The New Southbound Policy (NSP) is the signature foreign policy of Taiwan that enables collaborative partnerships to be built among public, private and the third sector in advancing its presence. This article unpacks the P-P-P-P practice of the NSP since 2016. It articulates that the cross-sectoral partnership and its synergy for delivering the NSP enables Taiwan to navigate in the changing dynamics of the Indo-Pacific region.
"Based on workshops co-organized by Japan's St. Andrew University and Taiwan's National Chengchi University, this book provides readers with the toolbox for navigating the regional dynamics of political economy in Southeast Asia, with special focus on exploring the key factors determining the shifting dynamics. Organized in three parts, namely, geopolitical and security factors, alternative fields for regional cooperation, and the regional considerations of Southeast Asia, the chapters in the book feature key factors determining the political economy of the region. Written by authors hailing from varied backgrounds, this book is also a joint research effort on policy discussion and timely assessment of COVID-19 recovery plans in Southeast Asia."
The volatile and uncertain future of democracies in Asia / Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao and Alan H. Yang -- The future of Taiwanese democracy : resilient yet under siege / Alan H. Yang and Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao -- The rocky road to new democracy in South Korea / Kwang-Yeong Shin -- Depoliticizing social cleavages for democratic consolidation in Indonesia / Okamoto Masaki -- In dissent : struggles for democracy in Malaysia since 2000 / Khoo Boo Teik -- Populist authoritarianism against the "firewall" of rights and due process / Maria Serena I. Diokno -- The Thai Chinese turn towards China / Kasian Tejapira -- Myanmar : the minorities dilemma and its shaky path to democracy / Tsai-Wei Sun -- Inclusiveness in governance : why is the Chinese authoritarian regime not democratizing? / Szu-Chien Hsu and Muyi Chou.
This article compares the ways Taiwan and South Korea have navigated the politics of soft power to gradually exert their influence in South and Southeast Asia. It then analyses Taiwan's self-declared 'warm power' practices. The article is divided into five parts. The first highlights the conceptual evolution of soft power and new policy practices in Asia. The second discusses the transformation and strengthening from soft power to warm power. The third introduces South Korea's New Southern Policy through the lens of soft power. The fourth presents Taiwan's New Southbound Policy, and the conclusion compares the impact and prospects of the two. (Asian Aff/GIGA)
Taiwan's landscape of think tanks, despite having emerged during a time of Leninist one-party governance and state-led economic development not unlike that in Mainland China, is today marked by a substantial agency in conducting both research and advocacy. This sets them apart from their counterparts on the mainland. We ask how this development was shaped by Taiwan's evolution as a political entity, especially its experience of gradual political liberalization and eventual full democratization by the mid-1990s. In its wake, multiparty competition, factionalism, the emergence of a vigorous civil society, and individual interest groups created an environment in which think-tank services were sought by many competing actors, offering a wide array of funding opportunities for policy research. Additionally, a political culture that stresses expertise and the need to conduct unofficial diplomacy often gave think tanks a privileged position within the system, and they served as key agents in conducting the kind of informal diplomacy made necessary by Taiwan's loss of diplomatic recognition from the 1970s onwards. We further offer an overview of Taiwan's think-tank landscape, describing major groups (or types) of institutes and briefly portraying especially prominent cases within them. Finally, we provide two detailed case studies to show how these institutes operate in practice, and how the need for unofficial diplomacy and a recent government change have shaped their activities.(Pac Aff/GIGA)
Cambodia and Myanmar are both identified as "pro-China" Indochinese countries with regimes that rely on political support and economic investment from Beijing. Cambodia and Myanmar, therefore, have become testing grounds for China 50 new soft power initiative of "spreading cultural understanding" by means of the establishment of Confucius Institutes. China 50 relations with both Cambodia and Myanmar are improving, but local responses to the Confucius Institute initiative differ in the two countries. Phnom Penh has one Confucius Institute and three Confucius Classrooms equipped with thirteen Chinese language teaching stations. including those installed in the Roy al Cambodian Armed Forces Academy and the Office of the Prime Minister: The initiative is enthusiastically championed by government and political leaders. In the case of Myanmar, three Confucius Classrooms, rather than Confucius Institutes, have been established by ethnic Chinese associations in Yangon and Mandalay. Lacking governmental endorsement, these Confucius Classrooms need to keep a low profile. The aim of this article is to differentiate between the politics of dependency in China-Cambodia and China Myanmar relations by exploring local contexts and responses to Beijing's soft power initiatives. (Issues Stud/GIGA)
Resilience has always been key to successful disaster governance throughout the world. Local communities can play an important role in promoting disaster preparedness and executing front-line relief to strengthen the effectiveness and efficiency of both local and national disaster governance. This article addresses a unique case of how a flood-prone, rural, and ageing community in Yilan County, Taiwan, successfully mobilized its citizens for disaster preparedness. Through the lens of social capital analysis, this article unpacks how Bonding Social Capital, Bridging Social Capital, and Linking Social Capital work, by tracing the process through which awareness of disaster resilience was developed and practised in the Meizhou Community. Since 2012, Meizhou has been recognized as a model of disaster preparedness and relief in Taiwan, and in 2019 this recognition was extended to the wider Indo-Pacific region. We begin the discussion of this article by contextualizing social capital as a theoretical departure to the empirical analysis of the Meizhou experience. This is followed by an exploration of how Bonding Social Capital was able to consolidate the community, and how Bridging Social Capital can facilitate the collaboration among functional groups in and beyond the Meizhou locality, and to what extent Linking Social Capital can implement Meizhou's experience on a national and even international scale. This article is based on a qualitative assessment of long-term fieldwork, interviews, and participatory observation conducted by the authors in the Meizhou community.
In the face of a rising China, some scholars have argued that ASEAN countries will choose to either bandwagon with or balance against China, while others believe they will respond with a more moderate policy known as 'hedging'. In considering these options, ASEAN countries must take into account their individual interests within the economic and security structure of this region. In this research, we argue that each ASEAN country confronts divergent sets of security and economic relations with China, which play a major role in shaping their policy responses. We can characterize their responses into four quadrants. Each cell can be categorized in terms of a high or low degree of threat perception (HT or LT) from China, as well as a positive or negative economic expectation (PE or NE) with China. We thus hypothesize that ASEAN countries in the HT-NE situation will balance against China; those in the LT-PE situation will bandwagon with China; those in the HT-PE or LT-NE situations will hedge against China. Hypotheses are supported by three case studies, Vietnam-China (HT-NE), Cambodia-China (LT-PE) and Singapore-China (HT-PE) relations. (Pac Rev/GIGA)
"This book intends to examine the relationship between East Asia and Southeast Asia across three themes: historical perspectives, economic flows of capital and people, and socio-cultural connections. While a substantial number of chapters in the book focus on overseas Chinese (living in Indonesia) and their connections with China and Taiwan historically and contemporarily, they also provide in-depth knowledge of international relationship between East Asia and Southeast Asia. Part One, 'Contending Regional Approaches', consists of four chapters that help readers understand the involvement of East Asia from a in historical context. The first chapter on Taiwan before 1975 is followed by a chapter on Taiwan's strategy toward Southeast Asia after the 1980s. The remaining two chapters focus on China-Southeast Asia and Japan-Southeast Asia relations. Part Two, 'Economic Flows of Capital & People', consists of six chapters that mainly examine the flow of capital and people between Indonesia and Taiwan from the colonial period to the present and how this flow changed both societies. Part Three, 'Socio-Cultural Connections', consists of three chapters. This part is a unique contribution to the scholarship that focuses on the transformation of both traditional and popular culture among Southeast Asia, China, and Taiwan by focusing on different agents."
