People Archive

The battle for Taiwan’s constitution

The following piece was published on the UnHerd website today: At the Taipei headquarters of the Taiwan Statebuilding Party (TSP), a wall of shame has been erected in dishonour of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) patsies. Towards the bottom of the TSP shit-list sits Elon Musk, whose recent “solution” to the cross-strait standoff was not well-received in Taiwan. […]
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Taiwan in the frame

Among the proselytizers, merchants and adventurers from Europe who inserted themselves into Taiwan’s early modern history, George Psalmanazar is notorious. Centuries before the Chinese Communist Party began faking news about Taiwan, this (most likely) French-born hoaxer, who claimed to be a Formosan and invented his own language to prove it, was regaling eighteenth century London […]
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When the KMT called the shots in the Philippines (review of ‘Diasporic Cold Warriors’ for Taipei Times)

The following book review appeared in today’s Taipei Times. In 1950, the overseas Chinese community of the Philippines numbered 230,000 — just over 1 percent of the country’s population. This made it among the smallest overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia. In comparison, Thailand had more than 3 million Chinese residents that same year. Yet, […]
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Hijacked history (review of ‘The Hijacked War’ for Taipei Times)

The following book review appeared in today’s Taipei Times: Outside historical circles, the name Li Da-an (李大安) will be familiar to few Taiwanese. However, there was a time where this lowly soldier was feted as a national hero in Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) propaganda. As one of 155,000 inmates in the UN’s POW camp on […]
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The complex tale of Taiwanese identity (Global Asia review of ‘Politics and Cultural Nativism in 1970s Taiwan’)

The following book review appeared in the June issue of Global Asia: References to Taiwan as the first Chinese democracy have justifiably drawn flak in recent years. With almost 90 percent of Taiwan’s population now identifying as Taiwanese and less than 5 percent as Chinese, the description is no longer seen as appropriate. For many, it […]
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The Cold War history behind Nicaragua’s break with Taiwan

The following piece appeared as the leader today in The Diplomat magazine: We touched down in Managua, Nicaragua, shortly before 7:50 p.m. on July 18, 2014. The tickets were originally booked for a cheaper flight the following day, but Pablo Morales was having none of it. “It’s Liberation Day,” he said. “You have to be […]
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Globetrotting entrepreneur brings a taste of the Baltics to Taiwan

The following article appeared in today’s Taipei Times: Once Peter Young (楊良棟) gets going, you can’t be sure where he’ll end up. One minute, it’s eighteenth-century Baltic history, the next, the health benefits of chokeberry wine. A discussion of the current situation in his native Hong Kong kicks off a sweeping tour of Chinese history that […]
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Hidden in plain sight: the extradordinary work of Hsieh Tong-liang (Part 2)

Part 2 of a feature for Guan Xi Media: With tea and preliminary chit-chat done, Diane suggests we start our tour in the large exhibition space next door. Split into sections showcasing the various series of works that have occupied periods of Hsieh’s life spanning, in some cases, a single year, in others, decades, the […]
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Life on the lam: an undocumented migrant worker’s story

Although the exact figure is difficult to ascertain, Ministry of Labor figures suggest there are over 55,000 undocumented migrant workers in Taiwan. In 2017, the National Immigration Agency announced that it would stop referring to these workers as “runaways.” However, this remains the default description among media and public. The term is misleading. Most workers […]
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Taiwan’s ‘return-to-reality’ trailblazers (Taipei Times review of ‘Politics and Cultural Nativism in 1970s Taiwan’)

The following book review appeared in today’s Taipei Times: Discussions of identity in Taiwan are seldom clearcut. Viewed through the prism of the country’s democratization, things can be even more opaque. For those with rudimentary knowledge of these issues, this short book is no primer; indeed, even the initiated may find it challenging. But those […]
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