The Child Welfare League Foundation’s Responses to the Government’s Childcare Policies for Children under five

Written by the CWLF.
In order to counter the declining birth-rate in Taiwan, in August 2018 the Executive Yuan enacted new childcare policies to support families with children aged zero to five. The new policies mainly consist of expanding the scale of public childcare services, establishing a set of mechanisms for quasi-public childcare providers, and raising childcare subsidies.

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Does the state of the economy matter when explaining presidential approval ratings in Taiwan?

Written by Eric Chen-hua Yu. Empirical studies on presidential approval ratings in the US and other OECD countries have long concluded that the state of the economy is an important factor explaining the rise and fall of presidential approval ratings. Specifically, when economic conditions are good, the sentiment toward the president will be positive. In light of this correlation, does the presidential approval rating in Taiwan follow such a pattern?

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Spoken at Home and in the Market: The Shifting Perceptions towards Southeast Asian Languages in Taiwan

Written by Isabelle Cheng. The New Southbound Policy (NSP) envisaged a joint force between the government and the private sector for forging ‘strategic partnerships’ with 18 states in Southeast and South Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Although being global-minded and aspiring to regional leadership, the NSP also entertained its domestic audience by promising to deliver the benefits of globalisation at home. A tool for realising this goal is the government’s authorisation of public funds for teaching of Southeast Asian languages

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The Mess Before the Storm: Making Sense of the Blue and Green Camps’ Primaries

Written by J. Michael Cole. In recent months, no subject has been brought up more often by Taiwan watchers than the party infighting that has been developing within the blue and green camps in the lead-up to Taiwan’s general elections next January. Much of that interest stems from the impact that the candidate selection, and of course the election itself, will have on Taiwan’s future external policy at a time of unprecedented engagement opportunities for the island-nation.

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The Making of a “Heroine”: Huang Bamei and the Politics of Wartime History in Postwar Taiwan, 1945–1982

Written by Weiting Guo. While some may think that we have garnered enough fragments of Huang Bamei’s life, one should bear in mind that the richness of her literary representations, together with the scarcity of her appearance in official documents, may have made her disappear inside the conventions of her own stories—a dilemma that often appears in the memories of mythologized figures.

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Exploring Migration Experiences of Young Taiwanese Migrant Workers in Singapore’s Service Industry Sector

Written by Chia-Yuan Huang. Unlike the so-called Taiwanese ‘elites’ or ‘talents’ who were headhunted by Singaporean companies with the highest-level employment pass, a number of recently-migrated young Taiwanese workers in Singapore are engaged in the service industry. Most work on a contractual basis, dispatched by an agency and hold the lowest-level work pass (hereafter WP), which has many restrictions.

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“Election” as a Consensus: The Changing Connotation of Taiwanese Local Autonomy in Postwar East Asia (1945–1947)

Written by Chao-Hsuan Chen. In the past two decades, a number of researchers have sought to determine how the process of social protest after 1970s became the turning point in Taiwan’s democratization. However, the authoritarian Kuomintang’s (KMT) process of shaping the local electoral system, especially in the 1950s, has seldom been the subject of concern.

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How the Subaltern Feels? A Dialogue on Emotions, Field-work and Subalternity

Written by Beatrice Zani and Lara Momesso. Marriage migration is a glocal phenomenon that refers to the interlink between marriage and mobility within a globalised world. During the last decades, Taiwan has become an illustrative site for global marriages: countries such as China, Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia are the main sending societies of females who decide to marry abroad.

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International Human Rights Law, Constitution and ‘A Nation Founded upon the Principles of Human Rights’

Written by Kuan-Wei Chen. In Taiwan, which experienced authoritarian rule after World War II, the pursuit of human rights protection was an important task in the process of democratization. The first political party rotation took place in 2000, and during the inauguration of President Chen Shui-bian from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), he declared the important policy guidelines of ‘a nation founded upon the principles of human rights as a goal.

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Mao and Chiang’s Geming (Revolution) for Recognition: The Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, the Great Leap Forward and the Project National Glory, 1958-1972

Written by Ko-Hang Liao. Mao could be considered the final winner in the diplomatic arena as the PRC eventually won the competition to be recognised as the legitimate China. However, one thing that was outside of his expectation was that the current status quo across the Taiwan Strait was established after the crisis – after more than 60 years it remains the last large-scale military confrontation between both sides.

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