Taiwan Insight

Grandmother Islands: Oral Memory, Mother Tongues, and Literary Kinship between Taiwan and Scotland

17 September 2025 Chee-Hann Wu

Written by Elissa Hunter-Dorans. This article reflects on how maternal and grandmaternal figures embody the preservation of Taiwanese and Gaelic. Through Tâigael, the author explores oral traditions, familial intimacy, and the “mother tongue” as both metaphor and surrogate caregiver, showing how literature sustains endangered languages and fosters cross-cultural kinship.

Tâigael: Orchids, Maternal Care, and a New Rosetta Stone

15 September 2025 Chee-Hann Wu

Written by Hannah Stevens and Will Buckingham. The article introduces Tâigael: Stories from Taiwanese & Gaelic, a translation project linking two minoritised languages through English and Mandarin as bridges. Writers reflect on linguistic solidarity, maternal legacies in “mother tongues,” risks of reinforcing hierarchies, and ecological fidelity in translation. Together, their essays highlight translation’s generative, resistant, and collaborative potential.

Who Won, Who Lost? Taking Stock of Taiwan’s “Big Recall Movement” Narratives

12 September 2025 Adrian Chiu

Written by Gunter Schubert. Taiwan’s “big recall movement” ended without unseating a single Kuomintang legislator, but it sparked fierce debate about the health of the island’s democracy. Was it a moral victory for civil society, a warning sign of democratic decline, or proof of voters’ stabilizing wisdom?

The Island Is Our Canoe: Taiwan–Guam Exchange Finds Connection Beyond the Stage

11 September 2025 Chee-Hann Wu

Written by Eloise Phillips. This article examines the 2025 Taiwan–Guam cultural exchange, led by Taiwan’s National Museum of Prehistory, which wove song, canoe building, and shared practices into island diplomacy. Through workshops, performances, and informal encounters, the program connected Austronesian communities across the Pacific, highlighting resilience, mutual reclamation, and living traditions of cultural practice, language, and art.

Distant Allies? Explaining U.S. Allies’ (In)action Over the Prospect of a Taiwan Strait Contingency

10 September 2025 Adrian Chiu

Written by Carlos Francisco Torres Morales. Using an alliance framework, this commentary argues that Tokyo and Seoul’s reluctance to convey support to Taipei publicly stems from strategic caution, since this could provoke the undesired effects they would seek to deter by extending clear security assurances, but also to retain flexibility in their redefining their stances vis-à-vis Taiwan (and China).

How Young Taiwanese Women’s Views on Romantic Romance Are Shaping Taiwanese Society

9 September 2025 Adrian Chiu

Written by Elspeth Lewis. Taiwan has the lowest birthrate in the world. This article explores this trend by putting women at its centre, challenging what we thought we knew. Beyond the vague idea of becoming more liberal, it explores the difference between the younger generation and their parents. Moreover, the traditional society does not condone the newly created ideas around dating, sex and relationships either.

A New Era for UK-Taiwan Relations: Explaining the UK’s New Interests in the Indo-Pacific and Taiwan

8 September 2025 Adrian Chiu

Written by Peter (Hung-Yao) Chu. This article explores the development of UK-Taiwan relations since the Tsai Ing-wen administration until the current William Lai administration. It suggests that Brexit and China’s increasing assertiveness serve as two of the most important factors that contribute to the UK’s reassessment of its approach toward the Indo-Pacific and Taiwan.

How Tsai Ing-Wen’s fashion sense can provide explanations for gender inequality within Taiwanese politics

5 September 2025 Adrian Chiu

Written by Carlotta Rose Busetto. This article examines Tsai Ing-wen’s fashion in her two successful presidential campaigns and how posting certain outfits online increased her electability. It finds that clothes matter in Taiwan and Tsai was not free to wear what she wanted. Moreover, clothes matter more than gender because Tsai also utilised them to promote her own political agenda.

Taiwan’s status and the Southeast Asian scam compound crisis

4 September 2025 Adrian Chiu

Written by Annabel Simpson. Over the summer of 2022, reports of people being trafficked from overseas and being forced to work scamming others in Southeast Asia began to make their way into Western media. This article explores how Taiwan’s lack of international recognition impacts the assistance it can provide to Taiwanese victims trapped in these scam compounds.

Indigenous Identity in Taiwan’s Contemporary Cinema: From Screen to Self

3 September 2025 Adrian Chiu

Written by Ana Paloma Martínez Gómez. This article explores how Indigenous identity is portrayed on screen and how film supports cultural revitalisation and self-representation through a decolonial and gendered lens. As a new Taiwanese national identity emerges, the gap between official recognition and ongoing cultural marginalisation reveals the complex space Indigenous communities occupy.

Gender, Remittances, and Taiwan’s Migrant Worker Financial Ecosystem: Beyond the Numbers

2 September 2025 Adrian Chiu

Written by Renee Te-Jung Chen. This article looks beyond the numbers of Taiwan’s Small-Amount Remittance Services for Foreign Migrant Workers from a gender perspective. It argues that the milestone of becoming the primary remittance channel obscures the gendered patterns in adopting the new platform. It suggests that the collection of sex-aggregated data is necessary.

Divided Not Doomed: Domestic Challenges for the Lai Administration’s Foreign Policy

1 September 2025 Adrian Chiu

Written by Nils Peterson. This article analyses the domestic challenge for the Lai administration’s foreign policy under a KMT-aligned Legislative Yuan. The divided government poses two potential hurdles: the risk of domestic gridlock and fights over defence appropriation funding. These challenges will require some degree of compromise between the KMT and the DPP, reinforced by the recent recall campaigns.

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