Written by Joanna Zylinska. Chen Shui-bian’s presidency has been said to be a period of polarization, typified by aggressive nation-building policies and worsening cross-Strait relations. He became president in May 2000 and at first enjoyed widespread support.
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
Written by Federica Passi. Overstressing the uniqueness of Taiwan literature can also force it in an isolated position. Instead, an approach that emphasizes the regularities and what connects the island’s literature with other literatures can possibly better integrate the image of Taiwan in a wider cultural context.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Conceptions of diplomacy held in Taiwan and Pacific nations like Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, and Palau have often come into conflict. One example is how Taiwan’s presidential visits to the Pacific have been conducted and received. Since the Chen Shui-bian administration came to power in 2000, Taiwanese presidents have attempted to visit most if not all of Taiwan’s allies. However, in the Pacific, these visits are often quite abbreviated.
