Written by Aleksandrs Gross and Gunter Schubert.
This article is based on interviews with Professor Gunter Schubert.
Image credit: provided by the interviewee.
What first attracted Gunter Schubert’s attention to Taiwan was its unique journey through democratisation. These were the late 1980s, when parts of Europe and Asia were turning into democracies. At the time, with a background in political science and Chinese studies, Gunter was beginning to specialise in comparative democratisation in East Asia. Early on, this made him aware of Taiwan, which stood out as a unique case study for democratisation. He decided to devote his PhD to the topic and spent a couple of years in Taiwan during the early 1990s, a politically formative yet chaotic time. Gunter contrasts his experience with that of many students going to study in Taiwan today:
The context back then was completely different from the one my students face in Taiwan today. Most of them have grants or stipends. Basically, they find everything structured and organised for them. When I came to Taiwan for the first time, the country was in a rough-and-tumble in many respects, and you had to do everything yourself.
Gaining Access
Because government structures were undergoing significant change back then, provided that one took initiative, it was remarkably uncomplicated to gain access to politicians of all sorts. When he heard or read about prominent figures in a newspaper, such as members of the Legislative Yuan, Gunter simply called them up and made an appointment. That is how he connected, for example, to Chen Shui-bian, the future president, in 1992 when Chen served as convener of the Legislative Yuan’s defence committee.
Such access also meant that Gunter was able to conduct pioneering research on Taiwan’s democratisation. His PhD was one of the first studies to analyse it in a systematic way and has become a classic in the field of Taiwan Studies in the German-speaking world.
When I conducted my PhD research, I met almost all the figureheads of the Dangwai movement that spearheaded Taiwan’s democratisation. I sensed the determination of those early leaders of Taiwan’s democratisation movement to take the wheel and steer the country into the future. It made an impression on me.
I also saw the frustration of younger and middle-aged KMT politicians in their 40s and 50s who felt disempowered by the change and feared losing out to the Taiwan independence movement. To see this tension was fascinating, too.
All of my interlocutors were willing to talk. Sometimes you needed some patience and perseverance, but overall, people were very welcoming and flexible. The country was in the middle of democratisation; there was much improvisation, and institutions were in a state of flux.
The research Gunter conducted back then would be hard to replicate today. Interviewing politicians, especially those in the central government, has become more difficult as politics has professionalised and become increasingly sensitive over the years. Even though there are more funding programmes in place to support foreign scholars, today bureaucratic compartmentalisation and hierarchy in Taiwan’s government system complicate data gathering and require thorough and purpose-driven networking over time.
Working on Both Sides of the Strait
Although he did his first fieldwork in Taiwan and became a committed Taiwan scholar, Gunter Schubert also conducted extensive research in China over the years. Many would expect significant difficulty, if not backlash, when working in both China and Taiwan, particularly as a political scientist. Surprisingly, Gunter’s experience has so far been the very opposite. Indeed, until the pandemic at least, his familiarity with Taiwan elicited interest among Chinese scholars.
In China, they know everything I’ve published on Taiwan — but I’m still going to the mainland and conducting research without having been sanctioned in any way so far. I never went to China specifically to talk about Taiwan, but universities or research institutions would approach me when they knew I was around and asked me to give lectures to explain the “Taiwan condition.” I would report matter-of-factly what I had observed on the island — and they were certainly not happy with everything I said. Discussions were quite open, and conference rooms were packed. I knew that I was walking a fine line, but I saw this also as a chance to “straighten out” official Chinese narratives on the “renegade province.”
Until the early years of the Xi Jinping era, there was even some serious research on Taiwan in China, and mainland scholars could go to the island and see for themselves. However, this has changed. Since the pandemic, research on Taiwan has had to follow strict ideological lines, and the leeway for debate has shrunk to virtually zero. Academic exchange between China and Taiwan has more or less stopped since 2016. For Gunter, this is unfortunate and detrimental to peaceful cross-strait relations in the medium and long term.
Insight Through Distance
As a Taiwan scholar, Gunter believes it is helpful not to live in Taiwan permanently. Maintaining some distance from the object of inquiry makes particular sense in the case of the “Taiwanese problematic,” for the sake of analytical clarity and intellectual independence. He is wary of associating himself with any one group in Taiwan or identifying as an “insider,” as doing so inevitably compromises academic objectivity.
He goes further. Not only is distance needed, but also familiarity with different ways of looking at the same problem. Only then can one’s perspective transcend simplistic narratives that often cast normative, even moralistic, interpretations on the complex realities scholars face in Taiwan.
Taiwan can feel like a bubble. It is a small island, a (sometimes) highly polarised society with competing, if not antagonistic, narratives concerning its history and identity, and you can easily get trapped within them.
This polarisation extends into scholarly communities — both Taiwanese and foreign. It may help that I am also a China scholar, because that exposes me to sub-official Chinese perspectives on Taiwan, which are themselves highly heterogeneous and by far not as monolithic as many assume. That allows me to approach issues from multiple vantage points. It does not mean that I do not take a stance. I certainly do, and I am not hiding it. But without the ability to change perspective, scholars hardly do a good job — and this certainly does not only refer to Taiwan Studies.
Taiwan Plus, or Global Taiwan
The field of Taiwan Studies, according to Gunter, cannot be a discipline in and of itself, but must stretch across disciplines. It also stands at the intersection with other fields of research, such as technology, defence policy, domestic policy, and social policy, and within a larger regional context, such as Taiwan’s relationship with China, Southeast Asia, and the world.
So if you are interested in Taiwan — and I hope many people are — then study it. Taiwan can tell you a lot about the world. But do not approach it as if “Taiwan Studies” were a self-contained field that defines you. Taiwan is important in relation to many comparative dimensions. Comparison is extremely important: it is Taiwan plus that makes Taiwan important. You may also call it “Global Taiwan.” Otherwise, the field of Taiwan Studies becomes self-contained and parochial — and scholars must definitely avoid parochialism.
Such a view of Taiwan Studies also best reflects the institutional restrictions that expertise in Taiwan Studies comes up against. There are no stable paid positions within academia for scholars only specialised in Taiwan Studies.
We do not have an academic infrastructure at European universities that would allow you to be hired purely as a Taiwan scholar. You need secondary qualifications — either within a discipline or within a broader regional specialisation.
In Germany — and I believe this holds true across Europe — you almost always need to specialise in China before you can work on Taiwan at a university. Most of us who are now professors in the field have followed this path. Departments of Chinese Studies may welcome candidates with Taiwan expertise, but they would not appoint someone who focuses exclusively on Taiwan. Political science departments, for their part, generally require a strong disciplinary background as a primary qualification. Since no department of Taiwan Studies exists — and likely will not — scholars in the field must operate within broader frameworks and treat Taiwan as an additional specialisation. That is why I have refrained from developing an independent degree programme in Taiwan Studies, like my colleague Dafydd Fell in London, and instead developed specific Taiwan modules within the departmental and inter-faculty programmes I am involved in in Tübingen.
Gunter thus believes that what contributes most to developing the field of Taiwan Studies is its integration into broader curricula, making Taiwan a case for systematic comparison and contextualisation across countries and regions.
At the same time, a Taiwan scholar should be versed in at least one discipline in the humanities or social sciences and approach Taiwan from that angle. Doing it the other way round may align more with one’s passion, but it comes at the price of academic career opportunities later on.
Career-building: An Organic Process
When it comes to pursuing a career within academia more generally, Gunter believes that it cannot be planned. Hard work and discipline will not suffice; a fair amount of fortune is indispensable. He cautions against seeing each step within academia as merely a means to an end. Each step is valuable in and of itself, as it develops one’s capacities and interests.
A PhD is about training your cognitive capabilities. It helps you develop something creative and meaningful — something that contributes to your intellectual and personal development. This is the most important. Postgraduate training should not foremost be considered a stepping stone to becoming a professor. We can see how such thinking results in streamlined publications and “academic marketising,” which restrict intellectual curiosity and creativity, thinking against the tide, and the willingness to challenge conventional wisdom.
This reflects Gunter’s own journey. He never planned to become a professor and only began to pursue an academic career after his PhD, during which he realised how much he enjoyed research.
I never had a big design. I never planned to become a scholar. I went to Taiwan to study Chinese and to get a PhD — nothing more. I was thinking about working in a bank, maybe in a big company, or in a consulting firm. I actually got an offer from a consulting company in 1994. If I had taken that offer, I would probably have ended up somewhere completely different. But at the same time, I received an offer from a research institute in Germany to work on Chinese and East Asian politics in an interdisciplinary setting. I found that very exciting, so I made this turn. A PhD takes you to an intersection, and you have to make choices. Students should calmly wait to reach that intersection and not think too much about possible choices before being there.
Since making his “fateful” decision, Gunter has spent more than three decades researching Taiwan, China, and the wider East Asian region — conducting annual fieldwork, publishing extensively, building up the European Research Centre on Contemporary Taiwan (ERCCT), and integrating Taiwan into the academic curricula at his university. In short, his career has been shaped by a steady commitment to following his intellectual interests step by step, sustained engagement with people from different — often opposing — political camps in Taiwan, the careful maintenance of analytical distance, and regular research stays on the island to remain attuned to the “political vibe” of a society he deeply admires.
Aleksandrs Gross is a freelance journalist focusing on the grassroots development of Taiwanese identity. He is particularly interested in the development of Taiwanese civic society, especially social movements, and how younger generations of Taiwanese respond to the unique political, identity-related and economic challenges of Taiwan. Find more of his writing on New Bloom and his Substack Identity Island.
Gunter Schubert is Chair Professor of Greater China Studies at the University of Tübingen and founder and current director of the European Research Centre on Contemporary Taiwan (ERCCT), a CCK Foundation Overseas Centre.
This article was published as part of a special issue on ‘Taiwan Studies Interviews: What can we learn?’.
Taiwan Insight 