Written by Shih-Yueh Yang. By preserving the Chinese identity, Taiwan can mitigate its political differences with the Mainland and thus be the sustenance of the whole Chinese people for a free, democratic, and equally prosperous China. With such a great and just cause for the future of the Chinese nation, Taiwan will get its strongest defence, and the danger of wars will also be minimized in the first place.
Written by Jyh-Shyang Sheu. With the military threats from China, Taiwan needs to enhance its military capabilities, or more precisely, enhance and rebuild its capabilities. The restoration of one-year conscription might solve the problem of limited human resources. Still, as evidenced by the war in Ukraine, other actions could serve to improve security in Taiwan further.
Written by Kuan-chen Lee. Following Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, many observers have pointed out that Kyiv’s ability to mobilise the entire population to resist the invasion is one of the main reasons why it has been able to prolong the war. Moreover, they suggest that Taiwan learn from Ukraine’s model of all-out resistance against a more powerful enemy. However, do the Taiwanese have the same determination to resist aggression as the Ukrainians have shown? Furthermore, how has the Russia-Ukraine War affected the willingness of the Taiwanese people to fight against aggression?
Written by Hung-yi Chien. In short, I would argue that “being Sinitic” is not inconceivable. New students of Taiwan studies in overseas countries need elements of sinology to grow up. The lesson from the Taiwan studies programmes in Taiwanese universities suggests that a new discipline requires a fertile ground to nurture it. In countries where sinology is available, this “politically incorrect” discipline is inevitable to play an important role in recruiting new students to Taiwan studies.
Written by Ti Wei. To solve the Taiwanese media problem, the first step is to recognise that the problem is unique and not like any other case in the world. Moreover, this problem could not be explained by any Western theories. Therefore, we need to carefully clarify and re-examine the nature of the problem and study society and the audiences thoroughly. Then, based on the re-acquainted knowledge, we may draw a new and reflective plan for rebuilding the media system. The only thing for sure is that it is neither commercial nor public in the Western sense. In addition, the latest development of media platformatisation and the new audience generation should be considered. The task is tough, but any endeavour to pay should be worthy when we think of how much hardship Taiwanese media have been through.
Written by Julia Marinaccio and Jens Damm. However, Taiwanese journalism also did its share. Like the political party system, Taiwan’s existing media landscape is ideologically divided over the question of how to fashion cross-Strait relations. Through their ideological orientation paired with a lack of investigative journalism, they act as mouthpieces of political parties. In doing so, they reinforce existing political cleavages rather than exercising their role as informants and watchdogs.
Written by Yu-peng Lin and Chang-de Liu. The development of over-the-top (OTT) media services is currently the main concern of Taiwan’s audiovisual industries. An OTT media service is an audiovisual streaming service provided directly to the audience by the Internet. The Taiwanese government wishes to strengthen this industry while also seeking balanced growth for international and local operators. For the latter, how to accelerate the production of their content in the face of global competition is the biggest concern. Furthermore, given the recent success of the Asian market, international operators are interested in co-producing content with Taiwanese companies.
Written by Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley; Yuan-hui Hu; Victoria Y. Chen; and Lihyun Lin. Crowdfunded journalism is no longer unfamiliar to Taiwanese people who care about the media ecosystem. Although journalism in Taiwan has been challenged by the powerful influences of political and business alliances in the news industry and the constant impact of ever-changing technological advances, crowdfunded journalism has provided a fresh possibility and lent financial assistance to independent media organisations and citizen journalism. All these undoubtedly positively affect the reconstruction of Taiwan’s news and media industry.
Written by Max Dixon. Therefore, the grievances, tactics and repression of the protest movements outlined here enable a clear foreshadowing of the approaches of Russia and China that would follow. Yet where Ukraine and HK saw their political systems collapse in their post-movement societies, the strength of Taiwan’s democratic institutions and values prevailed. This resulted in negotiating with the Sunflower Movement’s strains and the calls to repress it, which have seen a stronger Taiwan emerge.
Written by T.Y. Wang and Christopher H. Achen. We believe, however, that Taiwan’s distinctness requires focused scholarly attention from those who study it. The academic infrastructure that will make real progress and productivity possible is one in which the study of Taiwan is its own academic specialisation, equal in standing to the study of China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Vietnam, or any other part of Asia with a distinct identity. In our opinion, the distinct institutional structures for Taiwan studies that have developed should be continued and strengthened. Journals dedicated to research on Taiwan should also be encouraged and strengthened to make them visible and widely cited as flagship publications like China Quarterly.
Written by Josie-Marie Perkuhn and Hung-yi Chien. Therefore, we call for a more comprehensive cross-perspective and interdisciplinary academic dialogue to encounter the current segregations and broaden the community by strengthening the interconnectivity. Although some topics, such as identity politics and the cross-strait tension, have caught particular attention in recent years, Taiwan studies still lack some ‘infrastructure’ that helps new students of Taiwan to grow upon it. With this sort of infrastructure, even if Taiwan lose its existence as an independent entity in the future, the shared discipline of sinology researching Taiwan, in particular, will last, and Sinitic knowledge will become the common heritage of human beings.
Written by En-chi Chang. The convenience store in Taiwan has been part of daily life in Taiwan. To stay competitive, convenience store retailers remain focused on providing customers with convenient offerings. The current trend echoing the international retail development is the digitalisation of products and customer services. Nevertheless, development such as unmanned stores and metaverse is still in the infant stage. It is exciting to observe whether Taiwanese consumers will well receive services such as 7-Eleven’s X-Store and FamilyMart’s O2 Meta and whether other convenience store retailers will follow this development.
Taiwan Insight 