Abstract
Taiwan has long depended on imported fossil energy. The government is thus actively promoting the use of renewable energy. Since 2000, domestic installations of solar water heaters have increased substantially because of the long-term subsidies provided for such systems. However, data on the annual installation area of solar collectors in recent years indicated that the solar thermal industry in Taiwan has reached a bottleneck. The long-term policy providing subsidies must thus be revised. It is proposed that future thermal applications in Taiwan should focus on building-integrated solar thermal, photovoltaic/thermal, and industrial heating processes. Regarding building-integrated solar thermal systems, the current subsidy model can be continued (according to area of solar collectors); nevertheless, the application of photovoltaic/thermal and industrial heating systems must be determined according to the thermal output of such systems.
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Country or Region: Taiwan
Carter, Ash
Abstract
In April, I laid a wreath at the Manila American Cemetery, in the Philippines, where some 17,000 Americans are buried. Looking up at the mosaic maps of battles whose names still echo throughout the U.S. Department of Defense—Guadalcanal, Midway, Leyte Gulf, and more—it is hard not to appreciate the essential role that the U.S. military has long played in the Asia-Pacific. Many of the individuals buried in the cemetery helped win World War II. For the people and nations of the region, they also won the opportunity to realize a brighter future.
Since World War II, America’s men and women in uniform have worked day in and day out to help ensure the security of the Asia-Pacific. Forward-deployed U.S. personnel in the region—serving at Camp Humphreys and Osan Air Base in South Korea, at the Yokosuka naval base and Yokota Air Base in Japan, and elsewhere—have helped the United States deter aggression and develop deeper relationships with regional militaries. The thousands upon thousands of sailors and marines aboard the USS John C. Stennis, the USS Blue Ridge, the USS Lassen, and other ships have sailed millions of miles, made countless port calls, and helped secure the world’s sea-lanes, including in the South China Sea. And American personnel have assisted with training for decades, including holding increasingly complex exercises with the Philippines over more than 30 years.
Every port call, flight hour, exercise, and operation has added a stitch to the fabric of the Asia-Pacific’s stability. And every soldier, sailor, airman, and marine has helped defend important principles—such as the peaceful resolution of disputes, the right of countries to make their own security and economic choices free from coercion, and the freedom of overflight and navigation guaranteed by international law.
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Wu, Shang-Su
Abstract
Despite the low probability of such an event, a serious nuclear power plant incident in northern Taiwan would create a multidimensional security challenge, in terms of both traditional and non-traditional security when factors such as high population density and geopolitical significance of the island are considered. Dealing with nuclear contamination, including evacuation, medical treatment and resettlement, would severely affect human, environmental and other categories of non-traditional security. Taiwan’s insufficient level of preparation would make external disaster relief crucial. Since military units are likely to be deployed by assisting countries to respond to a nuclear event, consequent Sino-US interactions in humanitarian aid and disaster relief (HADR) could be either cooperative or competitive.
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Miller, Nicholas L
Abstract
Building on the rationalist literature on sanctions, this article argues that economic and political sanctions are a successful tool of nonproliferation policy, but that selection effects have rendered this success largely hidden. Since the late 1970s—when the United States made the threat of sanctions credible through congressional legislation and began regularly employing sanctions against proliferating states—sanctions have been ineffective in halting ongoing nuclear weapons programs, but they have succeeded in deterring states from starting nuclear weapons programs in the first place and have thus contributed to a decline in the rate of nuclear pursuit. The logic of the argument is simple: rational leaders assess the risk of sanctions before initiating a nuclear weapons program, which produces a selection effect whereby states highly vulnerable to sanctions are deterred from starting nuclear weapons programs in the first place, so long as the threat is credible. Vulnerability is a function of a state’s level of economic and security dependence on the United States—states with greater dependence have more to lose from US sanctions and are more likely to be sensitive to US-sponsored norms. The end result of this selection effect is that since the late 1970s, only insulated, inward-looking regimes have pursued nuclear weapons and become the target of imposed sanctions, thus rendering the observed success rate of nonproliferation sanctions low. I find support for the argument based on statistical analysis of a global sample of countries from 1950 to 2000, an original data set of US nonproliferation sanctions episodes, and qualitative analysis of the South Korean and Taiwanese nuclear weapons programs.
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Kastner, S. L
Abstract
It is widely believed that China’s growing links to the global economy are translating into increased Chinese political influence abroad. This article explores this possibility quantitatively by examining whether increased trade with China correlates with an increased willingness by countries to accommodate Chinese interests. I use newly collected data that capture cross-national variation in the willingness of individual countries to support Chinese government positions relating to Taiwan and Tibet, and China’s status as a market economy. I find that increased trade dependence on China is correlated with an increased likelihood of taking an accommodating stance on the economic issue (market economy status). But the evidence linking trade to an accommodating stance on the political issues is more ambiguous.
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Chan, Steve
Summary
How are China’s ongoing sovereignty disputes in the East and South China Seas likely to evolve? Are relations across the Taiwan Strait poised to enter a new period of relaxation or tension? How are economic interdependence, domestic public opinion, and the deterrence role played by the US likely to affect China’s relations with its counterparts in these disputes? Although territorial disputes have been the leading cause for interstate wars in the past, China has settled most of its land borders with its neighbours. Its maritime boundaries, however, have remained contentious. This book examines China’s conduct in these maritime disputes in order to analyse Beijing’s foreign policy intentions in general. Rather than studying Chinese motives in isolation, Steve Chan uses recent theoretical and empirical insights from international relations research to analyse China’s management of its maritime disputes.
Mochizuki, Mike M., and Deepa M. Ollapally, eds
Summary
This important book analyzes nuclear weapon and energy policies in Asia, a region at risk for high-stakes military competition, conflict, and terrorism. The contributors explore the trajectory of debates over nuclear energy, security, and nonproliferation in key countries—China, India, Japan, Pakistan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, and other states in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Arguing against conventional wisdom, the contributors make a convincing case that domestic variables are far more powerful than external factors in shaping nuclear decision making. The book explores what drives debates and how decisions are framed, the interplay between domestic dynamics and geopolitical calculations in the discourse, where the center of gravity of debates lies in each country, and what this means for regional cooperation or competition and U.S. nuclear energy and nonproliferation policy in Asia.
Yu, Maochun Miles
Abstract
In the annals of the communist world, the month of October enjoys supreme sanctity. The Red October of 1917 ushered in the first socialist government, which would eventually become the Soviet Union. In the People’s Republic of China (PRC), October is indelibly enshrined as the anniversary month of the founding of the communist state, observed with a multiday national celebration. But each year, amid glorious celebratory glow marking the inauguration of the PRC, the memory of a forbidden and inglorious episode surfaces—inevitably, albeit surreptitiously and furtively—within China’s educated and political elite. The event took place a little over three weeks after Mao Zedong triumphantly announced at Tiananmen Square, on 1 October 1949, the establishment of the People’s Republic. It is the subject of a substantial and nagging controversy that is antithetical to the overall academic and political discouragement of real historical debate, especially concerning any stain on the exalted victories of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). To most inside China who know and care about the episode, it was an ignominious defeat that undercuts the familiar and mandatory political culture of triumph and glory.
Read the article online here.
Thuy, Tran Truong, and Le Thuy Trang, eds
Summary
With contributions from some of the most well-known scholars and knowledgeable insiders in the field of South China Sea studies, this book offers an array of views from international relations and legal perspectives that will help enrich the ongoing global discussion on conflict management and resolution in the South China Sea.
Wu, Shicun, and Mark Valencia
Summary
Research on The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is a valuable addition to understanding the political situation in the potentially volatile South China Sea region. This book covers topics such as baselines, historic title and rights, due regard and abuse of rights, peaceful use of the ocean, navigation regimes, marine scientific research, intelligence gathering, the UNCLOS dispute settlement system and regional common heritage. In search of varying viewpoints, the authors in this book come from multiple countries, including the Philippines, Australia, Ireland, Mainland China and Taiwan, the United States, and Indonesia, Singapore, UK and Germany. Ongoing events, such as the recent waves made by China in the East China Sea and increasing tensions between the South East Asian countries over the use of South China Sea, make this book especially pertinent.
Meconis, Charles A., and Michael D. Wallace
Summary
The 1990s saw a sea change in East Asian security concerns. The role of the ocean as a highway for trade and a location of vital resources became critical to the region’s economic growth. Protection of territorial waters, the Exclusive Economic Zones established under the UN Law of the Sea, and strategic lines of communication grew in importance. Soon, a significant change in the size and sophistication of many of the region’s naval forces began to occur as they acquired modern weapons platforms (ships and aircraft) and weapons systems. This study uses two approaches from quantitative arms race theory, the role of the armaments-tension spiral and that of enduring national rivalries, to examine the hard data on arms races in the region.
The changing balance of naval forces has been interpreted in two very different ways. One camp has viewed the development as a largely benign and justifiable modernization of naval forces for legitimate defense purposes. A second camp has warned of a naval arms race in East Asia that will spawn armed conflict. Both camps have often relied on anecdotal evidence and rhetoric. While the argument was muted by the 1997 economic crisis, many naval projects have continued to move forward. Meconis and Wallace address the meaning of East Asian naval weapons acquisitions in the 1990s in a more formal and serious manner than any previous attempts, and they propose measures that might prevent naval conflict.
Magcamit, Michale Intal
Abstract
This article examines Taiwan’s cross-strait relations with China by analyzing the linkages between their respective security interests and free trade objectives in the twenty-first century. It argues that these entanglements induce a scenario akin to the prisoner’s dilemma that compels Taiwanese leaders and policymakers to preserve the Chinese-dominated cross-strait status quo. To enhance their political appeals during general elections, the major political parties in Taiwan are being forced to cooperate with each other, albeit artificially. By adopting a parallel, watered-down approach to sensitive political issues, particularly with respect to Taiwan’s sovereignty status, the omnipresent China factor is being legitimized further. Such an approach homogenizes the parties’ political agendas with respect to Taiwanese autonomy which leads to the island’s perpetual entrapment within the One-China trajectory. Using original and secondary sources in the empirical analysis of the security–trade nexus mainly from the Taiwanese perspective, the article highlights the slow yet steady co-optation of Taiwan’s sovereign interests within China’s sinicization project.
Read the article online here.
Karackattu, Joe Thomas
Summary
The partnership between India and Taiwan is situated in a virtual maze of complex political factors. Given the core issue of contestation of Taiwan’s political status in world affairs and India’s adherence to the “One China” policy, the relationship remains a fragile one for both partners. In recent years, Taiwan has signed the Cross-Strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) with Mainland China. Increasingly, its political and economic future (including its relationships with countries such as India) will continue to be linked with Mainland China.
This book closely examines the partnership between India and Taiwan within the new post-ECFA setting that Taiwan finds itself in. It explicates the shifts and continuities in Taiwan’s economic relationship with Mainland China, discusses how partnership with India could become a crucial pivot of Taiwan’s foreign policy in the coming years, and argues why this partnership is vital for the “take-off ” of India’s own economic growth targets. The book identifies specific avenues for India and Taiwan to benefit from the economic growth success stories that they have come to represent over these years and outlines policy realignments that could allow India and Taiwan to best realize their mutuality of interests.
Kahler, Miles, and Scott L. Kastner
Abstract
While the determinants and effectiveness of economic sanctions have been the subject of a substantial and growing literature in international relations, much less attention has been given to economic engagement strategies, where a country deliberately expands economic ties with an adversary to change the target’s behavior. This article develops a theoretical framework that distinguishes between three types of engagement strategies: conditional policies that directly link economic ties to changed behavior in the target state; unconditional policies where economic interdependence is meant to act as a constraint on the behavior of the target state; and unconditional policies where economic interdependence is meant to effect a transformation in the foreign policy goals of the target state. The article presents several hypotheses concerning the conditions facilitating or hindering the successful implementation of these different strategies, and then examines engagement policies adopted by three East Asian states: South Korea, Taiwan, and mainland China. The cases offer preliminary confirmation of at least three of the hypotheses: conditional strategies are less likely to succeed when the initiating state is a democracy; transformative strategies are more likely to succeed when the target state is a democracy; and transformative strategies are more likely to succeed when a broad consensus exists in the initiating state.
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Holmes, James R., and Toshi Yoshihara
Abstract
“Summer Pulse 1904,” an exercise designed to test the ability of the U.S. Navy to operate in multiple theaters simultaneously, excited lively commentary among China’s official press. In many cases this commentary drew on the writings of an American naval theorist, Alfred Thayer Mahan. Mahan’s writings on sea power and geopolitics spurred the United States to build up its navy at the turn of the 19 th century and to seek out a share of the Asia trade. This essay examines how Mahan is shaping Beijing’s geopolitical calculations today and, in particular, its maritime aspirations. Alarmed at the prospect of de jure Taiwanese independence, China is developing the military and naval forces necessary to keep U.S. naval forces at a distance while it prosecutes a Taiwan contingency. Western observers must not dismiss China’s bid for Mahanian supremacy in the Taiwan Strait and other East Asian waters.
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