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University of California Press

About the Book

A free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

China’s relation to Taiwan has been in constant contention since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in October 1949 and the creation of the defeated Kuomintang (KMT) exile regime on the island two months later. The island’s autonomous sovereignty has continually been challenged, initially because of the KMT’s insistence that it continue to represent not just Taiwan but all of China—and later because Taiwan refused to cede sovereignty to the then-dominant power that had arisen on the other side of the Taiwan Strait. One thing that makes Taiwan so politically difficult and yet so intellectually fascinating is that it ­­is not merely a security problem, but a ganglion of interrelated puzzles. The optimistic hope of the Ma Ying-jeou administration for a new era of peace and cooperation foundered on a landslide victory by the Democratic Progressive Party, which has made clear its intent to distance Taiwan from China’s political embrace. The Taiwanese are now waiting with bated breath as the relationship tautens. Why did détente fail, and what chance does Taiwan have without it? Contributors to this volume focus on three aspects of the evolving quandary: nationalistic identity, social economy, and political strategy.

About the Author

Lowell Dittmer is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He is editor in chief of the journal Asian Survey and the author of Sino-Soviet Normalization and Its International ImplicationsChina's Quest for National IdentityChina Under Modernization, and South Asia's Nuclear Crisis.

 

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations

1. Introduction
Lowell Dittmer

Part I. National Identity
2. Taiwan’s National Identity and Cross-Strait Relations Yi-huah Jiang
3. Changing Identities in Taiwan under Ma Ying-jeou
Jean-Pierre Cabestan
4. Mingling but Not Merging: Changes and Continuities in the Identity of Taiwanese in Mainland China
Shu Keng and Emmy Ruihua Lin
5. Chinese National Identity under Reconstruction
Gang Lin and Weixu Wu
6. Chinese Youth Nationalism in a Pressure Cooker
Rou-lan Chen

Part II. Political Economy
7. Varieties of State Capitalism across the Taiwan Strait: A Comparison and Its Implications
Chih-shian Liou
8. The Nature and Trend of Taiwanese Investment in China (1991–2014): Business Orientation, Profit Seeking, and Depoliticization
Chung-min Tsai
9. Cross-Strait Economic Relations and China’s Rise: The Case of the IT Sector
Tse-Kang Leng
10. Social Entrepreneurialism and Social Media in Post–developmental state Taiwan
You-tien Hsing

Part III. Political Strategy
11. Pivot, Hedger, or Partner: Strategies of Lesser Powers Caught between Hegemons
Yu-Shan Wu
12. A Farewell to Arms? US Security Relations with Taiwan and the Prospects for Stability in the Taiwan Strait
Ping-Kuei Chen, Scott L. Kastner, and William L. Reed
13. Xi Jinping’s Taiwan Policy: Boxing Taiwan In with the One-China Framework
Jing Huang
14. Strategies of China’s Expansion and Taiwan’s Survival in Southeast Asia: A Comparative Perspective
Samuel C. Y. Ku

IV. Conclusion
15. Taiwan and the Waning Dream of Reunification Lowell Dittmer

List of Contributors
Index