Taiwan Insight

Borrowed Architecture: The EU Analogy, Cross-Strait Impasse, and the Limits of Opposition Diplomacy

23 July 2026 Adrian Chiu

Written by Meng Kit Tang. KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun’s recently used the European Union as a model for cross-strait engagement. This article examines why the EU analogy has become a recurring feature of KMT discourse and whether the conditions that enabled European integration resemble those of the Taiwan Strait, arguing that key elements of postwar Europe are largely absent across the strait.

What Taiwan and Mexico Can Learn from Each Other on Indigenous Reserved Seats

22 July 2026 NGA Shi Yeu

Written by Chikara Yanome Toda. Geographically distant but democratically aligned, Taiwan and Mexico both navigate the complex challenge of indigenous political representation. While Taiwan uses identity-based, nationwide reserved seats, Mexico relies on territorial districts requiring community recognition. This article explores how Taiwan’s stable national presence and Mexico’s localised accountability offer vital, cross-regional lessons for modernising minority representation in both democracies.

The Place That Remembers: Taiwan, Healing, and the Cartography of the Body

21 July 2026 Drmarkm

Taiwan is too often reduced to a geopolitical abstraction, but this essay reads the island as a body — one that carries the trauma of colonisation, the 228 massacre, and the White Terror in its very flesh. Through memorials, indigenous counter-mapping, and the Mazu pilgrimage, Taiwan heals by inscribing its wounds back onto the map: re-membering, in the flesh, as another name for healing

High-Mountain Tea in Alishan: Envisioning a Cultural Economy for a Sustainable Future

20 July 2026 NGA Shi Yeu

Written by Hong Jiang. Taiwan’s renowned Alishan high-mountain tea sector faces critical environmental and market challenges after nearly five decades of growth. This article explores how local farmers are actively cultivating a sustainable future. By embracing nature-based farming, prioritizing quality over quantity, and integrating tea art with tourism, these producers are building a vibrant “cultural economy” of nature, culture, and care to safeguard their livelihoods and heritage.

The Lure of Jinxuan (金萱): Following a Tea Cultivar Bred in Taiwan Across Places, Names, and Tastes

17 July 2026 NGA Shi Yeu

Written by Junhong Ma. This article follows the journey of Jinxuan, Taiwan’s celebrated tea cultivar, tracing how it acquires new names, meanings, and sensory identities across Taiwan and beyond. Combining ethnographic fieldwork with historical inquiry, it shows how cultivars circulate through agricultural science, markets, translation, and taste, revealing tea as a living assemblage shaped by plants, people, technologies, and transnational cultural exchanges.

The Politics of Taiwanese Tea Terroirs

16 July 2026 NGA Shi Yeu

Written by Pauline Harlay. Drawing on ethnographic research in Taiwan’s tea industry, this article examines how the concept of terroir (風土) has been reinterpreted as both a commercial strategy and a political project. It argues that defining the distinctive tastes of Taiwanese tea is not merely about marketing quality or origin, but also about asserting national identity, territorial distinctiveness, and economic resilience amid intensifying cross-Strait geopolitical tensions.

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