 I welcome you here today. It's a way of starting the new academic year. In many ways 2013-2014 was by far our best ever year. I think we were overwhelmed by how many activities we ran. It was something like… I get about 40-something events over the last year. We broke our records in terms of the audience numbers of last year. more f developer production, with more service with the hundred plus ad joining it was also probably our best for you in terms of teaching we had the best number of students taking our 7祭an courses we're really excited about the stars of this new year I think it's a great way to get stands book launches are the celebrations of the hard work it takes i'r ddechrau'r ddweud ychydigol ei wneud o'r pethau sydd wedi'u bwysig i'r broses yw'r hyn o'r cyfnod. Mae'r lefyddiadau yma yn ymweld yn Ymdorg, ond mae'r ddweud yma yn Ymdorg, mae'n bwysig i'r ddweud o'r wahanol. Mae'r lefyddiadau yn ymdorg o'r Gerddodd, mae Gionpier Rheiddiadol, I am here in a number of title fun, the editor for the round-gauge research on the book series. I also have a chat to it in this book. This book is the twelfth book in the book series. 13 oes y llyfr o'r gwaith. Y Llyfrgell Llyfrgell yw'r ysgol yn yma i'w gweithio fy ngwrs 3 o 4, ym mwy o'r 3 o 4 o ar y gofod, sy'n cwybodaeth o'r 13 o'r ymddangos cychwyn, cychwyn, mynd i'w'r llyfr o'r llyfr, yn oed i'r llyfr, yn oed i'r llyfr. Mae'n mynd i'r llyfr o'r llyfr o'r llyfr o'r llyfr o'r llyfr yng ngwrs Over the last two to three years, I think you get some kind of sense about how vibrant the series is and how diverse. Of course we do have a number of forthcoming books. I think in 2014 we've got... But for 2014 to 2015 we've already got confirmed I think four volumes, a really exciting, for example Fanywn's new book on Tawni's social movements, Simone Grana's book on environmental politics, and John B. Hughes' book is also coming out thinking in the spring of next year. So we have a lot of book launches to come and maybe there'll be some more because we've got a number of books that are currently under review so there's a lot to look forward to. So what's so special about this book, political changes in Taiwan under my ego? Well I think there's a number of things that I think particularly stand out for me. The book deals with a really important question for political scientists and that's the impact of changing the ruling parties. And we have seen a number of really significant changes since 2008, since the K&T came back to power. This I think is a really interesting question. It's something that a number of really good books in the Taiwan studies feel to deal with. For example in 2006 we published a book called What Has Changed? Taiwan before and after the change of ruling parties in 2000 that John B.U. and I edited. Also in 2008 a very similar book came out called Presidential Politics edited by Steve Goldstein and something done which looked at the second Transnistria town. So I think this is a real nice kind of follow up on those two volumes. As a bit of the side is we're really interested in the impact of changes of ruling parties. For example Samuel Huntington talks about the two turnover texts as a way of judging whether a democracy is really consolidated. In Taiwan we've had two changes of ruling parties already and we've almost had two others. So elections are really competitive, so I think Taiwan represents a really good test case for the impact of changes of ruling parties. And this is a thing that we will continue to look at over this year at science. We are looking to have a journal special edition that again looks at this question, the impact of changing the ruling party. But from some different angles that's edited by Mignier Ronson. So that's something that will be coming up either late this term or early next term. Okay there's some other things that I think are really special about this book. One I think is the chapters. The chapters are really interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, as a number of you know, monthly is out deadline for MA dissertations. And when I was looking back at the chapters I noticed that a number of these really address some of the topics that some of my MA students are working on. On social movements for example, on party change that Jason is looking at. And also the impact of EXA. So I think it's quite possible that some of my students are going to be looking to buy this digital book. I know at least one has been talking to me about buying two copies which I think is quite amazing. I think another reason why I think this book is wonderful is that it addresses a number of badly neglected issues in the field of Taiwan studies. So for example there's a chapter on Japan-Taiwan relations which we rarely actually see. I think I'm only aware of one or two other earlier texts to look at this really important question. There's also a chapter that looks at the way that the Taiwanese Parliament deals with agreements with the PRC. And again the importance of this has really been reinforced by the Sunflower movement. There's a chapter that looks at the development of social movements in Taiwan since my idea came to power. And again the Sunflower movement really reinforced how important this is. I think it's also, I also like some of the choices of authors. Some of these authors really actually get involved in these kinds of editing volumes. One particularly stands out is Nathan Batten. So again it's a name that my students know very well. He has one of the best blogs on Taiwanese politics called Frozen Garlic. Which is, it's fantastic but he doesn't really publish enough so I'm really delighted to see he's got involved in this book. And of course those of you that have been involved in some of our seminars over this last year will know Richard Bush who was the de facto US ambassador to Taiwan. And one of the few people like me who actually has Taiwan studies in their job title. He's talking about US-Taiwan relations. Something that he talked about when he visited Suas earlier this year. I was the one author in this book that didn't actually join the conference. But when I heard about the contents of this I just had to get involved. So I was the one who, I did deliver my manuscript on time. I think another thing that I have to add, having edited books before is to praise the efficiency of the two editors. The initial conference was held in May in Hong Kong of 2012. To get a turnaround, have a peer review book to come out within two years with a real achievement. I think it hadn't been for one or two troublesome authors. It could have been even earlier. OK, so the way we're going to run this session, next Jack is going to talk a little bit about the overall book and then he's going to talk about his chapter. And then I'll talk a little bit about my chapter. Then we should have a fair amount of time for Q&A. Unfortunately, we only managed to get two of us here. Chris Hughes seems to be all the way. But I think it means we should have enough time for Q&A and then we've got time for more discussion over wine and coffee. So now let's give a big start. Welcome to Jeffrey Leil from the University of Pennsylvania. Thank you for that really fine introduction. You can doubt when people introduce a great book in their own series. But I'm not sure if he's completely objective despite the series and his includes the chapter. In terms of the quick turnaround, I should probably fess up because I'm probably one of the troublesome authors. But one of the other things that contributed to getting it out quickly was Radlech, which just did a terrific job of getting the book out in timely fashion. I've edited a few volumes over the years and this has been one of the most efficient in terms of this general turnaround and resilience in terms of dealing with the problems that inevitably come. Well, let me tell you a little bit about the book. Basically, the idea behind this volume was that we're going to look at Taiwan at a time that was sort of a political crossroads. And in many ways it was the crossroads, not just politically, but in areas that had something to do with politics. So in politics, nearly defined as it was alluded to, in 2008-2012 we saw two elections that marked a milestone collectively from KMT power to the EV power, back to KMT power, the alternation power that political science point to as being just heard. And it seems to be through the playing out of the constitutional reforms that were adopted in the mid-2000s, a consolidation of a bunch more of a two-party system with the real marginalization of the lesser parties. But there were still, can I do that? Can I do that? Well, it's showing up on my screen. Other, I've got to take it off, I've been to answer it once more. But the question is, with all of that behind us, what do things look like ahead? A line of Joe has chronically low approval ratings, and that's likely to be the case for the rest of his term. The KMT has been internally fractious throughout a bunch of this presidency. No, for instance, the line of Joe has been dust up on the side of our movement to some degree as well now. The questions of how much and how quickly the DPP can recover, is it really going to be viable in 2016, if you're all questions we're going to see in the near future. And there is the question about whether the long anticipated turn of Taiwan party politics toward things that have less to do with cross-crate relations and more with the ordinary economic developments of policy and things like that will finally start to take hold. Economically, the Ma administration began amidst the global financial crisis, and Ma ran very much on a platform of economic recovery, restoration of course, and there's been a recovery, but it's been kind of slow. It's been a period of Taiwan entering international trade agreements, external trade agreements, in a way that had not been able to do before starting with ECFA and some of the doors that has begun to open. But we're still now looking at the consequences post ECFA of deeper economic integration with the mainland, and how fast that will proceed, and what is the political consequences will be. Issues of inequality have been rising, issues of sustaining growth remain there as well. Socially, as Chris Hughes' chapter presents, this question of Taiwan identity and Taiwan culture is still very much on the table. It's been playing a very different role in policy under Ma or did under Chan, of course. And social movements, as I chose the chapter, have taken a new turn and become someone more active under Ma with the sunflower movement, which happened right as this book was in the editing process. We've snuck in a few references to it. I think we did it again. That's become a question of where we're headed on that front. In terms of foreign policy, of course, the Ma years have been marked by a real bounce back of recovery in US-Taiwan relations after they had reached under Chan, particularly with the 2008 UN referendum. And cross-strait policies, cross-strait relations obviously have worn greatly. Taiwan has gained in terms of international space, the diplomatic truce in terms of the mainland poaching, Taiwan's remaining diplomatic partners, and so on. But it's still somewhat questionable where this will go ahead. The victim of first easy then hard, first economic then political becomes rather difficult when you work through the easy and the economic and we're starting to see those issues come on the horizon, particularly with pressure from the Chinese side to turn toward at least cultural and social, there's been some progress on that, and maybe ultimately toward political. And we don't really know where Xi Jinping is headed. He's still fairly new in power, of course, and the initial signs have been very much continuity with Lujan Taal power, the erosion past period of policies, but is that going to change as he gets further into his term? What are the fall-outs of China's problematic relations increasingly with the United States as the US pivots, or as we now like to say if it sounds threatening, rebalance toward Asia? Neither one may be credible, but that's the language. And it won't be the fall-out of the East China Sea, South China Sea debates and things like that. So there's a whole long list there, and I'll say it in a few minutes a little bit about how some of the chapters look at that. What I want to stress is this is a book that both looks back over the Ma years and tries to find the roots of Ma era policies, partly in continuities with the pre-Ma period and partly in a reaction against China that was seen by Ma and his crowd as really quite bad policies. But it also looks forward. Every chapter says something about what to expect for the remainder of the Ma years, which aren't quite as long as when we started the book, but there's still a couple left. And I think in all cases have implications and sometimes quite explicitly drawn implications for the post-Ma years, speculating on the consequences of the DPP victory or a KMT continuity in office. So let me spend just a few minutes giving you a quick overview of the book. We say one more thing generally about the book, which is a staff to refer to. There are a lot of things I think are fairly remarkable about this volume, self-serving that maybe, but one is that it really is a truly international collection of scholars. We have Europeans, we have people from both sides as great, we have a Japanese contributor, we have Americans, North Americans. It's really quite a diverse staff in terms of origins and places of work. The types of issues listed in the book's lengthy subtitle have occurred for everyone. I think actually are what the book talks about. Then is that we cover partisan conflict, policy choices, external constraints and security challenges. In that rubric there are chapters that look at questions of identity policy in institutions. Chapters look at contentious policy choices on matters ranging from economic and welfare policy to many things that social movements take up to cross-strait policy and foreign relations. We talk about external constraints that stem from Taiwan's relations with the mainland, with the US, with Japan and Taiwan's more complicated in some ways, status in the international community generally, including its engagement with international organizations. We also have sections that look at national security challenges that come largely from that external environment but also have some domestic policies and even demographic roots for the declining population. Despite that rather large grab bag of topics at which the lengthy subtitle has meant to capture, I think there is some coherence here in that the title actually does leave all the chapters together. That is, well, this really is a book that is very much about political changes underlying jail. That is, we talk about background, we talk about the future, but it really does look at the maw years. And it looks distinctively at political questions. Many of the chapters are specifically about politics in the ordinary sense, domestic politics and also the politics of foreign policy, but the chapters that look at other things like economy and society look at the political consequences of social and economic factors or at the politics of social and economic policy, what changed its policies. The chapters on national security, external relations and international status tend to stress the political aspects of Taiwan's relations with the outside world or the domestic political foundations of what Taiwan is doing externally. I'll let you give you about a five minute summary of some of the chapters. Nathan Batow has a chapter on the elections. Particularly the 2012 election comparing it to the 2008 election. He says this is your classic maintaining election. It really continued trends from prior periods. The greatest predictor of 2012 was really 2008. That is, what you see is a cleavage structure that remained largely unchanged and policies toward the mainland were the defining issue. There were some changes around the edges of the other factors of political science. There were some changes around the edges of the other factors of political science. There were some changes around the edges of the other factors of political science. Issues that were new issues and such really didn't do the work. Then there's this chapter about us with a fellow named Fel. You know, it's not one of the best ones at the moment. It's actually an excellent chapter. Which we were delighted that he was able to submit despite our inability to lure into the conference. I'd get already committed to another conference at that point, otherwise I'm sure it would have been there. A quick footnote on that. I had been on a Jean Pierre in Hong Kong a couple of weeks ago and he regrets not being here but wishes us luck on this book launch. So that is a chapter we'll go into in detail basically it's broadly consistent with Baphos in saying that the characteristics of a party system have become pretty clear and constant through the last couple of elections. What you see is patterns of party fragmentation strongly toward a two party system and patterns of ideological distance widening between the two parties. That predicts some continuity ahead as well although I think Fel's chapter more than Baphos thinks there's room for change. There's a little more agency as it were in less determination. I am looking to the future again. Both do suggest continuity but some opportunity for change. The next chapter is then turned to institutions from party politics to instead of elections to institutions with Diane Wu looking at the very passive role the surprisingly passive role given the constitutional allocations of power of the legislative yen in looking at cross straight agreements. Why is that? They say basically it's a function of the KMP United Rule party in Parliament securely in one party's hands and need a super majority in Parliament for much of the period. A positive executive legislative relationship that's not that mind you on one thing got together it really is more a point of undividing a government. And the idea that the decision making on policies particularly cross straight policy was highly centralized within the KMP and largely in the hands of those around him. And also that the issues they look at with the cross straight relations probably reflect a broad truth of comparative politics as executives presidents get more deference on external relations than they do on domestic policy. Looking toward the future basically Diane Wu will think it's going to depend on whether the unified government continues and whether there is a moderately strong leader within the KMP. The next cluster of chapters turned to economy and society Doug Fuller looks at the impact of EXFA and he says EXFA has not done much and should not be expected to do much at least relative to the hype. So whereas Ma and the KMP have said that it would it would be a center piece of economic policy it would lead to increased growth and probably increased equality that happened to hand out. And nor have the DP used worse criticism about how the haul out industry leads a significant unemployment and fatally increased dependence on the mainland. Who knows what's going to happen way down the road but so far not that much in Fuller's analysis he's got a lot of data to back it up. He basically says EXFA's limited impact is due to the fact that EXFA didn't do that much. It wasn't a radically liberalizing agreement. It didn't really take down too many protectionist barriers and because it is a gradual phase in it's going to take a long time for even what is in there to come fully online to have full effect. Much of Taiwan's economic issues its economic and social related social issues lie beyond EXFA's reach of Fuller's stresses. He thinks there's nothing in EXFA that's going to change the basic bipartisan commitment in Taiwan to a developmental state and to relatively protectionist policies. He also says that there is no stomach so far along the two major parties to push very hard on the kind of welfare policies that unlike EXFA actually could deal with inequality in Taiwan. Huling Show looks at the question of social movements under MA and uses a political opportunity structure analysis to say that social movements particularly liberal or left leaning social movements have resurged under MA because they face a moderately hostile environment. More hostile than under Chun but not so completely hostile as to make them not viable. So the idea is that MA's government has leaned right on social policies and this has created demand and the sort of energy behind movements but MA has not fundamentally betrayed openness and democracy in Taiwan so there's still space for these movements to operate and that because these movements don't have the year of the MA government they've looked elsewhere in the DPP out of power and looking for support has been created. Chris Hughes looks at cultural policy. He says that MA has re-identified Taiwan with China from the Chen Shui Bin baseline to a point that went beyond what you needed to secure the median Taiwan voter and to a point beyond what Beijing really required to maintain a cooperative and patient approach on cross-strait relations. MA has overdone it in that sense if you take those as the metrics and Chris says that this must therefore reflect MA's ideological preferences or perhaps the desire to satisfy the deep blue wing within the KMT. This comes, Hughes tells us, with risks to Taiwan's domestic politics and external relations. It could erode democratic consolidation because this is such a hotline issue. It could erode Taiwan's international stature because anything that re-identifies with China risks undermining the stature that Taiwan has gained over the last couple of decades and it could create instability even in cross-strait relations because the mainland will over-read how much any sense of Taiwan's separateness has climbed back down. Toward the future those are the risks as Hughes' chapter sees them. The remainder of the book and Chris' chapter, to some degree, pivots us a bit to cross-strait external issues from domestic issues. The remainder of the book is primarily about external issues. We have a pair of chapters, one by the Osubo from Taiwan and one by Chucho from Beijing from the mainland and they have actually quite similar analyses of the progress or trajectory of cross-strait relations under Ma and likely for the remainder of Ma's term and beyond. For Leo, Ma has accomplished much in reducing tensions and enhancing cooperation and institutionalizing cross-strait ties combined with a hedging strategy of re-establishing ties with the US to a degree with Japan. Leo attributes this to Ma's cautious and pragmatic policy approach and the Hujintal and Nashiki King's administration's willingness to be patient and to shift from reunification to anti-succession provocative though that may have been and to accept a 92 consensus as a basis for moving forward. So Leo says going forward we'll see moderate incremental progress we're not going to see radical changes and even incremental progress is imperiled by Ma's weaknesses including his weaknesses the political leader and government manager and the strident and effective opposition of BPP. Chisholong, for the Beijing side of this cross-strait view of cross-strait relations finds foundations for rapprochement in Beijing's shift to the 92 consensus in more broadly China's pursuit of a peaceful development strategy that extends the peaceful development of cross-strait relations and in Ma's rejection of Chenchevian's cross-strait policies. Here too the view is one of prospects for moderate progress for the remainder of Ma's terms but it's going to be limited and here too focus on factors rather different from those of the old stresses Chisholong says basically there are going to be no big breakthroughs because Beijing doesn't expect very much it now understands the domestic political constraints that Ma faces particularly as they fully appreciate that stuff. Secondly Beijing recognizes that there is a lot of slack a lot of steps to be pursued in terms of economic relations and social and cultural relations can still be postponed and Beijing is also worried that any consents any any any accommodations that it makes any concessions it makes on politics toward Taiwan are going to be grabbed by a DPP administration that might win in 2016 and it will not be so trustworthy in Beijing's eyes. The next paragraph chapter is getting there to the end here. Look to Taiwan's security environment and national defense policies Ludwin Bakker discusses the factors that affect Taiwan's external security environment and here there's a lot of modest progress but still persisting limits so she points to the US's pivot or return to Asia and the improvement in US-Taiwan relations is helping Taiwan's security but it's not clear how durable that's going to be. Cross-strait economic integration has been good for now but could it be used later to extract political concessions from Taiwan to coerce without using force? So she says going forward it's going to take a lot of work to sustain these games given the inexorable drift in the cross-strait military balance in the mainland's favor although here China's bad relations with its neighbors may actually perversely help Taiwan because everyone is hedging against an increasingly assertive China and therefore more likely an effect to share Taiwan's views of the dark side of the cross-strait relations. Lin Chengy then turns to internal factors that affect Taiwan's external relations cover some of the same ground as Bakar but adds that a lot of what's been going on here in terms of the difficulties Taiwan has faced in security policy are the factors of domestic choices in that area so he points to the problem of assigning the military to what the guns and bombs people like to call mutwas military operations other than war. So disaster recovery is the kind of thing that distracts and degrades the ability to perform traditional military functions. You all volunteer military politically very popular, especially with young voters not the best thing for forced preparedness those people would say and failing to consummate the arms purchases with the US in generally to increase defence spending as has long been promised. To the future Lin says that these are indicative of some pretty lasting structural features but there's still room for political choice and maybe Ma are the successors can do a better job on these issues. Three last chapters touch on briefly Richard Bush assesses the rebound in US-Taiwan relations during Ma's tenure and says this has been turretically positive. It's improved US-Taiwan relations the improvement in cross-strait relations has taken the pressure off of Washington and it's been very supportive of how developments have occurred across the strait so the politics of the relationship is good the economics are a little weaker I don't like ractokomy painted beach not your best food perhaps it's become a trade issue Tifa and TPP are just not moving forward in pace with Taiwan at hope that those seem hard to solve Looking ahead Bush says don't worry about the abandon Taiwan thesis that's academic chatter policy intellectual chatter that it's not going to happen it hasn't changed the US's basic policy orientation and indeed the commitment is stronger under Ma and under Chun because it says that Taiwan will blow up the relationship has faded and because Taiwan is not the only problem in US-Taiwan relations if it were to go away other problems would be there and abandoning Taiwan would worry America's allies in the region of America's commitment to them so there's no real good security reason for the US to abandon Taiwan Looking to the future Bush says the most likely scenarios for the medium term in cross-strait relations are continued slow progress or a slowdown both of those are better for the US then crisis or rapid progress on Beijing's terms which is the only way progress is likely to occur Uesahashi then takes us into Japan-Taiwan relations a little discussed subject is that that pointed out and he says here to it's a somewhat similar story like US-Taiwan relations there's been great improvement during the Ma years but the strength there however has been the economic relationship it's been a real bright spot and it's been reinforced by cultural and social ties including India has an interesting discussion including a shared sympathy that came out of Fukushima and Murakawa the cooperation between the two countries and indeed the two societies that came out of that seems highly positive although there have been a couple of political aspects somewhat mishandled the political side of the relationship has been somewhat more troubled so here is the mirror image of US-Taiwan relations it's good on economics we run politics the political side of Japan doesn't want to get near this whole issue when you're dealing with China and the way that Japan is it's a little tough to go too far down the path of dealing with Taiwan in ways that suggest closer security alignment or cooperation and there is the Senkaku Diolwio Senkaku Diolwio Diolwio Tai you got to talk three things those pesky little things in these kind of things stick up above water and cause them much trouble there that has obviously been something of a problem because the ROC line has been very close to the PRC line in terms of Chinese sovereignty of the islands or whatever non-Japanese sovereignty of the islands and Ma's dissertation of course having fueled the flames as far as the deafening of your concerns and giving them to the background but by and large it hasn't been as bad as one might fear because the East China Sea peace initiative has put some distance between Taiwan and Beijing on that issue and because the fisheries agreement that they were able to forge works for both parties this cooperation that sort of shoves Beijing's claims a little bit to the side final chapter I'll mention here before turning to a quick summary of my own is the secret of England who talks about Taiwan's pursuit of participation in international organizations Taiwan's attempt to join more and more especially those UN affiliated and therefore invading to the state member only organizations and here she studies the WTO's government procurement agreement a follow on to the basic WTO agreement having to do with how governments purchase wisdom services and the WHO, the World Health Administration the World Health Assembly the sort of meeting side of the WTO and the international health regulations and of course these are successes in a sense during the Mayers and the Taiwan gained access it had previously been denied but she says these may looking ahead prove to be pure victories because Taiwan could only get observer status in the WHA which is kind of a recent conditional status and Taiwan had to accept terminology that eroded at least the more state like references you would see in the terminology used during the Chun years and it had to act with us in Beijing being the gatekeeper to Taiwan's access to these organizations looking ahead Wichler says we can't necessarily play out these examples very far Beijing has said these have because the lawyers have put up no presidential value right each organization has to be taken on its own terms alright that was a busman's tour now you don't you still have to buy it because you want the details you want the footnotes you want the subtlety of argument you want to be able to report back to the authors how badly I put your work in my short summer let me turn now to a little more detail on my chapter which is the last one in the book editor's privilege on Taiwan and soft power and it's about cross straight soft power competition now I'm not a huge fan of soft power the concept that is current enough is at least an analogy or a metaphor for what goes on across straight soft power or the ability of the state to get what it seeks through normative appeal rather than coercion or economic side payments matters in cross straight relations and in Taiwan's press for security it's a concept that of course started about the United States but the idea of soft power of winning without using force of course has deep roots in Chinese political thought all the way back in ancient times and it's been a part of cross straight relations for quite some time now at least back to when Jack Dingwall realized he needed to democratize to keep the US in play and as contrast began to be drawn across the straits on this issue soft power is also a weapon of the week that's W-E-A-K not the weapon for the third week it's a weapon of the relatively weak faced with the strong and it serves largely defensive ends push back against threatening forces certainly for Taiwan but also for China soft power is ultimately a relative asset who has more and a relational asset can I use it to persuade you in some sense so if you look at the soft power structure I'll say a little bit about the Chinese side a little bit about the Taiwan side what we've seen is a rise in attention to and thinking about policy discussions concerning soft power along with China's rising hard power so a lot of hard power accrues and they start saying we need to talk about and other similar terms what does China's soft power consist of at least insofar as it's relevant across the straits in Taiwan the China economic model a fearsome tool for economic development something which survived the Asian financial crisis and the global financial crisis which laid low China's neighbors and then the economic superpowers and the Asian model on steroids yet it's got its limits Chinese sources are very reluctant to articulate a Chinese model for a whole bunch of reasons it's hard to define and if you define it and somebody uses it and it's failed that's been a problem and there's also growing doubt about how robust the model is as China's growth curve flattens as readjustment seems to be necessary and as the political stability side of it may come into question but China is repicking itself as a singularly benign great power China will never be a hegemon it was a victim of colonial oppression so it would never oppress others as a developing country it's principal priority in foreign affairs a peaceful environment in which to proceed to develop in other words don't worry everybody should just chill and that of course is an agenda which gets reinforced by soft power and tries to develop soft power but there's a limit to how far you can go with that so we've seen some struggling so we've seen how do you feel about a philping issue how do you feel about a peaceful rise let's fall back a peaceful bell of a philping time I want to be a little tough too how about a harmonious world so there's this quest for the benign sounding phrase that's kind of like pivot versus rebalance it tells you that something isn't quite sticking some of that's aimed for Taiwan particularly the peaceful will and the cross trade relations you see also some attempt to portray China's benign stance on Taiwan in the granting Taiwan's vacancies a greater international space and accepting the 92 consensus in the diplomatic truce and so on but it has its limits it can't get rid of the 2000 white paper or the anti-succession law or the push for considering political talks as part of the discussion and it especially can't get rid of perverse consequence in the cross-strain context of Beijing's usual deep commitment to anti-interventionism so part of Beijing's benign soft power strategy abroad is we, unlike the Americans don't muck around other countries internal affairs we don't invade them, we don't try to remake their governments well it's all well and good but of course if it's Beijing talking about Taiwan that's an internal affair it's aimed at the US and others to keep out of our internal affairs so that little piece has a boomerang and of course the China's problems and its maritime periphery and with the US have kind of taken the bloom off the benign power rows at least for the time being thirdly, political, internal politics as soft power here this non-interference pluralism stuff flour buton in terms of the international system everybody can have his own domestic politics sort of the domestic face of what I was just talking about well again I've got the same problems as what I was just talking about in a way that Beijing's political brand the Chinese political model unlike the Chinese economic model doesn't get a whole lot of followers much of anywhere except maybe in Pyongyang China's culture is the fourth element and there's been a specific attempt to say cultural soft power is an important part of soft power you see it all the way at the Wujitaw and Xi Jinping and others talking about it and here you see things like the Confucian resonance of a harmonious world and a harmonium in diversity you see the term offences stuff that people used to write about the advent of public diplomacy cctv all over the place the Confucius Institute these are all very much cultural gambas and of course it is especially powerful because of the Taiwan because of the assertion of the Chineseness of Taiwan to bring it inside that umbrella. Here too there are some limits of course greater cultural and social contract across the straits has had an ambiguous impact on Taiwanese attitudes toward China and Chinese culture and who bears that culture there was a constituency for decent association on the Taiwan side and by and large there are sort of problems with Chinese soft power here too the Confucius Institutes have gotten a lot of blow back and the Ai Wei Wei and others are sort of counter cultural if you will cultural icons in China modern Chinese culture so let me turn quickly to the Taiwan side of the story to a shocking degree it mirrors China's soft power partly that's happenstance what are the resources or potential resources of the soft power of Taiwan partly it's a game it's a contest in a struggle where Taiwan has to respond to what China is up to and vice versa so ethnologically Taiwan has a pretty appealing model the East Asian model is one of the four tigers it got this whole thing going that's all been very good and it's done it with democracy and relative equality and all that stuff it's pretty appealing but it's pretty small it doesn't belong large the way the US or China or somebody else does in international consciousness and for developing countries Taiwan's growth miracle was a long time ago and far far away and what now is a pretty anaemic growth rate it's just not stirring emotions the way it might once have instead Taiwan's economic soft power has converted much more to an argument that Taiwan plays by global rules it's part of international supply chains it lives up the market standards it's a good WTO member it's part of the club it's not stealing your jobs or engaging in unfair trade practices of the way China is that matters not for developing countries it matters hugely for the developed world Japan, the US and others and that's the constituency where this soft power battle is really being fought and you see this notion of this global norm of international invocation you see it with Moz, pursuit of Tifa and TPP in a slight way to continue for an affair of soft power well here, Taiwan flips what China has been up to Taiwan says if anybody is going to upset the international status quo it's not Taiwan it's Beijing so this quest for state-like status for security inside the international system this long ongoing quest joining every organization that will allow Taiwan in behaving like a state signing on to the Human Rights Covenants at least through domestic legislation all these kinds of things stressing this sort of alliance of democracies it's at least part of the TPP and things like that all of this is an attempt to sort of look like a normal and pro status quo state and that helps make any attempt to disturb the cross-grade status quo as something the blame for which goes to Beijing and here under mother is of course China we're no longer doing media and equal or there are two state thesis it's not that kind of separation there has been backsliding but you still got the mutual non-denial the three nos the quest for international space and the quest for maintaining the diplomatic relations and where Ma has strayed even farther from his predecessors he's had to be in a hasty retreat so Taiwan's policy has remained protecting this state-like status such that China is the one upsetting the international arrangement if it tries to pressure Taiwan into a subtle one as opposed to China's view which is Taiwan's trying to break away and therefore upset the norm of not passing an existing state so we saw the peace accord being dropped the liberal talks being dropped and things like that next to last in terms of internal political legal order I touched on this a little bit Ma has certainly continued his predecessors pattern of stressing the importance of Taiwan's democracy and Taiwan's human rights as soft power values it makes Taiwan a beacon for China and change he said it explicitly is inaugural and it plays very much to the US again this goes all the way back to Dengel but you've seen it throughout the administrations into the Ma administration stressing the milestones of democracy stressing the progress Taiwan has made and sure there are bumps in the road legislatures hit one another legislators hit one another and shirts show up in the streets these things happen but people say elections are illegitimate but by and large Taiwan's gotten through all those and every time it gets through one of those and an effect makes the argument stronger and the main line is no longer beating up on Taiwan's democracy and its propaganda as much as it used to and here Taiwan benefits not only from its own accomplishments but it makes them as they are in some respect it benefits from the main line's utter failure it collapses its soft power as a political model and the apparent abandonment of the reforms and achieve you know when you jail somebody like Dio Shawddol for charter 08 that's really kind of a bad contrast with the claims of a democratic constitutionalism on the other side of the street last finally culture Taiwan's played a tit for Taiwan you want a Confucius Academy, how about a Taiwan Academy you want to have the 2008 Olympics well here's Warriors of the Rainbow and there's the Venice Film they're always attempting to get these other cultural things out there this of course it's worked reasonably well but again in Taiwan it's too small to be a huge cultural power and there is a problem that the two ways of defining culture have problems one is to emphasize the Chinese side which Ma is bad but then you're not differentiating from the mainland and you risk beating a mainland culture argument the other is you go with Aboriginal culture in Taiwan which is part of the Warriors of the Rainbow and you're trying to have any use to hang things in front of John Cash's face but of course that's not the culture meaningfully of the vast majority of Taiwanese who are ethnically so there's that so I think in the end basically to butcher hobs when nothing else has turned up clubs or trumps but where institutional restraints on use of force are extremely thin as they generally are in international relations hard power matters right but since Taiwan doesn't have any clubs in its hand it's playing hearts you're trying to play diamonds too and you're not having any much got more money I'm sure there's a feeling to values and to the squishier things that's not a great strategy but it's the best strategy in a bad situation given the assets that Taiwan has and it's especially an important strategy for the third party audience here which is the US and if you look at US foreign policy there's been a deep ambivalence throughout American history between realistic power based national and security type thoughts that's still there and Taiwan can play some to the hard edge side of things but it can play much more effectively than the value side of things and that's why I think soft power competition across the straits is likely to be with us for a while and it's a game that Taiwan is wise to play even if it's someone that's playing one that it sometimes plays but we can Thanks So what I'll do is very very briefly just talk a little bit about my chapter which looks at Taiwan's party system and how the party system has changed particularly since 2008 Essentially we think about party systems as patterns of competition and cooperation within a political system So when we look at party systems we're looking at all the relevant parties together rather than individual single parties We tend to look at party system change through a number of angles fragmentation number of relevant parties and their relevant sizes We look at their ideological distance the way they move towards the centre or towards the poles they converge or divergent We also look at the interrelationship between political parties Are they hostile antagonistic or are they cooperative For example if we think about the Lidonfuei era where we're seeking conferences that really allow Taiwan to democratise and have a blueprint for a multi-party democracy And then there's kind of the three kind of dimensions that I look at in my chapter So how have things changed Where did we start from So if we think back to 2008 the party system looks something like this we had quite polarised political parties If we think about national identity as a policy spectrum we had the DDP moving to the centre towards the far left of our spectrum talking about almost back to its position in the early 1990s and we have the KMT again talking about unification of one China and re-embracing some of those old Chinese nationalist singles We had as Jack mentioned we had fights in Parliament so we had very very antagonistic interparty relations and from around mid-2005 we have a trend towards a two party system and it's really kind of clear when we look at the election results in 2008 when all these small parties are wiped out perhaps we could even say at least in terms of seatships it looks almost like a one party dominant system at least initially So what's happened since that picture in 2008 Well in many ways I think we've seen a lot of continuity I would say that the parties are as far apart as they have been. There's been some attempt at moderation in the case of the DDP but I would say that the KMT has probably shifted even more to the right towards unification and close relations with China and this is something that came out in our analysis of the 2012 election In terms of the interparty relationship I think it's just as hostile as ever and again we've seen that in some of the in things like parliamentary clashes lack of interparty negotiation Perhaps the one area where we do see some signs of change is in terms of fragmentation In 2012 some of the smaller parties did manage to get through that 5% threshold So for example the Taiwan Solidarity and the PFP managed to win the number of seats This kind of brings me on to one of the really interesting contradictions that we've seen in the Taiwanese political scene When we look at the overall party systems I think we've got a similar trend in Japan and perhaps South Korea is a trend towards dominance of two mainstream political parties But when we look at public opinion we've got very very low trust rates in mainstream political parties really strong alienation with the major political parties I mean for example if you think about the DVP I like the KMT in 2006 DVP doesn't really look like a party that's waiting to come to power in the way that my India was in 2006 The fact that Suzhentang for example resigned after Sunflower does show something I think So in other words the KMT is extremely popular the DVP has really taken its place at least not yet A few months ago I joined a seminar on the Sunflower movement and during the seminar for more time raised the question about how many of you are satisfied with mainstream political parties I think almost everyone said no I think this says something about the DVP in theory should be really fitting into this gap Another key element of that seminar was the number of people who were calling on then to create a new political party So for me I think one of one of the interesting texts of development of the party system is what's going to happen in November 2014 when we have a lot of local elections both for executive and for city and county councils To what extent will third forces actually make an impact because this is quite significant nomination of the smaller parties including the Green Party which I'm doing some research on So I think this could be really quite interesting how the whether we see any shift in the party balance Last time in 2010 there was a rough 50-50 balance between the KMT and the DVP Will we see this in 2014? For what I could see there's probably going to be some space for smaller parties but there will be some challenges We will actually come back to this topic in about a month's time when my students will be talking about the development of the Taiwan Solidarity Union and I'll talk about the development of the Taiwanese Green Party I think it's definitely something to look out for I think on that note then I think we should move to Q&A I would like to say I remember this mention so far the anti-nuclear movement which in terms of last year's demonstrations we looked at what you called the summer power in Taiwan now and a very wide spectrum of class members How has that played into the critical system in that months since last march? Okay, let me say a few things on this one This is a topic that for example Simola Grano is particularly interested in in her forthcoming body she's working on this a couple of times at SOAS I think in many ways the anti-nuclear movement has benefited from Fukushima I think that I mean if you look for example there's a really amazing shift if you compare public opinion on fourth nuclear power station in 2001 with the last two years especially since Fukushima there's been a huge shift so I think that's it did come up in the 2012 elections when Tsain did you a kind of nuclear free homeland Marl managed to diffuse that issue by talking about phasing out one, two and three but I think it has grown as a movement and we saw that in the way that it emerges towards the end of the sunflower movement and the fact that there was a kind of compromise on stopping construction at least officially temporarily but would they really really restart another thing that strikes me at least from my discussions with people who are involved in this movement is the gap between them and the DDP I mean a lot of people I talk to really hate the DDP and feel that they were kind of let down by the DDP when it was in power so I think it seems to become a much broader coalition we'd be a big issue in the future I'm not sure it seems to a certain extent to have been diffused with that kind of recent compromise and much more your area of the mind but a couple of things I think in terms of some of the things that go on in the analysis of the book it's an interesting test case for clothes of social movements theses because on the one hand it is an issue that has gained a lot of salience and I think his depiction pretty plausibly is that social movements of course represent whoever they represent but they catch fire or not based on some degree of resonance and that's sort of the front below organics side but there's also this question about how do they link up with political parties and on the one hand there is this long standing DDP willingness to be somewhat critical at such but perhaps the DDP but we hear that they are on a lot of social justice things despite talking to me before we start a new style on the MRT I think it's really interesting to see I would say that the issue has become far more salient over the last two years that it has been at any point perhaps since 2000 2001 and I think that's quite interesting the fact that the KMT has been forced to compromise when it wasn't in the past I think it's really quite achieved and I think it's clearly one of the strongest elements of this social movement scene and how much do you think is the the social disillusionment with both the local parties versus the sort of special quality of the issues posted between them I think it's definitely part of the world it's really a practical question you were talking in the beginning when you were saying about how we put them together and it's been a process that's happened over the past two years so it's just wondering really what you would perhaps add or what would you like to see perhaps being entered in the book if it was to be something that was to be starting now knowing what's happened so obviously it was still within his within his terms is there anything perhaps maybe you would change within your own work or anything that you would like to see being added in it or something that you would begin now probably that's what I was saying of course everything in the book is right and here's what we did in the second edition I think I don't think anything has changed profoundly I mean I think there are recent developments along to incorporate and have some of the office address meaning the sunflower movement probably the most obvious one because it has clear implications for the social movements chapter and it clearly has implications for Bato and Fel and their chapters on the party but may or may not be at least something worth chewing on about what that not only what it causes but what it reveals about is that periodically over the years in Taiwan politics it sees eruptions of youth participation and a lot of strawberries and that resonates in a funny way for me with the discussion of the all-voluntary and that chapter if kids really are younger people really are a more volatile political force that seems I'm surprised at what seems to be the lack of a consistent perception of the importance that's monitored in Taiwan politics like everybody ignores it until it comes up again and political leaders seem to react in terms of the external relations things you know we have more data now on how the change in leadership on the mainland plays out I don't think it was fundamentally changed any conclusions but you know we have a third plenum which is not a law important policy but at least it sort of sketches a lot more clearly and I think although across great policy continuity has been remarkably robust despite some return to some of the strong politics that has not been caught in the wake of the general toughening line pursuing Chinese interests standing up to the members on the other side of disputes one last thing I'll say on that is I think one of the really interesting moves was only which was still pretty co-aid if not with the one that went to press release and also being done rather than simply tickered with this last moment is what to make of the daylight that the mon government has put between itself and Beijing on the territorial it's a fairly abrupt relation but I think for years one of the things that complicated Taiwan's relations with Japan the complicated attempt to stake out its separate existence in that space was it was quoting chapter and verse from the PRC handbook the old ROC handbook on the maritime territorial plans and now with the with a shift to something that sounds much more like US policy follow international law resolve the issues peacefully and and Beijing implicitly somewhat so the budget of Beijing being really assertive on this and then the ability with that creation of some space to forward the fisheries agreement with Japan and to forward to deal with the Philippines simply killing the Taiwan fishermen to improve Taiwan's relations or at least not only to do the immediate damage but to help build a stronger longer term foundation for those kind of relationships and on the old status game it helps because fisheries agreements with countries with states to enter into one another states protect their nationals abroad so contrast the fisherman incident with the question handing over the several Taiwanese in Manila I think this is a great question I think the south house is one we just had a few references I think it's very good it's a little bit too early to judge what's the impact I know at least one of my students is writing on this and it's quite speculative again we'll get a bit of a sense in the November elections I know that that would be great but I'm always waiting for the next one so unfortunately in Taiwan you don't have the result of the forecast that's right why Taiwanese politics is so interesting full of surprises does Chris talk much about education reform in his chapter I think that might be an interesting thing to it's mostly about the modern cultural policy Chinese the anti-Chun I think that would be an interesting thing but we do have this idea about reversal and the degree that he's reversed brought China back into curriculum so that would be one thing to look at another one I think that's come up particularly in the south house period was the relationship between Taiwan and Hong Kong my sense is that Taiwanese are much more interested in Hong Kong now than they were in the past at a very moment when Beijing is doing its best to in some ways make the one country two systems model its practice it's not terrible, it's never been very completely out of the element the moment for Taiwanese to be focusing on right as Beijing says the chief executive of the life of the Orals are going to be pretty constrained which I don't think is surprising in the wake of the NPC interpretation on their quest for democratisation back nearly ten years ago now but it still was another new a final thing I think would be interesting for future research is looking at the impact of administrative change in other words if you look back into the domestic reform what's Mars done what is Mars done domestically very little one of the few big things I can see is city mergers I've never seen a really good academic paper on that topic just as I've never seen a good academic paper on the impact of getting rid of the provincial government I think that would be a really interesting comparison of the actual impact I'm sure there'll be a lot to say on that OK we've got Abiu and Dan I just want to ask two questions based on your observation is there any commonality or changing trends with two terms of Mars I think that's probably something we can look forward to in future or at least can roll it over when you're thinking about what is going to change this in the market another is what's your view of a Scottish referendum that has been solved on Taiwan and the across Australia relations is a fun question but I think everyone is keeping their eyes on the result We'll dip Taiwan's chance of getting into NATO Should we take Joanne's one as well OK Thank you for your point on the authors how you talk about their position that Taiwan joining these international organizations as China's Taipei actually does not help Taiwan's sovereignty as far as ROC is concerned because my thesis is on the toxic relations and all of my arguments apply to the U.San's power similar to the approach that by joining organizations under satisfying Beijing's conditions Taiwan is actually giving up its sovereignty as an ROC so to speak So going back to Niki's question about following up where the volume 2 and what other issues are to be explored citizens of 92 consensus is more than 20 years old in the history so to speak So I'm just wondering whether we should take a more revisionist approach towards the 90 consensus and what it actually means for Taiwan because my argument was during his administration he sees this as an opportunity to exercise pragmatic diplomacy and expand Taiwan as the way he interprets it but unfortunately as far as Beijing is concerned since Beijing represents one China and OCI is one China with respect to interpretations of all of Beijing's hegemonic discourse across the straits so I was wondering whether we should just look back towards it and see since it's been 20 years what it means for Taiwan and its sovereignty as the ROC Thank you Okay, we'll go one more then Hi, I'm a student at the IOV and I'm very happy to be here today and I have two questions I'm quite impressed that in the book you analyze some the Taiwanese topic from political, economic, societal and foreign affairs perspective but I'm wondering why there's why you it seems that you just mentioned that you see the foreign relationships with Taiwan and Japan it's mentioned in the book but how about the Asian countries because we know that Asian countries they have a agenda that they are going to unite have an organization such as EU in 2015 and I'm wondering is that going to impact Taiwan or not because it seems that most professors now they are focusing more on the Taiwan relationship with China or Japan or those eastern countries but how about the south eastern countries and this is what I'm quite curious and the second question is I'm very curious about why you are interested in Taiwan related topics because because Taiwan is eager to introduce international students but most of the international students are mainly from the Asian and I'm very curious why western people why what scary researchers like you are so interested in Taiwan's topic but why do you like Taiwan and Japan's okay let me just say there's one point on the EU's question I think comparing the first and the second term I think one of the most interesting differences is in terms of public opinion in Mars' first term its public opinion went down very quickly but recovered quite strongly If you look at KMT and Master Poor rates by about mid 2011 it was actually really high. We get a reverse trend in his second term. It falls very, very quickly after he gets re-elected even before he's been re- inaugurated and it just doesn't recover. So there's no kind of recovery there. So for me I think that's the biggest difference. Because the KMT support level has gone down, the DUP's looks better. Again, Sujant Alun raised that issue when he was speaking it so earlier this year. But it's not really still around that 25% so it's not. That's right, yes. So for me, the other trend that I touched upon was that in his first term the shift towards the two-party system was very obvious. It continued for the second term. But there seems to be a little bit more space for smaller parties in the second term. Parties due to mainstream party alienation. A bunch of questions there, I'll try to say a little bit to each of them. In terms of the first to second terms, I think it is the remarkable weakness of loss throughout the second term. He did not have terribly robust approval shortly after the first election. So part of his first term to cover his second term has been anemic at best. We can talk about why that is and then some of the chapters will get into the possible explanation. I think they're fascinating. I don't know that anybody's done a very good job in convincing argument about the relative weight that should be assigned to them. Some of it is maws own personal weaknesses as a politician and a manager. Some of it is a famously fractious KMT internally. And that his lack of roots map is sort of the internal dynamic. But some of it is, he couldn't deliver on his campaign promises. There were some pretty robust claims including in 2012. Basically, it hasn't really come to pass in terms of what the economic fruits were going to be. I want to think about world standards, but people have pretty high expectations that Mawn never really delivered on that. I think in 2008 he benefited from the not changing phenomena. That election was a blowout or maybe it was going to be a blowout, but 2012 was a lot closer. The not that thing becomes what we've done pretty lately, which I think hurts it. I think even in external relations, Washington used to wake up with nervous twitches every morning when Sean was president to find out what's going to happen next. Mawn took that out and it was a massive sigh of relief. But again, you can't sustain a sigh of relief in great years. You start sort of saying, okay, well that's nice. How about letting some beef in? How about doing what we think you need for Tifa? How about buying those weapons that we took a political hit with Beijing and with Congress? Let's see that move forward. I think the landline waiting in cross-strait Rathbone-Scholm is that the strategy of first easy, then hard, first economic and political is. You have a great deal of consensus for those first steps, but almost by definition or what the term is meant to capture is, you're headed toward things where it's much harder to get consensus. And that started to come up. I mean, I thought it was DPD came pretty quickly on closing out the book, but still the argument is there about how it would lead into the launch of the next steps. In terms of Scotland referendum, every time the international map is rearranged, a new order is drawn, everybody in Taiwan gets very concerned about it. You've got this about Kosovo, you've got this about the Soviet breakout. And when it goes the other way, when Germany, the United States, everybody is watching about what this means. I know this guy's referendum is something of an obsession right here right now, I understand why. But it's, I think, win or lose. If it is relevant all to Taiwan, it sort of strengthens the argument for a right to self determination. So the argument is look in a functioning democratic system where people consider themselves to have a somewhat separate identity. You let the people in that area decide rather than saying ask a vote by everybody in the UK about it. And you try to persuade rather than, of course. That said, though, obviously Beijing's not going anywhere near that. No one in Taiwan is arguing for that kind of referendum right now politically because it will be too explosive. And from a very, very parochial international lawyer's perspective on this, self determination doesn't get you as much as you think. It gets you kid back, it doesn't get you to a separate country. If the central government is willing to accommodate a significant whole rule and adaptation to local circumstances, it may not get you much more than a full implementation of one country, two systems model. So it's a, to the extent that's aimed at external audiences including places like the US and then people who may occasionally embrace international legal norms if only for clients and convenience, it does have its limitations. In terms of time I'm getting into international organizations on terms that seem to give up sovereignty. You know, it strikes me as a tactical choice. I'm not so, I mean, I know there are many people who are really more cynical about what I'm up to, but I think that despite all the political polarization, there is a strategic similarity and I'm on the way to the end of my deal, and even somewhat back to young people, where basically they all want international space and security for Taiwan, or the ROC, or the ROC of Taiwan. It's like, you know, it's a couple of different things. You know, whatever you want to call this thing. And there is a profound and legitimate and perhaps the plausibility of different arguments changing the circumstances. Debate about how you best achieve that, right? And there's a pretty good argument that Chan overreached, overstretched, maybe even acquainted to, and the blowback was costly to Taiwan security. There's also a pretty good argument that mommy had given up too much. So I think people of good faith can disagree about the best tactics and good jobs from the hindsight. You know, I think Taiwan's access to the UN organizations, the UN affiliate organizations has come at a fairly high symbolic price. And that's a fair thing to point out. The secret doesn't in your chapter in our book. I would say, though, that one has to be sensitive to the other side of the argument, which is, even participation on a limited basis with Beijing as something of a gatekeeper is still something which has value. Now it may be outweave on a cost but it has real value because given the barriers to certain higher levels of formal ownership, you know, being present on the international scene, you know, keeping the diplomatic resolve sort of stuff, it's not going to win the game but it's a way of avoiding losing it in the short term. And I actually think of it in the very long run, it may have been in Taiwan, because it had the kind of sequencing it has. That is, we've got plenty of time to push back very, very hard at the time when Taiwan was at risk of being squeezed to the very margins. And perversely, you know, Beijing took the deep green's best shot, right, and survived it. And I think that's what's created some of the space of tolerance now that Maha has been able to think. History will go a little more high. Post-92 consensus, you know, one of the things that we should include in the book, but it wasn't as much on the radar screen but in discussions I've had in Beijing and in Shanghai on this subject in more recent months, there has been more flirtation with this idea of a post-92 consensus consensus. Something has to replace the 92 consensus. Anything that can replace that is going to move more to Beijing's thoughts. So the question will you reach a point where where this is seen as too old and too dated and we could best off suit you. So 14 or 16 consensus or something. Finally, the Why No ASEAN discussion. Well, I think Hannah would have said enough pages already. We tried to wedge in another couple of chapters. But I think really, there's a reason this book is about the politics of Mainland area and the things that matter for international politics for Taiwan continue to be dominated by the mainland, the US, and then the next circle out is Japan. ASEAN matters, especially matters if the extra door opening in the free trade area starts really going down that path. And I think it's going to be very complicated because the ASEAN-related institutions are among the emerging test cases for what these non-violator agreements or these multi-lateral institutional structures do in terms of including or excluding Taiwan. So the ASEAN-based things are a big part of it. RSAP is going to be another. TPP is going to be another. And I think those are going to be important cases to study whether Taiwan can get in the door on these institutions. The real concern that we are looking at from a Taiwanese perspective is that we are at a moment when universal institutions are under siege. The WTO is stalled. And so some of the vacuum is being filled by regional organisations. And it's not clear what that means to Taiwan. It could be better, it could be worse, it could be, I think, contingent. So that would be for around a third of the issue. Megan, one impression I have is that there was probably more attention on Taiwan's south-east Asian relations in the 1990s when Taiwan was really trying to push. One area where that is being developed is on migration. So, for example, Taiwanese companies moving into, things like Vietnam, on migration of south-east Asian wives into Taiwan. There it seems the field is developing quite well. On the second question, my sense is actually Taiwanese universities are becoming quite internationalised in terms of the overseas students. One of the things that struck me up on my last visits, for example, is the numbers of French and German students being Taiwan compared to the past. And the other element of your question about why do we study Taiwan is a great question. I remember in, I think it was in 2001 or 2002, Shelley Riga touches upon this question. I think she raises a number of reasons why Taiwan is so attractive to study. I think one of the issues she raises is the ease of getting data. Doing interviews is so straightforward. Service data is available online. I think that helps. It's a relatively safe place to do field work compared to many of the places that we look at at science. A lot of our students really need to look at risk when they're going out into the field. Taiwan is not really a problem. I think because Taiwan's science and its political system is really suited to doing comparative positive or comparative social science research, that helps. We can test the areas. A lot of our chapters in this book do that. I think a final thing that Shelley touches upon is collaborative research. I think we found it really good working together with Taiwanese scholars. For example, my Green Party project is working with a Taiwanese-based scholar. I think it's pretty fruitful, actually, because we're from quite similar educational backgrounds. Most Taiwanese academics are either educated in Europe or the US, and I think that definitely does help. I think all that's true, and that accounts for a lot of it. The other thing is, political scientists are by and large changed junkies. We're always trying to do the delta. What's the dependent variable? Something has to change on your independent variables. Taiwan has been replete with that within living memory. You see this remarkable economic transformation, this remarkable political transformation. You see an extraordinary rate of external pressures. The problem becomes that all these things are happening, so you're either guessing or focusing on one aspect, or you're trying to be comparative or twentechlit, but it just seems overflowing with these kinds of questions. Plus, it's a darn pleasant place to be. You can breathe, you can eat. We'll take a final question then. Jason. I have a question about the presidential link-down. I think that was a quite painful time, a quite painful time in the second half, but I mean in the second half of the presidential presidency, especially in the last two years, that there was almost nothing beyond what he did. That's right. And the president himself could hardly exercise his presidential power. And it seems that the history has not repeat itself, mind you, is wearing, changing against old shoes. So, two questions. So, first of all, how do you compare the presidential link-down to just banana in the last two years of the second term? And the second question is that, maybe in the last two years of the degree rule, there was a very big political frustration, and that frustration, last month, theoretically, however, had been confirmed. So, would you only, by this kind of frustration, to claim you would lead to the possible change in position to use later? Would it lead to a change in ruling parties? No. Can this change in position? Yeah. To do that. Probably moving to the fundamental sense or even back to the Taiwan identity spectrum. Okay. Well, comparing the two, so it's lately 2006 versus, late 2006 versus late 2014, one big advantage that one has is his common majority. It's in theory he should be able to do whatever he wants, while Chen was always short on the majority. So, it's not really surprising how the fact that Chen achieved anything is quite amazing. But I think as a manager, it has to be a question there, because if you've got a great big majority, there's very limited constraints, but if we are talking about him being a lame duck, that does say something. Despite how unpopular Chen was in 2006, do you think he still did okay in those 2006 elections? If we look at the way opinion polls are for November, it's surprising actually how the KMT is actually looking reasonably strong. If you consider how unpopular it has been, you would expect to get a landslide majority against the KMT, but I don't think that's going to happen in 2014. So, I see a bit of a similar actor there. Will the KMT shift? I don't see any signs at this date, but it probably needs a major electoral defeat. Generally parties only shift when they have to. It's very, very difficult. So, you need a number of ingredients. You need a change of party leader. You need an exam of shock, which could be a bad electoral defeat. And you probably need a change in the factional balance of power. Harmon agenda. So, I think we'll have to wait and see the scale of defeat if the KMT does lose. Interesting set of questions. You know, in terms of the lame duck issue, in some sense, the March of Contrast reminds me of the Tuobans, right? You know, we have a lame duck president in the United States as well. On one hand, he frequently talks about using the power of the executive. Congress won't do anything. And that's probably because of how majority of it's also probably to some parties' fractures. So, in some ways, it's analogous to both of them. So, he talks the use of executive power. There have been some examples. That's so much so that some congressmen are now suing it for being a tyrant. On the other hand, there's a growing narrative that he's just given up, right? He's just waiting for the next thing. He gets through the next ten years out of any major mess-ups and right off in the sunset. I think you see that going. I think some of it, as much as it's kind of academically shallow, I think, you know, personalities do matter. I think at the end, Chun decided he was going to swing for the fences, right? He was going to try to have a historical legacy to get what he could out of this. There was a nice paper, I think, Tom Ginsburg did, on gambling for resurrection. Basically, when you're at rock bottom, you've got a choice of trying to avoid the downside or you take the big risk to make Sarah pale when you're vice-president again. And you hope that it's a game changer, right? And so, as you see in the last few years of Chun, and partly this is the anti-selection law which made him claim to respond to Chun, but that happened in 2005, right? And then the march toward the two referendum. He's clearly on that track. Whereas Ma seems to be kind of waiting it out, kind of giving up on really being able to accomplish a whole lot. Now, there are a couple of asymmetries here, and that was talked about one of them, which is I think even when you have a party in Parliament that is yours that you can't manage, you still can't run against it the way you can go against an opposition party dominated Parliament. I think the politics of that are very different. And you can be more empowered in a sense if you are a minority party president, a parliamentary minority party president, then if you are a majority party president, you can't control the majority. And toward the end, of course, the DDP was toast in the 2008 election. Near the end of Chun Chun, there was no way to win the presidency in 2008. Everybody knew that. What he does can affect the KMT's chances of winning or losing in 2016. It's not a walk. So he's got a little more of a stewardship element there. So I think it's part of the circumstance and part of the psychology. In terms of whether KMT will change its policies, that's way beyond my pay grade in terms of understanding how on domestic politics, but I think on the broader political side to compare the politics ones, that was absolutely right, that the parties that have been winning don't change lightly. Every once in a while they have the foresight to realise they need to change the state of powder. But usually what gets you to the alcoholics anonymous meeting is waking up drunk in the gutter. I mean, it's not G.I.S. So that's what happened to the Democrats in the U.S. after the 2000 was about in the forum. And then what happened, what may happen, sort of all of the party went forward. But I think it takes a lot. And I think it's going to be especially tough because I do it, but just anecdotally, my sense is that the KMT folks, including some of the potential candidates, and certainly including people around MAHM 2012 and beyond, don't believe that the KMT's vulnerability stem from unattractive policies sort of being a voter. It's not that if we could only get the policy right, we'd have a secure majority or getting the policy slightly wrong would really cost us a majority. I do think it's much more about emotional stuff and identity and exogenous shocks. In 2008 it was with the DPS on the trick for still the election now to have a little more subtle than that. But I just don't get the feeling that discourse is about what policy is going to get that media voter on our side. And this has happened in a lot of democracies with relatively polarized parties, is the game has become much more get-out-the-base than a place in the media voter. That's not a great thing for the health of democracies perhaps, but it's certainly happening in my category and I think it's happening in a lot of other places. Okay, I think on that note we should finish and enjoy some wine and get some books if you'd like to. Okay, let's give Jack one more round of applause.