 Welcome to Taiwan's Politics and International Relations. My name's David Feller and I co-teach this course with Dr. Dambi Yu. One of the great things about SOAS is it's actually possible to offer this kind of in-depth year-on-course on Taiwan's politics and international relations. There's no equivalent course in any other European or American university. I specialise in Taiwan's electoral and party politics as well as social movements. Dr. Zhang specialises in cultural policy and also Taiwan's identity politics. So this means that the course is very closely linked to our own research and that's one of the reasons why we're so enthusiastic and passionate about this course. Why is this course so interesting from the perspective of comparative politics and international relations? Well I think there's a number of things that I can mention. Let me give you a few examples and particularly on things that students find particularly interesting on this course. Well first of all Taiwan is a unique case in international relations. Is it a state or is it a province of the People's Republic of China? Taiwan is not a UN member and it's only recognised by a tiny number of countries. But despite this it's a successful liberal democracy, it's a multi-party democracy. It's also an interesting case when it comes to comparative politics. Many of my students find our week on gender politics really intriguing. Why is Taiwan seen as one of the most gender equal societies in the world? How important for example is its high representation of female parliamentarians? Why does it have the highest number of female parliamentarians in East Asia? A similar gender related topic that we look at is Taiwan's move towards same sex marriage which has really taken off over the last few years. Will Taiwan be the first Asian country to legalise same sex marriage? Why do we see quite a strong counter movement? We also spend some time looking at Taiwan's social movements and students often tell me that the thing that they most admire about Taiwanese politics is how protest matters. One such case study that we'll look at is the sunflower movement where in protest against a trade deal with China there was a occupation by students of Taiwan's parliament for over three weeks and they were able to actually change government policy and block this trade deal. Another topic that students find fascinating is Taiwan's electoral politics and the timing this year will be perfect because we will have presidential and parliamentary elections in the middle of our course. So we'll spend quite a bit of time looking at political communication. What kind of political communication works in the Taiwanese context? Now one of the ways we try and support the course is through public events. So we have something like 40 to 50 Taiwan public events over any one academic year and many of those will be closely related to our course. So that means you'll be meeting many of the figures from your reading list during your time taking our course. But we also have related film screenings and we also bring in political practitioners to come and talk to you over the year. So for example in previous years students have met former foreign ministers, former prime ministers, former defense ministers, party leaders and also student activists, social movement leaders. We also hope that you'll find this course useful for your future studies and also work. Many of the students say that this has been invaluable for their future academic studies but also for their work. So for example some students will go on to do ISPs or extended essays on topics that they've started during this year. Others will go on to study or even work in Taiwan. We've also had a number of students who have gone on to give academic papers at international conferences based on topics that they started during this course. Let me give you a couple of examples of where students have actually directly used what they study in their future careers. One of our students went on to work and study in Taiwan after he graduated and then came back to do a master in Taiwan studies and is now working in London in Taiwan's de facto embassy for Taiwan's Ministry of Culture. We had another case where a student went on to study Chinese in Taiwan and then he came back to SOAS, did a master degree and now he's actually working at SOAS, working with me on the Centre of Taiwan Studies. We hope that you'll enjoy this course as much as we enjoy teaching this course.