Revolutionary Taiwan: Making Nationhood in a Changing World Order
by Catherine Lila Chou and Mark Harrison
Hardcover ISBN 9781638571957 • Paperback ISBN 9781638573227 • 222pp.
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In the early 1990s, the people of Taiwan gained the right to vote for their executive and legislature. In building a democratic society, they transformed how they saw themselves and their homeland. The outcome of democratization was nothing less than revolutionary, producing a new, de facto nation and people that can be justly called “Taiwanese.”
Yet this revolution remains unfinished and incomplete. In an era of increasing US-China rivalry, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) claims sovereignty over Taiwan and insists that “reunification” is the historic mission of all peoples on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. The PRC threatens war with and over the island, inviting a crisis that would engulf the region and beyond.
Common ideas about Taiwan—that it “split with China in 1949” or “sees itself as the true China”—fail to explain why the Taiwanese withstand pressure from the PRC to relinquish their democratic self-governance.
Revolutionary Taiwan: Making Nationhood in a Changing World Order sheds light on this. Each chapter shows how democratization in Taiwan constituted a revolution, changing not just the form of government but also how Taiwanese people conceptualized the island, coming to see it a complete nation unto itself. At the same time, however, Beijing has blocked the “normal” endpoint of this revolution: an open declaration of statehood and welcome into the global community. Continue reading Revolutionary Taiwan