Taiwanese Policy in the Twenty-First Century - Politics and Culture in a Global Context

"The Republic of China on Taiwan is one of the great success stories of the post-World War II era. In less than 50 years, under the leadership of the KMT dictatorship (and later one-party democracy) and with U.S. support, this small island was transformed from an agricultural backwater to an industrial and then a high tech powerhouse that now boast the world’s thirteenth largest economy and the second highest per capita income in Asia ... The subject of this book is, then, of enormous importance to us all. If you want to gain an understanding of the background – both the deep historical background and the more recent political, economic, and cultural background – to the events of the last four years in Taiwan, and then be in a position to understand the unfolding of relations between Taiwan, China, and the United States for many years, if not decades, to come, you can put yourself in just such a position by a careful reading of this excellent book. Everything that has happened in the time since these essays were written has only served to demonstrate the astuteness of their writers’ respective analyses ... The collective analyses of the issues raised in these essays should provide long-term guidance for an understanding of the many ramifications of the Taiwan experience and Taiwan’s relations with the world." - Professor Michael S. Duke, University of British Columbia

List of Tables
List of Contributors
Introductory Preface
Acknowledgements
1. American-Chinese Relations and the Taiwan Question (Michael S. Duke)
2. Twenty-First Century Taiwan Culture: Internationalization with Local Characteristics (Jan W. Walls)
3. The Evolution of Social Welfare Programs in Taiwan and the New Administration (Wen Hui Tsai)
4. The Alienation of Chu t’ien-hsin: The “Military Dependent Village” Generation in the 2000’s (T.C. Russell)
5. Taiwan: Sovereignty Re-Interpreted: The Relations across the Taiwan Strait (Zheng Hai Lin)
6. Significant Paradoxes: In Contemporary Chinese Communist Theoretical Discourse (Josephine Chiu-Duke)
7. Transformation of Local Culture: Taiwan’s Search for Democratization (Harry Hsiao)
8. Prospects of Taiwan’s Bipolar Multiparty System (Leo Y. Liu)
9. Selective Bibliography