This article explores the intersection of Cold War geopolitics, cultural psychiatry, and migration in Taiwan from the mid-1940s to the 1970s. Building on recent scholarship in cultural psychiatry and Cold War science, it examines how geopolitical tensions shaped psychiatric knowledge production in East Asia. Focusing on the psychological and social impact of the 1949 mass migration, when over a million Chinese immigrants arrived in Taiwan, alongside the clinical and academic work of Taiwanese psychiatrists, the study highlights how migration and societal upheaval became central research concerns. Operating under the authoritarian Kuomintang regime and within the constraints and opportunities of international politics, Taiwanese psychiatrists – most of whom were native-born with colonial backgrounds – drew on intellectual traditions from imperial Japan, fascist Germany, and the Cold War Western bloc. Navigating both global psychiatric discourses and local concerns, they positioned themselves as key contributors to the international development of psychiatric research. While their portrayals of Chinese character structure and family dynamics sometimes reflected essentialist views, their work also demonstrated a nuanced awareness of historical change and contemporary realities during a period of intense political repression and uncertainty. By analysing archival sources and medical texts, this article illuminates the complex interplay between geopolitics and psychiatric knowledge production in Cold War Taiwan.

Despite ongoing affective polarization in the United States, support for Taiwan has somehow remained unscathed; Democrats and Republicans unanimously endorse US-Taiwan foreign policy. This is reflected both in public opinion surveys of American voters and support for Taiwan from elected officials. Theories of foreign policy and public opinion suggest that whether voters take top-down or bottom-up cues on foreign policy, we should expect some level of polarization on a salient issue like Taiwan. Utilizing two preregistered survey experiments in the United States, this study tests how robust bipartisan support for Taiwan persists when Taiwan is framed as either a Republican or Democratic issue. When presented as a partisan issue, do American voters still support Taiwan? Contrary to theoretical expectations, Taiwan presents a complex reality. Some foreign policy issues related to Taiwan can become partisan when framed along party lines while others remain bipartisan. Specifically, support for diplomatic and military policy may be affected by partisan framing, but support for economic policy remains bipartisan. This study contributes to theories of public opinion and foreign policy, particularly for scholars focused on US-Taiwan and US-China relations.

A well-defined territorial boundary is essential for the design and implementation of social policies, as it defines the scope of the political community. In states where territorial boundaries are contested, the contours of sovereignty remains ambiguous. This paper studies the effects of contested perceptions of territory on welfare states. The paper distinguishes between institutional solidarity (support for formal welfare arrangements) and intergenerational social solidarity (willingness to help the other generation at a personal cost) and argues that territorial state identity independently influences both, aside from national identities and nationalism. Employing Taiwan’s social security reform as the case, and using observational data derived from the 2019 nationally representative Taiwan Image Survey alongside data from an original survey administered in Taiwan in 2023, the article demonstrates that territorial state identity enhances support for both institutional solidarity and intergenerational social solidarity. This effect persists even when controlling for nationalism. This research underscores the importance of recognising territorial boundaries consistent with the welfare apparatus for the sustainability of welfare states.

Research informed by sociological neoinstitutionalism often frames organizational reactions to legal norms as either loose coupling, where formal legal commitments are only weakly aligned with actual practices, or tight coupling, where strong internal or external compliance pressures drive close alignment. This article introduces a third pattern – contentious coupling – where some organizational members attempt to realign practices with legal commitments, but these very efforts provoke pushback from others, resulting in substantive yet constrained success. This paradox is key to understanding the widespread yet limited effects of legal rights. I illustrate contentious coupling by examining how international human rights law has shaped solitary confinement reform in Taiwan. While hierarchical enforcement led by rights advocates and policymakers has successfully reduced prolonged solitary confinement, it has also alienated frontline correctional officers by triggering a sense of relative deprivation and perception of hypocrisy, encapsulated in their complaints of a “human rights upsurge.” In response, these officers engage in two forms of passive resistance – formalistic care and resistance spillover – both of which undermine the authority of human rights and hinder their capacity to transform correctional culture.

From the 1950s to the 1980s, disputes about fishing rights and practices that emerged due to decolonisation processes and the expansion of maritime boundaries shaped diplomatic relations between Taiwan and Pacific polities. Whether legal or illegal, fisheries provided a space where Taiwan and Pacific locales engaged at state and non-state levels. Using newspapers and archival materials, this article examines how the Taiwanese fishing community in American Samoa became intertwined in American Samoan society and complicated state-level relationships. This legal fishing community then expanded into illegal fishing incidents in Tuvalu, Niue, and the Cook Islands, again shaping Taiwan-Pacific relations. Taiwan’s fisheries history demonstrates beyond-the-state encounters for Taiwan, overseas Chinese communities in the Pacific, colonised and independent Pacific locales, and colonial powers. It contributes to global history understandings of a deep relationality between histories of the Pacific Rim and Oceania that have been separated in historical analysis.

This article explores recent developments in English language education in Taiwan, situating them within broader sociopolitical shifts and demographic changes. It begins by outlining the emergence of English in Taiwan’s education system before presenting the formulation and objectives of the Bilingual 2030 policy. The article then analyzes how this national initiative has reshaped English language education across educational levels. In particular, it highlights the expansion of English–medium instruction (EMI) in higher education as a central feature of Taiwan’s bilingualization agenda. Finally, it discusses two key developments influenced by the policy: the internationalization of higher education as a response to demographic and policy pressures, and the resulting expansion of EMI courses as a central strategy for attracting global talent and sustaining university enrollment.

Throughout the twentieth century, Taiwan and South Korea underwent rapid economic development and successfully democratized without reversal to authoritarianism. Despite their similar trajectories, the two countries diverge significantly in political and public support for gender equality. Taiwan is widely seen as the most gender-equal country in Asia, while South Korea remains deeply polarized, with uneven progress in women’s representation. What accounts for this divergence between two democracies? This article advances a political institutions thesis, arguing that differences in democratic institution-building—particularly the actors and modes of democratization—have shaped the contour of gender politics of each country. Contrasting the histories of party-driven democratization in Taiwan and mass-driven democratization in South Korea, this article shows that the process of building democracy has had lasting effects on the institutionalization and sustainability of gender equality.

The operating goals of family firms (FFs) typically include building both economic and socioemotional wealth. Innovation is increasingly recognized as a key source for the development and growth of family firms. From the multiple dimensions of socioemotional wealth (SEW), this research has focused on how family influences a particular type of innovation – green innovation – in family firms. Using 5,071 observations from among the listed firms in Taiwan over an eight-year period (2014–2021), we examined the relationships between FFs and green innovation. The results indicate that FFs are more likely to develop green innovation than their nonfamily counterparts. In particular, there are complicated effects within different types of FFs – control deviation family firms (CDFFs).

The European Union and China have a relationship that is characterized by strong economic interdependence. But since Xi Jinping’s ascent to power, the gap in power and interests between the EU and China has widened, and cooperation has become more difficult. As a result, the EU’s China policy has shifted towards a more structural realist perspective, strategy, and policy. The EU’s realist turn will be analysed in two major areas of the EU–China relationship: security and defense with a focus on Taiwan, and trade. The EU has increased support for Taiwan and for maintaining the status quo in the Taiwan Strait by bandwagoning with the United States. In external trade, the EU is strengthening its own economic security and is balancing against China through diversifying its trade relations in the Indo-Pacific region.

Cartographic representations of Kashmir and Taiwan act as sites upon which Indian and Chinese state power is exercised to govern the logics of visibility and legibility for these two regions. Despite the differences in regime type, these major non-Western powers represent Kashmir and Taiwan respectively as internal and integral parts of their sovereign territorial form. In this article, we consider two cases that have not hitherto been studied together in International Relations (IR), putting forward ‘cartographic imaginaries’ as a framework to reveal systematic analytical dynamics in relation to representation, nationalism, and diaspora. Cartographic imaginaries are sites of productive power that evoke certain emotions and carry a set of ideas relating to territory that can be naturalised through repeated exposure. We present in-depth investigations providing a range of examples to trace Indian and Chinese states’ efforts, both domestic and international, involved in constructing and controlling cartographic imaginaries of Kashmir and Taiwan. Our analysis relates to significant current concerns in IR about critiques of imperial cartography, impact of rising powers on global order dynamics, and transnational governance of diaspora. Our framework thus demonstrates the connexions between affect, visuality, and state power and offers empirical insights into non-Western projections of imperialism on a global scale.

The current Hong Kong situation is the product of a long-term accumulation of crises and the consequences of the broader interplay of clashes among nations. Taiwan has long seen the PRC's treatment of Hong Kong as a barometer of its Taiwan policy. The “One Country, Two Systems” formula was proposed with an eye on Taiwan. In recent years, Beijing seemed to decouple the Hong Kong-Taiwan nexus as it began to turn the screws on Hong Kong. Taiwan has played a significant but often misunderstood role in Hong Kong's resistance to Chinese domination. This article explores the political impact of the Hong Kong-Taiwan civil society nexus from the early 2010s, through the Umbrella Movement (2014), to the Anti-Extradition Movement (2019) and the implementation of the National Security Law (2020). The ever-more repressive measures China imposed on both Hong Kong and Taiwan have given rise to close and lively exchanges between both civil societies. Taiwan may play a supporting role in Hong Kong's resistance to Chinese repression and subordination.

This article focuses on three of Tsushima Yūko's later works. It examines Tsushima's criticism of Japanese ruling policy, especially aboriginal policies in colonial Taiwan, in All Too Barbarian. The second, Reed Boat, Flying, exposes the repressed history of how, just after Japan's defeat in the Second World War, Japanese women returning from Manchuria who were raped by Russian or other foreign soldiers were forced into having abortions. Wildcat Dome, written after the 3.11 disasters, discloses how the inter-racial children born between Japanese women and American soldiers were discriminated against in postwar Japan.

In this article Izumikawa Yuki, an international relations expert, dispels two core misconceptions undergirding the notion that China is a particularly belligerent state that unilaterally engages in aggressive behavior threatening the national security of Japan. The first is that the Senkaku Islands, or Diaoyu Islands as they are known in China, are Japan's territory, on which China has been illegally or unfairly encroaching. The other misconception is that if and when China violently grabs Taiwan for itself, preventing Taiwan from gaining independence in some kind of “Taiwan contingency,” Japan will have the duty and the right to defend Taiwan's independence. Even only equipped with a simple map of Taiwan showing the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands close by, and having the knowledge that Taiwan was originally taken away from China by the Empire of Japan during the war of aggression known as the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), would make one suspicious of the “China threat theory,” but Izumikawa provides readers with some neglected facts concerning international law and history, and pokes holes in the narrative that is broadcasted daily by the mass media.

The main elements in Taiwan's green power shift are reviewed, with focus on developments since the election of the DPP government in early 2016 and its commitment to phase out nuclear power in Taiwan by 2025. The drivers of the shift are identified, concentrating on solar PV power and the potential for offshore wind power. Like other countries in East Asia similarly pursuing a green shift, Taiwan is as much concerned with the business and export prospects for green industry as with reducing carbon emissions. The argument is developed that further progress in Taiwan is linked to liberalization of the electric power sector, creating genuine competition for the quasi-monopoly, TaiPower.

Between 1894 and 1936, Imperial Japan fought several “small wars” against Tonghak Rebels, Taiwanese millenarians, Korean Righteous Armies, Germans in Shandong, Taiwan Indigenous Peoples, and “bandits” in Manchuria. Authoritative accounts of Japanese history ignore these wars, or sanitize them as “seizures,” “cessions,” or occasions for diplomatic maneuvers. The consigning the empire's “small wars” to footnotes (at best) has in turn promoted a view that Japanese history consists of alternating periods of “peacetime” (constitutionalism) and “wartime” (militarism), in accord with the canons of liberal political theory. However, the co-existence of “small wars” with imperial Japan's iconic wars indicates that Japan was a nation at war from 1894 through 1945. Therefore, the concept “Forever War” recommends itself for thinking about militarism and democracy as complementary formations, rather than as opposed forces. The Forever-War approach emphasizes lines of continuity that connect “limited wars” (that mobilized relatively few Japanese soldiers and civilians, but were nonetheless catastrophic for the colonized and occupied populations on the ground) with “total wars” (that mobilized the whole Japanese nation against the Qing, imperial Russia, nationalist China, and the United States). The steady if unspectacular operations of Forever War– armed occupations, settler colonialism, military honor-conferral events, and annual ceremonies at Yasukuni Shrine–continued with little interruption even during Japan's golden age of democracy and pacifism in the 1920s. This article argues that Forever War laid the infrastructural groundwork for “total war” in China from 1937 onwards, while it produced a nation of decorated, honored, and mourned veterans, in whose names the existing empire was defended at all costs against the United States in the 1940s. In Forever War—whether in imperial Japan or elsewhere–soldiering and military service become ends in themselves, and “supporting the troops” becomes part of unthinking, common sense.

China's international position is quite strong: it has leverage over Russia, which is increasingly dependent on China for economic and military aid; and it is in a strong bargaining position with the European Union, which relies on Chinese trade and investment. These circumstances might not seem conducive to improvement in China-U.S. relations, especially since many longstanding issues, such as on Taiwan and trade, remain unresolved. But progress in some areas, notably military-to-military talks, have (as Chinese officials see it) “stabilized” relations. This article argues that if the U.S. develops a China policy that emphasizes finding common ground rather than, as at present, devising ways to contain and deter China, some elements of China's foreign policy might change and serious tensions over Taiwan and the South China Sea islands could be calmed. Furthermore, it addresses incentives–in particular, U.S. acceptance of the Chinese principle of partnership, not rivalry– to wean

This article investigates the history and contemporary development of the local antinuclear experience in Gongliao district, Taiwan. It traces villagers' intricate relations with political parties, their frustration with the decision making process, and efforts to sustain local anti-nuclear momentum at a time when the anti-nuclear movement was in decline. By exploring local villagers' three decades of antinuclear efforts, this article focuses on their change of tactics, networks and ideologies, and explains how these changes had happened. It argues that local anti-nuclear activists played an important role in transforming an antinuclear movement from a party-led activity to an issue-based protest independent of party control. The transformation was facilitated by the deepening of a place-based consciousness among local activists.