The Vitality of Taiwan

The Vitality of Taiwan

The Nottingham China Policy Institute series Series editors: Steve Tsang is Professor of Contemporary Chinese Studies and Director of the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham. Shujie Yao is Head of the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham and Professor of Economics and Chinese Sustainable Development, University of Nottingham. The Nottingham China Policy Institute Series brings cutting edge scholarship, policy relevance and accessibility together. It includes works on the economics, society, culture, politics, international relations, national security and history of the Chinese mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong in the twentieth and twentyfirst centuries. Books in this series are written in an accessible style though they are based on meticulous research. They put forward exciting ideas and research findings that specialist academics need to take note of while policy makers and opinion leaders will find inspiring. They represent innovative multidisciplinary scholarship at its best in the study of contemporary China. The Nottingham China Policy Institute series Series Standing Order ISBN 978 0 230 36922 1 You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England.

The Vitality of Taiwan Politics, Economics, Society and Culture Edited by Steve Tsang Professor, School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, and Director, China Policy Institute, University of Nottingham, UK

Editorial matter, selection and conclusion Steve Tsang 2012 All remaining chapter respective authors 2012 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-1-137-00611-0 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2012 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-43618-7 ISBN 978-1-137-00990-6 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9781137009906 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12

Contents List of Tables and Figures Preface and Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors List of Abbreviations and Acronyms vi vii ix xiii 1 Forces Behind the Vitality of Taiwan 1 Steve Tsang 2 The Resilience and Dynamism of Taiwan s Democratic System 19 Shelley Rigger 3 Social Foundations of Political Vitality 37 Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao 4 Literature s Role in Breaching the Authoritarian Mindset 57 Pei-Yin Lin 5 The Impact of Film and the Performing Arts on Life in Taiwan 80 Mark Harrison 6 The Media and the Vitality of Democratic Taiwan 98 Gary D. Rawnsley and Qian Gong 7 Cross-Strait Tensions and Taiwan s Economic Vitality 119 Scott L. Kastner 8 Taishang as a Factor Shaping Taiwan s Domestic Politics 139 Gunter Schubert and Shu Keng 9 Social Networks as a Source of Economic Vitality 164 Dung-sheng Chen 10 Innovation and Taiwan s Vitality in the Knowledge Economy 190 Joseph Wong 11 Sustainability of Taiwan s Vitality 211 Steve Tsang Index 216 v

List of Tables and Figures Tables 8.1 The mainland Taishang as a linkage community : scope and limits to attain political change 152 9.1 The number of years of acquaintance between the network partners in a garment industry 167 9.2 Type of acquaintance between the network partners in a garment industry 167 9.3 Frequency distribution of technology interaction between Taiwan and other countries in the IC industry 177 9.4 Frequency distribution of different types of technology interaction in Taiwan s IC industry 180 Figures 7.1 Taiwan s openness to trade 124 8.1 Linkage Communities as a heuristic model for the analysis of people-driven change across the Taiwan Strait 143 9.1 Frequency distribution of technology interaction between Taiwan and different countries in the IC industry 178 9.2 Frequency distribution of different types of technology exchange in Taiwan s IC industry 181 9.3 Frequency distribution of technology transfer between Taiwan and different countries in the IC industry 182 9.4 Frequency distribution of technology diffusion among Taiwanese companies and between Taiwanese companies and foreign companies in the IC industry 184 9.5 Taiwanese companies investments in research and development 185 vi

Preface and Acknowledgements Taiwan is a fascinating subject for study as it is full of dynamism, contradictions, colour, excitement and, above all, vitality. The sheer vibrancy of the place and the drive, exuberance and friendliness of its people cannot but leave an impression on visitors. But what is really behind the vitality of Taiwan? Can it be the democratic politics, or its predicament as a state that most of the rest of the world cannot recognize while they happily maintain a full range of relations with it in reality? Or is its energy due to its highly competitive media, culture, international nexus, business communities and relentless devotion to innovative industries? In different ways all these factors have played a part in delivering the vitality of Taiwan. But how should we understand the forces that have interacted to produce the Taiwanese way of life that is so vibrant? Even though I have spent two decades trying to understand Taiwan and its vitality, the idea of tackling this from a multi-disciplinary and multi-faceted way single-handedly was too daunting a prospect. It was recognition of this reality that encouraged me to gather a team of first class scholars to join in an international collaborative project to address the different dimensions of this subject. To achieve this I was fortunate to be able to call on the resources of the Taiwan Studies Programme at St Antony s College, Oxford University, to organize an international workshop in June 2010 to bring together some of the best scholars with expertise in the different dimensions of this subject to examine, discuss and debate the many different issues involved. This started a process of intense intellectual discourse on various subjects and debates on the finer issues covered. Although the conference was a key step towards producing this collaborative work, this book is not a collection of conference papers, excellent as they were. Contributors to this volume took advantage of the brainstorming at Oxford to reflect on their insights. Subsequent to the conference they conducted further research and discussions before they revised and, in a number of cases, wrote new papers to produce a coherent collaborative work. Indeed, one of the contributors joined the project after the Oxford conference. The final product was only completed at the end of 2011, by which time I had already left Oxford for a new position at the University of Nottingham. The project has received further support from the brand new Taiwan Studies Programme at the China Policy Institute in the University of Nottingham. vii

viii Preface and Acknowledgements As editor I am grateful to my colleagues for the good humour, cooperative spirit and forbearance they showed when asked to meet one tight deadline after another while fulfilling their many obligations in the academic world as well as demands on their time in private life. They are not named here as you already know who they are. Without their understanding and cooperation this volume would have no doubt taken much longer to see the light of day. In organizing the international workshop at Oxford, I am deeply indebted not only to those who presented papers but also to all the friends and colleagues who served as discussants, chaired sessions and more generally shared their insights in two days of intensive intellectual discourse and debate. In this connection I am particularly grateful to Antonio Chun-nan Chiang, David Coates, Dr Stephane Corcuff, Professor Mark Elvin, Dr Dafydd Fel, Dr Douglas Fuller, Professor Edward Friedman, Dr Margaret Hillenbrand, Dr Szu-chien Hsu, Professor Jil-wen Lin, Dr Ming-Yeh Rawnsley, Michael Reilly, Dr Fang-long Shih, Dr Jeremy Taylor, Dr Stuart Thompson, Dr Patricia Thornton, Professor Chen-yuan Tung, Professor Horng-luen Wang and Rod Wye. Kirsty Norton and the staff of St Antony s College provided invaluable administrative assistance and other practical support. The financial backing of the Taiwan Studies Programme at St Antony s College, Oxford University was essential for the holding of this event and subsequent support from the Taiwan Studies Programme at the University of Nottingham ensured the publication of this book. Without the financial support from both institutions and the intellectual backing of my former colleagues at St Antony s College as well as from Professor Shujie Yao, the co-editor of this series, this volume would never have been produced. In terms of transliteration conventions I have resisted the temptation to adhere to one system strictly throughout the book, despite the expectation in the academic community that one system should be used consistently. It does not really work in the case of Taiwan, where some individual names have been transliterated under different systems and some have gained wide currency. Where individual, place or institution names have been used widely in English the usual form is followed in this book. For other terms or Chinese words, they are rendered in accordance with the Pinyin system. In a sense this incongruent mixture reflects the reality in Taiwan, where an important driver of its vitality is its people s willingness to celebrate differences. Steve Tsang

Notes on Contributors Dung-sheng Chen is a Professor at the Department of Sociology, National Taiwan University. He was educated at the National Taiwan University and received his PhD in Sociology from the University of Minnesota. His research interests include science, technology and society, the sociology of organizations, urban sociology and economic sociology. He has published widely and his main publications include two books: Profitopolis: A Sociological Analysis of Local Factions, Financial Conglomerates and the Development of Taipei Metropolitan Area (1995, Chu- Liu Book Co.); and Making it Integrated: An Analysis of Industrial Networks in Tawian s Integrated-Circuit Industry (2003, Socio Publication). Qian (Sarah) Gong is a Lecturer in Media and Communication at the University of Leicester, UK. She has research interests in political communication, journalism studies, media and democracy, media sociology, consumer culture, advertising and discourse analysis. She has published journal articles and book chapters on consumer practices, political communication and online and citizen journalism. Mark Harrison is a Senior Lecturer and the Coordinator of the Chinese Program, and Deputy Head of School in the School of Asian Languages and Studies at the University of Tasmania, Australia. He completed his PhD at Monash University. He worked as a Research Fellow and then as a Lecturer at the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster in London before returning to Australia. He is the author of Legitimacy, Meaning and Knowledge in the Making of Taiwanese Identity (2006, Palgrave Macmillan) and co-editor, with Carsten Storm, of The Margins of Becoming: Identity and Culture in Taiwan (2007, Harrassowitz Verlag). His research interests include questions of representation, identity and epistemology in Chinese and Taiwanese contexts. Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao is Distinguished Research Fellow and Director of the Institute of Sociology at the Academia Sinica (Taiwan) and Professor of Sociology at National Taiwan University. He had previously served as a national Policy Advisor to the President of Taiwan between 1996 and 2006, and as Executive Director of the Center for Asia-Pacific Area Studies, Academia Sinica. His areas of specialization include civil society and new democracies, middle class in the ix

x Notes on Contributors Asia-Pacific, sustainable development and NGO studies. His most recent publications include: Changing Faces of Hakka in Southeast Asia: Singapore and Malaysia (2011) (in Chinese, editor), Taipei: Center for Asia-Pacific Area Studies, Academia Sinica; Cross-Border Marriage with Asian Characteristics (2010) (co-editor with Hong-Zen Wang), Taipei: Center for Asia-Pacific Area Studies, Academia Sinica; Japan-Taiwan Relations in East Asia s New Era (2010) (in Japanese, co-editor with Jun Nishikawa), Tokyo: Akashi Shoten; and Rise of China: Beijing s Strategies and Implications for the Asia-Pacific (2009) (co-editor with Cheng-Yi Lin), London: Routledge. Scott L. Kastner is an Associate Professor at the Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland, College Park, US. He graduated from Cornell University (1995) and received his PhD in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego (2003). Much of his research examines the political and security-related causes and consequences of international economic exchange, with an empirical focus on the international politics of East Asia. His book, Political Conflict and Economic Interdependence across the Taiwan Strait and Beyond, was published in the Studies in Asian Security series at Stanford University Press (2009). Shu Keng is an Associate Professor at the School of Public Economics and Administration, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, China. His research interests include comparative and international political economy, cross-strait relations and Taishang studies. He is currently working on a book project with Gunter Schubert on the Taiwanese businesspeople in mainland China. Pei-Yin Lin is Lecturer in Taiwanese Studies at the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Cambridge, UK. She had previously taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London, UK) and the National University of Singapore. Her research focuses on modern Chinese literature and culture, particularly fiction and films from Taiwan. She is the author of several articles on Taiwanese literature, and has been a regular translator for the Taiwan Literature English Translation series. She is currently working on a monograph on Taiwan s literary production during the Japanese colonial period. She completed her PhD at SOAS. Gary D. Rawnsley is Professor of Asian International Communications, University of Leeds. He had previously served as Director of the Leeds

Notes on Contributors xi University Institute of Communications Studies (2008 10), and as University Dean at the University of Nottingham Ningbo (2005 7). He has published extensively on international political communications and propaganda, and is particularly interested in political communications, public diplomacy and soft power in an Asian context. His recent publications include (co-edited with Ming-Yeh Rawnsley) Global Chinese Cinema: The Culture and Politics of Hero (2010, Routledge). Shelley Rigger is Brown Professor of East Asian Politics at Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina, US. She has a PhD in Government from Harvard University and a BA in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University. She is the author of two books on Taiwan s domestic politics, Politics in Taiwan: Voting for Democracy (1999, Routledge) and From Opposition to Power: Taiwan s Democratic Progressive Party (2001, Lynne Rienner Publishers). She has published articles on Taiwan s domestic politics, the national identity issue in Taiwan China relations and related topics. Her current research studies the effects of cross-strait economic interactions on Taiwan people s perceptions of mainland China. Her monograph, Taiwan s Rising Rationalism: Generations, Politics and Taiwan Nationalism, was published by the East- West Center in Washington (2006). Gunter Schubert is Professor of Greater China Studies at the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies at Eberhard Karls University of Tuebingen, Germany. He is also Director of the European Research Centre on Contemporary Taiwan (ERCCT) at the same university. His research focuses on local governance reform in the PRC, cross-strait integration, Taiwanese politics and national identity in Greater China. Steve Tsang is Professor of Contemporary Chinese Studies and Director of the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham. He is also an Emeritus Fellow of St Antony s College, Oxford University, where he had previously served as Dean and Director of its Asian Studies Centre. He is the author of five books and the editor or co-editor of ten others. His most recent books on Taiwan are: Taiwan and the International Community (2008, Peter Lang), The Cold War s Odd Couple: The Unintended Partnership between the Republic of China and the United Kingdom, 1950 1958 (2006, I.B. Tauris) and If China Attacks Taiwan: Military Strategy, Politics and Economics (ed.) (2006, Routledge). Joseph Wong is Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto, where he holds a Canada Research Chair in political economy.

xii Notes on Contributors He is also the Director of the Asian Institute at the University. In addition to articles and book chapters, he is the author of Betting on Biotech: Innovation and the Limits of Asia s Developmental State (2011, Cornell University Press) and Healthy Democracies: Welfare Politics in Taiwan and South Korea (2004, Cornell University Press) and the coeditor (with Edward Friedman) of Political Transitions in Dominant Party Systems: Learning to Lose (2008, Routledge). He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

List of Abbreviations and Acronyms BMEC CCP CCW CDE CEPD CF CMOS COA CSCC CTS DCB DPP DRAM EAMC ECFA ERSO FTA FTV GDP GIO GNP IC IDB ITRI KMT LCD MOEA DOH Biomedical Engineering Center Chinese Communist Party Citizen Congress Watch Center for Drug Evaluation Council for Economic Planning and Development Consumers Foundation Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Council on Agriculture class structure and class consciousness (project) China Television System Development Center for Biotechnology Democratic Progressive Party dynamic random-access memory East Asia middle class (project) Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement Electronic Research and Service Organization free trade agreement Formosa Television gross domestic product Government Information Office gross national product integrated circuit Industrial Development Bureau Industrial Technology Research Institute Kuomintang liquid-crystal displayer Ministry of Economic Affairs Department of Health xiii

xiv List of Abbreviations and Acronyms NCC National Communications Commission NHRI National Health Research Institute NGO non-governmental organization NPO non-profit organization NSC National Science Council OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development PRC People s Republic of China R&D research and development RCA Radio Corporation of America ROC Republic of China RSE research science and engineers (per 10,000 people) SMEs small and medium-sized enterprises STAG Science and Technology Advisory Group TAO Taiwan Affairs Office TBAs Taiwan Business Associations TBS Taiwan Broadcasting System TITV Taiwan Indigenous Television TSMC Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation TFT-LCD thin film transistor liquid-crystal display UMC United Microelectronics Corporation USA United States of America VC venture capital