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.

An Old Book of Taiwan Studies: On Leo T.S. Ching, Becoming Japanese: Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation

19 May 2026 Chee-Hann Wu

Written by Yu-Han Huang. Reflecting on formative undergraduate experiences, the author traces how studying Japanese colonial Taiwan and reading Leo Ching’s Becoming “Japanese” shaped his academic path. Ching’s analysis of colonial identity formation, despite criticisms, offered a framework to understand Taiwan’s complex identity and revealed how colonial legacies continue to influence Taiwanese self-consciousness.

Old Books in Taiwan Studies: Chou Wanyao’s “The kōminka movement: Taiwan under wartime Japan, 1937-1945”

18 May 2026 Chee-Hann Wu

Written by Catherine Tsai. This article examines Chou Wan-yao’s study of kōminka policies in colonial Taiwan. The author argues that Chou’s work on the relationships between assimilation, identity formation, and wartime mobilisation has served as foundational to Taiwan-centred historiography in both Sinophone and Anglophone contexts.

Bridging the Gap: How Walking, Healing, and Gardening Connect Universities with Migrants

15 May 2026 NGA Shi Yeu

Written by Tzu-Chi Ou. Traditional migration studies in Taiwan often treat migrants as mere statistics, leaving students feeling socially disconnected. To bridge this gap, a professor moved beyond the classroom through three hands-on experiments: student-led walking tours, art therapy to process emotional guilt, and a communal “immigrating garden.” These initiatives transform “the other” into a neighbour, fostering genuine empathy and mutual worth.

More than Education, Not Quite Foreign: The Politics of Taiwan’s Overseas Chinese Students

14 May 2026 NGA Shi Yeu

Written by Chiao-Yuan Jo Ko. Taiwan’s category of ‘overseas Chinese student’ may appear administrative, but it reflects a much longer political history. Tracing the system from the Cold War era to Taiwan’s democratisation, this article explores how education became tied to the ROC’s nation-building project, US geopolitical strategy, and shifting ideas of Chinese identity.

Learning Otherwise: Indigenous Experimental Education and Plural Pathways in Taiwan

13 May 2026 NGA Shi Yeu

Written by Tuyuq Rabay. This article examines Indigenous Experimental Education in Taiwan through an ethnographic vignette of an Atayal school’s pslkotas ritual. It argues that such programmes re-centre indigenous epistemologies through embodied, place-based, and spiritual pedagogy, while also revealing ongoing tensions with state curricula, structural inequalities, and settler-colonial legacies that shape education and identity.

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