Taiwan Insight

River and Sea · Plateau · Resonance: The Possibility of Peace in a Turbulent World

Written by Kefei Cao. The author traces her personal and historical journey across the Taiwan Strait, moving from lived encounters to reflections on war, memory, and coexistence. Drawing on Lung Ying-tai and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, she proposes theatre as a space for reimagining peace beyond binary divisions, where vulnerability, dialogue, and shared humanity become the grounds for fragile yet enduring connection.

Taiwanese Peace as a crucial engagement to advance decolonisation for Japan

Written by Yoshitaka Ota. This article argues that the first step toward contributing to Taiwanese peace is to stop creating a common enemy between Taiwan and Japan and to start taking Taiwanese agency seriously. Japan should also exercise its agency to recognise and depart from the permanence of coloniality, which continues to create China as a common enemy, rather than looking at itself as the enemy once.

Peace and Democracy: A Symbiotic Relationship

Written by Wu Yu-Shan. This article argues that Taiwan urgently needs to establish a public body of knowledge surrounding “peace research”. Peace research concerns not only the safety of life but also the survival of democracy and freedom. Nascent democracies under the shadow of war, like Taiwan, face external threats, security dilemmas, and cultural deficits. Therefore, to protect democracy, we must first protect peace.

Why Such Haste to Cook and Eat Me, China? Cao Zhi’s Seven-Step Poem and Taiwan for Peace, not Pees

4 May 2026 NGA Shi Yeu

Written by Sheng-mei Ma. This essay mobilises Cao Zhi’s seven-step poem as an allegorical lens on cross-Strait tensions, tracing how fraternal violence, de-personalised poetics, and classical Chinese cosmology illuminate Taiwan’s precarious geopolitics. Interweaving “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” and “Journey to the West”, it critiques power, survival, and moral contamination, arguing that domination ultimately inscribes both victim and victor within enduring cycles of violence.

Our Small but Persistent Steps for Peace

1 May 2026 NGA Shi Yeu

Written by ChuChun Yu and Tiffany Jan. This article shares how the Lung Yingtai Cultural Foundation advances the thinking from peacebuilding in Taiwan amid rising geopolitical tension. Reframing peace highlights dialogue, education, and grassroots initiatives as practical tools. Peace emerges not as an abstraction but as an everyday civic practice sustaining resilience, empathy, and democratic life.

Taiwan’s Second Line of Defence: Taiwan needs a strategy for preventing war, not just fighting one

29 April 2026 Chee-Hann Wu

Written by Yingtai Lung. The article proposes that, in contrast to the preparation for war, Taiwan should prioritise resilience, communication, and goodwill diplomacy to prevent escalation, sustain trust, and protect society from panic, thereby making peace an active, practiced strategy.

Learning Across Borders: Taiwan, Gaza, and My Responsibility in an Unequal Reality

27 April 2026 NGA Shi Yeu

Written by Roi Silbeberg. This essay traces an encounter between Taiwan’s White Terror memory and the unfolding devastation in Gaza to argue that peacebuilding must confront asymmetries of power, not obscure them. Moving across intergroup dialogue, identity formation, and international responsibility, it insists that silence sustains violence, and that ethical clarity, political engagement, and global accountability are conditions for any meaningful future.

Living on the Frontline: What Kinmen and Gaza Teach About Peace Under Continuous Threat

24 April 2026 Chee-Hann Wu

Written by Hazem Almassry. Visiting Kinmen, a Taiwanese frontline-turned-tourist site, the author reflects on living under continuous threat, comparing it to Gaza. Both challenge conventional ideas of peace as post-conflict stability, revealing instead how people adapt to enduring militarisation and structural violence, in which “peace” often means managing rather than resolving ongoing conditions.

Good friction: A design principle for positive peace

22 April 2026 Chee-Hann Wu

Written by Emma Baumhofer. This article argues that “good friction” supports trust, deliberation, and coexistence. Drawing on Taiwan’s civic tech and public life, it proposes designing systems that balance efficiency with social cohesion and the demands of positive peace.

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