenomenological ecofeminism in Yen Ai Lin and Hsia Yü’s poetry
Written by Gabrielle Killick. This article examines the poetry of Yen Ai Lin and Hsia Yü through the concept of “phenomenological ecofeminism”. It argues that their representations of bodily and natural fluids challenge patriarchal ideas of femininity, expose the social abjection of women’s bodies, and foreground connections between embodiment, nature, and non-human life in post-Martial Law Taiwanese poetry.Continue reading
Queer utopia shaped by gender and sexuality: Through the lens of the father–Son relationship in Pai Hsien-yung (白先勇)’s novel Crystal Boys (孽子)
Written by Phoenix, Fung Lam Chan. This article examines Pai Hsien-yung’s Crystal Boys through the relationship between fatherhood, masculinity, and queer identity. It argues that the novel exposes how patriarchal family structures and heterosexual norms marginalise homosexual men, while New Park provides an alternative space of queer kinship and belonging. Yet the novel also highlights the continuing limits of this resistance.Continue reading
Beyond the Rainbow Symbol: Was Tsai Ing-wen’s Election a Breakthrough Moment for Gender Equality in Taiwan?
Written by I-Sheng Wang. This article argues that Tsai Ing-wen's election marks a significant breakthrough for gender equality in Taiwan. The Tsai era changed the political meaning of gender equality by embedding it in Taiwan’s democratic identity and state governance. However, the progress was selective, and Tsai's legacy of equality also becomes a political asset that remains contested and challenged.Continue reading