In South Korea, you can still get on buses and trains, or just wander around for miles at your leisure, so yesterday, I was in Gimhae. Like all Korean cities, it unashamedly flaunts nondescript, skyscraping condos and sterile, soulless churches that surely prove there is no God, for there’s no way he would tolerate so... Read More

Did President-elect Donald Trump turn a 10-minute phone call with the president of Taiwan into a Hellfire missile, instantly vaporizing the US’ 'One China' policy? Of course not. This is a riddle inside an enigma. Let’s start with a cool-headed interpretation, as published in a report by the National Academy of Development and Strategy at... Read More

Mdme. Tsai Ing-wen, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate for president in the 2016 Taiwan elections, came to Washington and appeared at the Center for Strategic and International Studies a.k.a. Pivot Central to make some remarks, chat with Kurt Campbell (proud pivot pappy), and do some Q&A moderated by the indefatigable pivot sherpa Bonnie Glaser... Read More

Back in March, I presciently speculated about (and J. Michael Cole pined for) a Taiwanese political uprising that would combine domestic mass resistance to the KMT's mainland-friendly policies with US institutional support a la Maidan and whip up a political froth that might result in the sidelining of the KMT, the acquisition of political momentum... Read More

With regard to the occupation of the Taiwan legislature and, in particular, the DPP’s determination to sidetrack the democratic process when the numbers were not in its favor on its pet issues, I was the recipient of some indignant feedback along the lines of Gandhi, MLK, etc. i.e. on issues of moral imperatives you gotta... Read More

The ineluctable drift of Taiwan outside of the PRC’s political orbit, with a helping shove from Taiwan’s DPP (Democratic Progressive Party), that’s what’s going on. On March 18, on the occasion of the Crimean referendum, I wrote a piecespeculating on what would happen if the United States decided to support a Maidan-style insurrection against an... Read More

[This piece was also posted at Asia Times Online on March 18, 2014.  It can be reposted as long as China Matters is credited and a link provided.]  A certain amount of attention, and rightly so, has been paid to the discomfiture of the People's Republic of China (PRC) with Crimea unilaterally declaring independence from... Read More

McDonald’s in Taipei. By the 1990s, Taiwan had already become a “post-nation” (source) East Asia has long been bucking the trend toward globalization. Its countries have become major players in the global marketplace, while jealously guarding their cultural specificity and national character. But East Asia is now getting with the program. South Korea in particular... Read More

The Obama administration is warily inching toward the expected announcement that it will provide Taiwan some upgrades for its current fleet of F-16s, instead of selling 66 new ones. Expected, that is, if one had read a piece I wrote for Asia Times in July, which I reproduce below (for the links, please go the... Read More

Saturday's presidential election in Taiwan has led to an unseemly Florida-200-type wrangle, with the losing candidate demanding the result be annulled. Incumbent President Chen Shui-bian's margin of victory was 30,000 votes out of 13 million cast; the number of spoilt ballots was nearly 340,000. There are no hanging chads in this case — the voters... Read More

President Bush's remarks about Taiwan, following his meeting with Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, have set off a spate of hyperventilating in both Taipei and Washington. Typical was The Weekly Standard: This needs a little deconstruction. Taiwan is a small country with a large and hostile neighbor. She has the good fortune to possess what... Read More

One unpleasant little side story to the commemoration of the 9/11 attacks has been the reluctance of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to invite representatives of Taiwan to his city's ceremony. One Taiwan citizen and at least eight other Taiwan natives died in the attacks last year; five Taiwanese banks had offices in the World... Read More

The news that China is continuing its build-up of missiles opposite Taiwan, with 100 more short-range ballistic missiles now in place at a newly-built base, comes as one of China's most senior officials, Vice Prime Minister Qian QiChen, arrives in Washington for the first high-level Sino-U.S. discussions of the new administration. (That "q," by the... Read More