Kerry Brown - The Trouble with Taiwan

Fresh and authoritative, written with brio and precision. Professor Thomas Plate, author of Yo-Yo Diplomacy : An American Columnist Tackles The Ups-and-Downs Between China and the US

Taiwan is one of the most important but least understood places in Asia today. This book provides an invaluable introduction to this potential flashpoint for future conflict between the US and China, while centring Taiwanese people in their own story as they attempt to take control of their own futures in the face of ever greater pressure from Beijing. As Chinas military and diplomatic power grows, Taiwan is on the frontline in standing up to Beijing and asserting its rights for autonomy and democracy. James Griffiths, author of The Great Firewall of China: How To Build and Control an Alternative Version of the Internet

By marshalling history, biography, internal politics, and international affairs, Brown and Wu Tzu-hui address the very trouble they describe: they help situate a Taiwan whose place in the world is otherwise plagued by uncertainty. Benjamin Zawacki, author of Thailand: Shifting Ground Between the US and a Rising China

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Kerry Brown is Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Lau China Institute, Kings College, London, and Associate Fellow on the Asia Programme at Chatham House. He is the author of 20 books on contemporary Chinese politics. He can be followed on Twitter @Bkerrychina, and his work can be found at www.kerry-brown.co.uk

Kalley Wu Tzu-hui is a native of Taiwan, who completed an MBA at the University of Birmingham, and has lived in the UK and Australia. She worked for a number of years in the finance sector in London.

THE TROUBLE WITH TAIWAN

HISTORY, THE UNITED STATES AND A RISING CHINA

KERRY BROWN AND KALLEY WU TZU-HUI

Taiwan: History, the United States and a Rising Chin a, was first published in 2019 by Zed Books Ltd, The Foundry, 17 Oval Way, London SE11 5RR, UK

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Copyright Kerry Brown and Kalley Wu Tzu-hui 2019

The right of Kerry Brown and Kalley Wu Tzu-hui to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

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Index: Kerry Brown

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of Zed Books Ltd.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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ISBN 978-1-78699-523-0 pdf

ISBN 978-1-78699-524-7 epub

ISBN 978-1-78699-525-4 mobi

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To our parents

CONTENTS

Map of Taiwan

Source: https://www.chinahighlights.com/taiwan/map.htm

Disputed claims in the South China Sea

Sources: D. Rosenberg/MiddleburyCollege/Harvard/AsiaQuarterly/Phil govt

The authors are grateful to the Taipei Representative Office in London for their help in arranging interviews in Taipei in September 2018. They also express their thanks to all of those who, over the last decade or more, hosted events, and arranged briefings, on Taiwanese issues, inside and outside Taiwan. They would like to thank Kim Walker at Zed Books for commissioning the book, to Emma Schleifer for reading the manuscript and for comments, and to Linda Auld for her editing.

A small amount of material drawn on in the text has been taken from research produced by the authors in earlier work. This has been clearly marked, and has been significantly revised and updated. We should make clear that the opinions and interpretations expressed in this work are entirely those of the authors.

A note about the background and reasons for writing this book. One of the authors is Taiwanese, though currently resident in the UK, and, from 2012 to 2015, Australia, since 2005. The other has mostly engaged with the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) since 1991, but has visited Taiwan over 25 times, the first time in 2000. This mix of perspectives has hopefully created something a little different to the usual treatment on issues around the island. There is, it has to be stressed, excellent scholarship by scholars inside and outside Taiwan on its history, politics, and almost every conceivable aspect of its society and development. Much of this is in English. In the UK, US and Australia, there are world class centres and networks focused on Taiwanese issues. This book does not, and could not, compete in terms of detail and specialization with this material. What it tries to do is to update, and disseminate, discussion of a set of key issues Taiwan faces that matter, sometimes in different ways, to the rest of the globe, particularly as the world moves into a complex period where globalization and identity seem to clash against each other in the era of Trump and Brexit. These also involve complicated questions of ethnicity and its meaning, values and what the future of democracy and the freedoms it is predicated on might be. In some ways, therefore, this is a book about those issues, using the case of Taiwan because of its pertinency and urgency.

Some of the ideas that follow came from participation in different kinds of seminars, conferences, and forum related to Taiwan in Europe, the US, Australia, the PRC, and, of course Taiwan, over the last decade, particularly since 2008, and the start of the Ma Ying-jeou presidency. Some of these were track two dialogues involving experts working on diplomatic issue, or as part of delegations to Taiwan. The most recent material, referred to in the text, is from interviews carried out in early September 2018 in Taiwan by both authors of key officials, academics, and people in think tanks.

ASEAN Association of South East Asian Nations

BRI Belt and Road Initiative

CPC Chinese Communist Party

DPP Democratic Progressive Party

ECFA Economic Co-operation Framework Agreement

GDP Gross Domestic Product

ICAA International Civil Aviation Authority

IMF International Monetary Fund

KMT Kuomingtang Guomingdang, the Nationalist Party

PLA Peoples Liberation Army

PRC Peoples Republic of China

ROC Republic of China

WHA World Health Authority

WTO World Trade Organization