Ma Ying-jeou Research Articles

Explaining Cross-Strait Relations with Regional Integration Theory

Abstract Regional integration theory can explain past and present processes of cross-strait integration and disintegration. Historical institutionalism can analyse how the path dependence of the ‘One China policy’ shapes cross-strait relations until today and how fundamental changes can occur through critical junctures. Neofunctionalism can well explain the dynamics of economic integration through spillovers and spillbacks driven by transnational actors since the 1980s. Liberal intergovernmentalism can shed light on the bargaining processes and their outcomes during the negotiation of various cross-strait agreements under the Ma Ying-jeou administration. Postfunctionalism offers the best explanation for the central role that identity has played in cross-strait relations, in particular since 2014.

Taiwan’s Southbound Drive towards Southeast Asia

This article examines Taiwan’s foreign policy towards Southeast Asia during Ma Ying-jeou’s two-term (2008–2016) and Tsai Ing-wen’s first-term (2016–2020) presidencies. It discusses the context of East Asian regionalisation and regionalism, and Ma’s and Tsai’s primary objectives for their strategies in relation to the ASEAN region. With a focus on their trade, investment, tourism and higher education policies towards the region, this article evaluates how successful their polices have been in achieving the goals in the relevant areas.

Finding the trade-security nexus: Taiwan’s economic statecraft from 2009 to 2021

Over the last few decades, China has become one of the most important foreign investment destinations and centers of economic development in Asia. China’s growing economic clout and coercive measures lead to the following empirical puzzles: how has Taiwan perceived China’s increasing military capabilities and economic influence? What are the major factors that facilitate or constrain the role of a government agency of a weaker state in addressing the economic power of a stronger one? More specifically, what has been the purpose of Taiwan’s economic statecraft? Based on Taiwan’s official statements, regional trade data, and newspaper coverage in Chinese and English, this study investigates both positive and negative evaluations of China-Taiwan trade from 2009 to 2021. From 2009 to 2016, President Ma Ying-jeou adopted a desecuritization strategy in normalizing bilateral trade with China, and he actively promoted greater liberalization of Taiwan’s financial and service sectors for China’s investment. From 2016 to 2021, President Tsai Ing-wen employed a securitization strategy in light of the risks of economic reliance on China’s markets. The article proceeds as follows. First, it engages the current literature on economic statecraft, China-Taiwan relations, and Asian politics. Second, this study offers a framework of desecuritization and securitization of Taiwan’s trade toward China, and it highlights how the political leaders in Taiwan attempt to find a balance between trade and security. Third, it provides in-depth case studies on how Taiwan executed desecuritization and securitization strategies. Finally, it concludes with some initial thoughts on the studies of comparative economic statecraft, and provides policy implications for countries in the Asia Pacific region and beyond.

Conceptualising Taiwan’s Soft Power Projection in its ‘New Southbound Policy’

This paper examines Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy (NSP-T) from a soft power conceptual perspective. It traces the origins of the NSP-T before the Tsai Ing-wen administration came into power in 2016 and then discusses the NSP-T’s subsequent implementation. Through an overview of the earlier ‘Go South Policy’ (GSP) during the administrations of Lee Teng-hui, Chen Shui-bian and Ma Ying-jeou (1994–2016), this paper finds that soft power was not institutionalised in the policy despite it being a prevalent concept, and repeatedly propagated by successive Taiwanese presidents for their foreign policy goals. Soft power is now outlined as the ‘overarching link’ connecting Taiwan and the NSP-T countries for the attainment of the former’s three strategic aims ─ identifying a new direction and driving force for a new stage of Taiwan’s economic development, redefining Taiwan’s important role in regional development and creating future value for Taiwan’s engagements in the region. This article seeks to extrapolate how soft power contributes to the achievement of the three policy visions in Southeast Asia. Through assessments of NSP-T cooperation programmes and strategies in its six sectors of medical care, agriculture, manufacturing, tourism, education and civil society, an analytical model is introduced to explain Taiwan’s soft power projection in Southeast Asia.

Leadership and anti-corruption reforms in Taiwan: a comparison of Chen Shui-bian and Ma Ying-jeou

PurposeThis article analyzes the implementation of anti-corruption reforms in Taiwan by two former presidents, Chen Shui-bian (2000-2008) and Ma Ying-jeou (2008-2016).Design/methodology/approachA three-tier research approach, including in-depth interviews, questionnaire survey, and descriptive and inferential analysis, is adopted. In addition to Chen and Ma, 11 senior anti-corruption officials who served under both presidents were interviewed by the author. The survey questions cover 12 factors which are later grouped into the five dimensions of ethical leadership, considerate leadership, delegating leadership, participatory leadership, and performance to illustrate the causal relationship between these dimensions and performance.FindingsMa’s personal ethics are distinct from Chen’s in kind but Ma’s overall leadership and performance outshine Chen’s in degree rather than in kind. While the gap of ethical leadership between two Taiwan presidents is significantly wider than other dimensions of leadership, the outcome of the national integrity is not proportionate to the ethical leadership gap. In other words, personal ethics are not automatically transformed into political will for enhancing anti-corruption effectiveness. Three popular forms of corruption, red envelopes (bribing), influence-peddling, and vote-buying are analyzed in the context of changing political culture through national leadership. Unfortunately, both Chen and Ma produce insignificant contributions based on public surveys.Originality/ValuePolicy-makers and scholars can use these research findings to further explore how ethical leadership can enhance a country’s anti-corruption performance.

Kharis Templeman, Yun-han Chu, and Larry Diamond, eds., Dynamics of Democracy in Taiwan: The Ma Ying-jeou Years

Kharis Templeman, Yun-han Chu, and Larry Diamond, eds., Dynamics of Democracy in Taiwan: The Ma Ying-jeou Years

The mechanisms of trust formation under different conditions of political identity: An experiment among Taiwanese voters

Trust and cooperation within and between political identity groups are important issues for building a healthy civil society and democratic development. However, this research problem has seldom been analyzed under different political identity conditions by means of experimental design in Taiwan. Presidential elections have reproduced the polarization between two groups of voters supporting different presidential candidates. Therefore, in this article the authors are interested in whether political identity matters in trust exchanges among strangers. This study applies a three-stage trust game experiment to examine how trust is developed within pairs of subjects with either the same or different political identity. In the first stage subjects were randomly matched in pairs as trustor and trustee, and their political identities were not disclosed. In the second stage the pairs were still randomly matched, but each subject was informed of their partner’s political identity. In the final stage each subject could choose the preferred political identity of his/her partner. There were two mechanisms of trust-behavior formation under different identity conditions. The first mechanism was political identity. Supporters of presidential candidate Ma Ying-Jeou were more trustful than supporters of candidate Tsai Ing-Wen. Under the condition of subjects knowing their partner’s political identity, the identity effect became strongly significant in stages 2 and 3 of the experiment, especially for that of the Ma–Ma group. The second mechanism was mutuality. The mutuality effect was very significant in all three stages of the trust experiment, and that effect was stronger for those who voted for Tsai.

The Southeast Asian languages policy in Taiwan: the linguistic and nonlinguistic goals

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to examine the linguistic and non-linguistic goals of the Southeast Asian languages (SEAL) policy in Taiwan. It was proposed by former President Ma Ying-jeou’s administration to develop grades 1–12 students’ multilingual awareness, for there has been an increasingly significant presence of second-generation Southeast Asian immigrants at school. Since current President Tsai In-Wen’s first-term in 2016, the SEAL policy has been fuelled with an economic and sociopolitical agenda – the New Southbound Policy, the measure which is designed to advance the nation’s prospects in Southeast Asia. This study applies Cooper’s [1989. Language Planning and Social Change. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press] language policy as marketing and analyses the instrumentalist value of the SEAL. The Tsai government is conceptualised as a marketer; the SEAL are defined as the product; the Ministry of Education is assigned to the place as a hub which distributes the SEAL product to nationwide consumers; promotion piques the consumers’ interest in SEAL learning; price is set by making one’s profit gains larger than the sum of investment. The study concludes that the value of the SEAL product increases when its communication network is expanded from local immigrant communities and national school systems to an international business area.

The Golden Age of China-Taiwan Relations: The Explanation and Its Future

The past eight years since 2008 under the leadership of Ma Ying-jeou, the relations between China and Taiwan have been experiencing the golden age. By cooperating in many sectors, like economic partnership; social interactions; tourism and some political dialogues, both countries have been building a good relationship between them. Looking back to the past, China and Taiwan have a long series of conflicts, which ended in the Chinese Civil War 1949 with the victory of the Chinese Communist party which has now become the People’s Republic of China. Meanwhile, its opposing democratic party has now become the Republic of China (Taiwan). Since then, China and Taiwan’s relations have been on a standstill Ma Yingjeou rose to power as the president of Taiwan. By using the concept of Economic Interdependence and Conflict in World Politics by Mark J.C. Crescenzi, this paper aims to explain how the golden age of China-Taiwan relations have been going on in the past eight years up until now, as well as the future of the relations itself under the new president of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-we. This paper has the following research question: how has the good relation between China and Taiwan been built since 2008, considering their previously severed relations in the past?

The Race to Zero?: China's Poaching of Taiwan's Diplomatic Allies

The election of Tsai Ing-wen as President of the Republic of China (Taiwan) in 2016 reignited Beijing's quest to poach Taiwan's diplomatic allies. Between her election in January 2016 and reelection in January 2020, Taiwan has lost seven countries to China. After eight years of a “diplomatic truce” under President Ma Ying-jeou, China re-started its multi-pronged strategy to pressure Taiwan into eventual unification, and one of the key tactics is to poach all of Taiwan's now-15 remaining diplomatic allies to eliminate its international legitimacy. This article seeks to explain what, if any, benefits formal diplomatic relations provide Taiwan and the ways in which Beijing induces countries to switch ties. It concludes by providing recommendations for what actions the United States can undertake to slow the impending completion of the “race to zero.”

Acclaims, attacks, defenses: Critical discourse analysis of Ma Ying-jeou’s 2012 Taiwan presidential debates discourse

Taiwan, under both domestic socio-political pressures and exogenous diplomatic shocks, underwent a democratization process since the 80s in the last century. Presidential debates became a part of the election benefiting from Taiwan’s media liberalization, and are closely related to the Taiwan’s democratization process. Ma Ying-jeou’s landslide victory in the 2008 Taiwan Presidential Election marked Taiwan’s second democratic transfer of power (with the first one taking place in 2000) and started a new era in cross-strait relations. Due to the Kuomintang (KMT) government’s performance falling short of the people’s expectations during Ma’s governance, however, Ma encountered a neck-and-neck challenge in his second term presidential election. This article adopts a Critical Discourse Analysis perspective to investigate Ma Ying-jeou’s deliberate manipulation of linguistic strategies including selective modality choices to formulate his acclaims, attacks and defenses in the 2012 Taiwan televised presidential debates. This analysis reveals his employment of negative and positive linguistic choices in addressing his opponents’ arguments and casting doubt on his key opponent as well as depicting his leadership and character traits and conveying his high degree of commitment to gain the support of the electorate to offer him an opportunity to continue his stewardship of the country. It examines also how us-you, in addition to us-them polarization, was used as a discursive tool of attack during the debates; and identifies the impact of his discourse on the election outcome in 2012. The investigation of Ma’s engagement in televised presidential debates thus offers a snapshot into Taiwan’s democratization process.

ECFA and Taiwan from the Perspective of International Law

The Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) is an important milestone between the People's Republic of China and Taiwan; it is also the most critical achievement in improving the close cross-strait relations since President Ma Ying-Jeou took office in 2008. This article intends to use Guzman's rational choice theory of international law to analyze Taiwan's motivation for signing ECFA under East Asian regionalism, and to speculate whether Taiwan will abide by the relevant ECFA regulations. Signing the ECFA with China is mainly to break through the predicament of Taiwan's isolation under East Asian regionalism. As the first step in cooperation with East Asia, ECFA has a significant impact on Taiwan's credibility in East Asia. Regardless of whether there is a chance to cooperate with other East Asian countries in the future, if Taiwan gets off ECFA's relevant regulations, it will cause damage to Taiwan's credibility and may even obliterate the possibility of future cooperation with East Asian countries. Therefore, from the perspective of rational choice, in order to maintain Taiwan's good reputation and look forward to more cooperation possibilities in the future, complying with the relevant ECFA regulations is an obligation that Taiwan must fulfil.

The Japan-Taiwan Relationship: An Unstable Stability

The Japan-Taiwan Relationship:An Unstable Stability June Teufel Dreyer (bio) Japan's relations with Taiwan (Republic of China, or ROC) have been shaped by both countries' relationships with the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the United States. Despite President Chiang Kai-shek's adversarial relationship with Japan during World War II, relations between Japan and his ROC (first on the mainland and then on the island of Taiwan) were cordial during the postwar period. Shared opposition to Communism provided a common bond. An estimated twenty thousand Japanese troops under Japanese command wore Chinese Nationalist (Kuomintang, or KMT) uniforms and fought against the Chinese Communist troops until 1948.1 Strategic reasons also reinforced ties: the city of Hualien on Taiwan is but 69 miles from Japan's Yonaguni Island. Were Taiwan to be absorbed into the PRC, the territorial waters of Japan and China would be uncomfortably close. This essay argues that strategic calculations, shared democratic values, and generally pleasant memories of colonial history will foster the continued development of Taiwan-Japan relations, although these will remain constrained by each side's fear of unduly angering China. The first section situates the relationship in a historical context, while the second section examines the development of relations under Shinzo Abe and Tsai Ing-wen. The essay concludes by considering the outlook for the Taiwan-Japan relationship. The Past Is Prologue As the PRC began its ambitious industrialization program, Japanese businesses saw lucrative opportunities and pressed for the normalization of diplomatic relations that would facilitate these. Tokyo's 1972 derecognition of the ROC in favor of the PRC dealt a sharp blow to the Taipei government, but economic and other ties continued informally. When Chiang Kai-shek's son and heir Chiang Ching-kuo died in office in 1988, he was succeeded [End Page 161] by his Taiwanese vice president. Born in Taiwan when the island was a Japanese colony, Lee Teng-hui infuriated Beijing by saying, correctly, that he had been a Japanese citizen for most of his life. In deference to Japan's acceptance of Beijing's one-China policy, Lee agreed not to visit Japan officially so long as he was in office, though he was able to use his language fluency to arrange informal meetings with Japanese officials. Under his administration, the ban on Japanese-language media programming was lifted, with the Taiwanese quickly becoming enthusiastic consumers of the latest Japanese television programs as well as Japanese fads and fashions. A new Taiwanese word, harizu (Japan mania), came into being. After a Chinese show of force in the Taiwan Strait ahead of Taiwan's 1996 election, Japanese officials, aware of the implications for their own security, committed to the United States to help defend the shuhen jitai (the waters around Japan), refusing Beijing's demand that Taiwan be explicitly excluded from the definition thereof. By 1999, retired members of the Japan Self-Defense Forces had become frequent visitors to Taiwan. As China became less Communist and more prosperous, formerly anti-PRC elements in Taiwan became attracted by the mainland's nationalistic message. Overwhelmingly composed of those who had come to Taiwan with Chiang Kai-shek and their descendants, this group tended to identify as Chinese and favored unification with China, albeit under a variety of improbable scenarios (such as the PRC accepting ROC rule or the complete democratization of the PRC). Native-born Taiwanese, by contrast, were more resistant to incorporation into a country they had never been part of. The former became known as the "blues" and the latter as the "greens," with Lee, the first popularly elected president, as the standard bearer of the greens. In 2000, the term-limited Lee was succeeded by another Taiwanese, Chen Shui-bian, who continued his de-Sinification policy and moved still closer to Japan. These developments not only angered China, which from time to time accused Japan of wanting to bring Taiwan back under its control, but also upset the George H.W. Bush administration, which feared that Chen might provoke a war that could involve the United States. Chen's successor, Ma Ying-jeou, born to a family from the mainland, reversed this process, declaring unification...

Non-Traditional Threats to Security in the Discourse of Taiwan Presidents Chen Shuibian and Ma Ying-Jeou: a Double-Edged Sword

<p>Podejście realistyczne jest nadal najczęściej stosowanym przy analizie polityki zagranicznej i bezpieczeństwa Tajwanu, a utrata terytorium i przyłączenie wyspy do Chin są uznawane za główne zagrożenia egzystencjalne. Niemniej jednak w dyskursie politycznym coraz częściej zwraca się uwagę na nietradycyjne zagrożenia dla bezpieczeństwa, takie jak bezpieczeństwo zdrowotne, czy bardziej ogólne bezpieczeństwo jednostki ludzkiej. Celem artykułu jest zbadanie procesu sekurytyzacji, czyli włączania nowych zagadnień do sfery bezpieczeństwa Tajwanu, poprzez analizę dyskursu politycznego dwóch prezydentów tajwańskich – Chen Shui-biana i Ma Ying-jeou’a.</p><p>Jak się okazuje, w politycznej retoryce Tajwanu coraz więcej miejsca poświęca się zagrożeniom ekonomicznym i zdrowotnym. Artykuł ukazuje, że poruszanie w dyskursie kwestii związanych z bezpieczeństwem ekonomicznym, prowadzi do ograniczenia udziału Tajwanu w światowym handlu. Powiązanie kwestii handlowych z politycznymi (problem suwerenności wyspy), przekłada się na protekcjonistyczną politykę handlową. Z drugiej strony, traktowanie pandemii jako zagrożenia dla bezpieczeństwa, pozwala tajwańskim politykom na ubieganie się o miejsce w Światowej Organizacji Zdrowia, niejako przyczyniając się do międzynarodowej legitymizacji wyspy i wzrostu jej znaczenie w stosunkach międzynarodowych.</p>

Taiwan’s Secession Against Two Hosts: the Xi-Ma Summit and its Implications for Future Cross-Strait Relations

<p>Tajwan przyciąga uwagę całego świata ze względu na znaczenie geopolityczne wyspy w regionie Azji i Pacyfiku. Demokratyzacji Tajwanu towarzyszą ruchy secesyjne, co stwarza dodatkowe komplikacje. Prowadzi to wzrostu zagrożeń w różnych obszarach, politycznym, militarnym, ekonomicznym. Pomimo, że stosunki w Cieśnienie Tajwańskiej można obecnie określić jako względnie spokojne, sytuacja nadal nosi znamiona „niestabilnego pokoju””, używając terminologii zaproponowanej przez Lund Curve. W sytuacji gdy nadrzędnym celem Chin pozostaje zjednoczenie narodowe, większość tajwańskich wyborców faworyzują zachowanie status quo. Tym bardziej na uwagę zasługuje analiza bezprecedensowego spotkania prezydenta Ma Ying-jeou (Tajwan) z Xi Jinping (Chiny), które miało miejsce w listopadzie 2015 roku. Było to pierwsze spotkania tej rangi urzędników od zakończenia wojny domowej czyli od 1949 r.</p>

Taiwan’s Social Movements under Ma Ying-jeou: From the Wild Strawberries to the Sunflowers , edited by Dafydd Fell

Taiwan’s Social Movements under Ma Ying-jeou: From the Wild Strawberries to the Sunflowers , edited by Dafydd Fell

Dancing with the Wolf: Securitizing China–Taiwan Trade in the ECFA Debate and Beyond

ABSTRACTSince Ma Ying-Jeou assumed presidency in 2008, he promoted an Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) and Taiwan’s political rapprochement with China. However, the opposition party soon proposed a counter argument, claiming this agreement might produce severe negative consequences for Taiwan’s economy and sovereignty.This study presents a securitization framework to highlight both the KMT and DPP strategy in contesting the nature of ECFA despite the potential inflation of benefit. It investigates both the KMT and DPP securitization strategies under Taiwan’s political and economic contexts. A de-securitizing discourse, though might have been a convincing counterargument against ECFA, was underdeveloped by the DPP members. It also shows how the debate shapes the discourse in the Sunflower Student Movements in 2014, and led to the DPP’s subsequent change of securitization strategy.

Asymmetric Risk Impacts of Chinese Tourists to Taiwan

Since 2008, when Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-Jeou relaxed the Cross-Strait policy, China has become Taiwan’s largest source of international tourism. In order to understand the risk persistence of Chinese tourists, the paper investigates the short-run and long-run persistence of shocks to the change rate of Chinese tourists to Taiwan. The daily data used for the empirical analysis is from 1 January 2013 to 28 February 2018. McAleer’s (2015) fundamental equation in tourism finance is used to link the change rate of tourist arrivals and the change in tourist revenues. Three widely-used univariate conditional volatility models, namely GARCH(1,1), GJR(1,1) and EGARCH(1,1), are used to measure the short-run and long-run persistence of shocks, as well as symmetric, asymmetric and leverage effects. Three different Heterogeneous AutoRegressive (HAR) models, HAR(1), HAR(1,7) HAR(1,7,28), are considered as alternative mean equations for capturing a variety of long memory effects. The mean equations associated with GARCH(1,1), GJR(1,1) and EGARCH(1,1) are used to analyse the risk persistence of the change in Chinese tourists. The exponential smoothing process is used to adjust the seasonality around the trend in Chinese tourists. The empirical results show asymmetric impacts of positive and negative shocks on the volatility of the change in the number of Group-type and Medical-type tourists, while Individual-type tourists display a symmetric volatility pattern. Somewhat unusually, leverage effects are observed in EGARCH for Medical-type tourists, which shows a negative correlation between shocks in tourist numbers and the subsequent shocks to volatility. For both Group-type and Medical-type tourists, the asymmetric impacts on volatility show that negative shocks have larger effects than do positive shocks. The leverage effect in EGARCH for Medical-type tourists implies that larger shocks would decrease volatility in the change in the numbers of Medical-type tourists. These results suggest that Taiwan tourism authorities should act to prevent the negative shocks for the Group-type and Medical-type Chinese tourists to dampen the shocks that arise from having fewer Chinese tourists to Taiwan.

U.S. AND ITS “ONE CHINA” POLICY

Amongst top national goals of the contemporary China’s leadership, the Taiwan issue occupies a particular place. This issue bears a fundamental significance since it deals with national pride, state sovereignty, territorial integrity and the unity of the PRC. Its resolution has also an applied significance – it promotes the legitimacy of the ruling China’s Communist Party and resolves some geopolitical difficulties China faces. Currently relying on the creation of island’s all-pervading economic dependency on China, yet not excluding military invasion as an option, Beijing expects to resolve the Taiwan issue by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the PRC. By using economic statecraft and exerting pressure on the world’s countries and international organizations, Beijing has succeeded in narrowing Taiwan’s international space, thus coming close to the desired goal of bringing back the island. Still, a crucial impediment to the resolution of the Taiwan issue is the US’ support of Taiwan. The article reveals specifics of the so-called “One China” policy, a policy that the US pursues towards the Taiwan issue ever since 1970s. By analyzing in details the provisions of the documents that lay the basis of “One China” policy, the author identifies its enduring principles. The author emphasizes the dual character of the US’ “One China” policy, which is its simultaneous orientation to promote relations with the PRC and to support Taiwan. The author further explains the motivation of the American support of Taiwan. The nature of the China-Taiwan relations – either confrontational (which has been the case with a few exceptions) or peaceful (like in the beginning of the 1990s and 2008–2016) – is seen in the article as a major determinant of the formulation of the US’ Taiwan policy. Beijing’s readiness to return the island with the use of force and China’s rapid military power accumulation determine the US-Taiwan close military ties, including arms sales to the island. By analyzing the development of the situation in the Taiwan Strait through the examples of three Taiwan administrations (the ones of Chen Shui-bian, Ma Ying-jeou and Tsai Ing-wen), the author shows that in the 21st century Taiwan leadership’s policy towards mainland China and the independence issue plays the defining role in the Taiwan-China-US triangle relations. It concludes that changes in the basics of the US’s “One China” policy and the termination of Washington’s support of Taiwan are highly unlikely.

Soft Power Rich, Public Diplomacy Poor: An Assessment of Taiwan's External Communications

AbstractAccepting that Taiwan has accumulated “soft power” since the introduction of democratic reforms in the late 1980s, this paper assesses Taiwan's external communications during Ma Ying-jeou's presidency and how its soft power resources have been exercised. Demonstrating the strategic turn from political warfare to public and cultural diplomacy, the paper begins with the premise that the priority must be to increase familiarity with Taiwan among foreign publics. It then argues that any assessment of external communications in the Ma administration must consider the impact of two key decisions: first, the dissolution of the Government Information Office and the transfer of its responsibilities for international communications to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a new Ministry of Culture, and second, the priority given to cultural themes in Taiwan's external communications.