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Taiwan's Development Experience: Lessons on Roles ofGovernment and Market scrutinizes the main features of theTaiwanese development experience under five interrelated themes anddomains:1. Outward-orientation vs.inward-orientation;2. Sources of growth;3. Dynamic balancedgrowth process: the interaction between agricultural andnon-agricultural sectors;4. The role of government in thetransition to a more market-oriented economy; and5. The potentialtransferability of the Taiwanese development experience to developingcountries. In addition to highlighting the essential contributions of papers, theEditors also bring out the views and contributions, under each of theabove headings, of two distinguished former Cornell Universitycolleagues who are honored at the sponsoring conference -- T.C.Liu and S.C. Tsiang. ... Read more

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Politics of Taiwan is an accessible and highly readable survey of the Taiwanese political situation spanning from 1949 to the present.With a focus on the issue of democratization, Shelley Rigger covers Taiwan's complicated and unique political history, and tells the story of how Taiwanese, demanding a stonger voice in politics, drove their government to reinvent itself on a democratic blueprint.
This book shows that Taiwan, unlike other countries, avoided serious economic disruption and social conflict, and arrived at its goal of multi-party competition with little bloodshed. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Superb
Professor Rigger's inaugural work shows a great deal of talent and promise.She argues convincingly that it was the very institution of local elections, conducted even in the darkest days of the Chiang Kai-Shek era,that made a crucial contribution to the island's later peaceful transitionto democracy.Very insightful and informative.

A Must-Read
'Politics in Taiwan' is an extraordinarily well researched, elegantly argued and very readable book.It concisely contends that Taiwan's 'democratic miracle' is a result of a long history of local elections thathave taken place on the island, inculcating democratic skills and nurturinga viable opposition to the authoritarian regime.The book comprises anequal blend of theoretical reasoning and empirical richness. ProfessorRigger nicely captures both the dynamics of historical development and thecontingencies of real-life politics.A must-read for those interested incontemporary Taiwan and/or democratization, and very suitable for thecollege classroom.

Politics in Taiwan
An outstanding contribution to understanding the current status of the political scene in this part of Asia and its implications for the greater world community.It is comprehensive, well organized, and very readable,even for the relative novice to the field. ... Read more

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In this book, the position of Taiwan is examined in light of its dependence on the vagaries of American and Chinese (both PRC and ROC) geopolitical machinations. Fu traces the ROC's changing geopolitical position on Taiwan--particularly in light of improved relations between the PRC and the U.S. in the early 1970s. It also explores Taiwan's response to the challenges posed by the normalization of Sino-American relations and provides an overall assessment of Taiwan's continuing role in the fluid geopolitics of East Asia and the Pacific. Employing a geopolitical frame of reference, Fu's central conceptual concerns focus on the interface between geography and politics. ... Read more

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Throughout the twentieth century Taiwan was viewed as a model - whether in terms of a model colony, a model China or a development model. This perception was based on the notion of Taiwan undergoing an economic miracle and political developments. Yet much of Taiwan’s history is unique and may not be readily replicable elsewhere.

Written by an impressive line up of contributors from the US, UK, Taiwan, France and Hong Kong, this book analyzes Taiwan’s economic and political achievements, and asks whether it is possible to identify through the experience of a single nation – Taiwan – the makings of a replicable model.

This book will appeal to students and scholars of Taiwan, political economy, and Asia-Pacific regional development issues.

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Taiwan National Police Handbook (World Business, Investment and Government Library) ... Read more

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Exploring the transitional role of the state in Taiwan's economic development, this book moves beyond the "strong state" paradigm, focusing especially on the impact of trade with mainland China. Providing an irresistible business opportunity, cross-Straits trade and investment have served as a fulcrum by which societal interests have moved an unwilling state. Weighing the crucial forces at work-democratization, state-society interaction, and economic interdependence with mainland China-Leng offers a thorough analysis of Taiwan's current and future political and economic development. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

the reality of the Straits relationship
This researcher has to admit that this book provides asian studies with a clearer and more realistic view of the relations between the Taiwan Straits.Taking away the political games being handed the general publicby governments of the ROC, PRC, and USA, this book provides not only anin-depth introduction to the history and current context of relationsbetween the ROC and PRC, to also give us thought as to how more intenserelations between these two regions will aid in their growth, development,and world peace.

the reality of the Straits relationship
This researcher has to admit that this book provides asian studies with a clearer and more realistic view of the relations between the Taiwan Straits.Taking away the political games being handed the general publicby governments of the ROC, PRC, and USA, this book provides not only anin-depth introduction to the history and current context of relationsbetween the ROC and PRC, to also give us thought as to how more intenserelations between these two regions will aid in their growth, development,and world peace. ... Read more

Product Description
Over the past 35 years Taiwan has experienced one of the world's highest rates of economic growth. Clark uses a detailed case history of the Republic of China on Taiwan to suggest not only that development and dependency in contemporary society are extremely complex and indeterminate processes, but that development in Taiwan deviates significantly from the postulates of the two leading paradigms of international political economy. To go even further, Clark states that Taiwan's economic growth and transformation resulted from its deviation from the normal dependency syndrome. Indeed, a development strategy based on economic flexibility and periodic regime change that has made this flexibility possible are hallmarks in Taiwan's success story. ... Read more

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Severed from Mainland China at the end of the Chinese Civil War and officially unrecognized by most countries, the island nation of Taiwan thrives as a vibrant democracy and an economic powerhouse while still struggling to come to some political arrangement with the Chinese motherland. (20000101) ... Read more

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For China, Taiwan is next in line to be unified with the People's Republic after Hong Kong in 1997.China's claim on Taiwan is of great importance to the politics of Chinese Nationalism.However, the democratic challenge from Taiwan is very potent and its status and identity within the international community is crucial to its survival.

Taiwan and Chinese Nationalism gives a survey of how Taiwan's status has come to be a symbol for the legitimacy of the Chinese regime in the evolution of Chinese nationalism.It also demonstrates how this has been challenged by demands for democratization in Taiwan. The KMT regime is shown to have allowed sovereignty to be practised by the population of the island while maintaining the claim that it is a part of China. The result is a "post-nationalist" identity for the island in an intermediate state between independence and unification with PRC. ... Read more

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A well-known observer of Taiwan and Asian history and culture provides an insightful biography of Lee Teng Hui, the pro-democracy statesman and former president of the Republic of China. As head of the Taiwanese government from 1988 to 2000, Lee managed, without violence or major civil unrest, to reform the authoritarian state into a constitutional democracy with a multi-party political system. This examination of Lee's success puts to rest the idea that Asian values support only authoritarian regimes and reject human rights and political democracy in favor of economic success and military power.

Richard C. Kagan describes in rich detail Lee's struggle to reinvent Taiwan s culture and political system by advocating an independent sovereign nation with universal values of human rights, democracy, freedom, and economic justice. His book offers new insights into the role Lee played in the still volatile Taiwan Strait crisis and how Lee's diplomatic skills used the crisis to break free of the "One China" straitjacket of the Shanghai Communiqué of 1972 while avoiding open warfare with the People's Republic of China. The author argues that Taiwan is a vital part of America's national security interests in Asia and that the loss of Taiwan to Mainland China would seriously damage American economic and military power in Asia. He calls Lee's life a beacon for people looking for new ways to promote democracy and sovereignty and intends this biography of Lee's life to highlight the statesman s significant contributions, until now little known or misunderstood in the United States and Europe.

Customer Reviews (2)

A fascinating case study
In 1988 a man who had studied Zen and lived in the U.S and Japan came to power in Taiwan and began to shake up the island's politics.Lee Teng Hui was a master politician of the first class.His understanding of democracy led him to victory over the Koumintang, which had preserved Taiwan's independence but had also become dicatorial.The surprising thoguths of this world class leader should be studied by many.A true man of the people who understood the importance of democracy and the security of Taiwan.This obscure subject is a fascinating read.

Seth J. Frantzman

Excellent, insightful, and useful work
Taiwan's Statesman: Lee Teng-hui and Democracy in Asia
Richard C. Kagan
Naval Institute Press, 2007, 231p

In an oft-quoted passage, the ancient Roman biographer, Plutarch once explained his philosophy thus: "in the most illustrious deeds there is not always a manifestation of virtue or vice, nay, a slight thing like a phrase or a jest often makes a greater revelation of character than battles when thousands fall, or the greatest armaments, or sieges of cities." Richard Kagan's rich new work, Taiwan's Statesman: Lee Teng-hui and Democracy in Asia, which examines the life of one of the great statesmen of the 20th century, Taiwan's Lee Teng-hui, elevates Plutarch's approach to a entire framework for understanding the life and thought of Taiwan's first democratically elected President. Kagan illuminates Lee's often cryptic and elusive use of words, and supplies a robust account of the origins and development of his personal approach to life and politics.

Kagan opens with Lee's moment of triumph: the 1996 Presidential election, Taiwan's first direct presidential election. A native Taiwanese, Lee had successfully risen through the ranks of a Kuomingtang (KMT) party dominated by post-1949 exiles from China, out-maneuvered a rear-guard fight to preserve the authoritarian dominance of the KMT, and defeated the rising pro-democracy party at the polls. How did the son of a humble Taiwanese policeman accomplish these feats?

The answer, according to Kagan, lies in the experiences and values that have shaped Lee Teng-hui's personality: his sojourns in Japan and the US, his study of Zen, his conversion of Christianity in 1961, and his study of agricultural economics. These influences have created in Lee a character and understanding of great depth and flexibility. "If one painted Lee's idea of democracy, it would not hang in a picture frame," describes Kagan. "Rather, it would be splashed all over the neighborhood in expressions of creativity, chaos, and unpredictability with strings of entanglements and loose threads."

Kagan begins his discussion of Lee's education, dismissing the pro-China criticisms that Lee is half-Japanese for the far more elegant and fruitful exploration of what being Japanese means for Lee. This meant education in a Japanese high school at a time when few Taiwanese were permitted to enter Japanese educational institutions; then a year at Kyoto Technical School (later Kyoto University) before entering the Japanese Army in 1944. In Japan he was deeply influenced by the writings of Nitobe Inazo and Nishida Kitaro. Nitobe was a philosopher and statesman who was also an agricultural specialist - a career that "could be a template for Lee's own." Lee also found the Zen thinker D.T. Suzuki to be a refuge from the militarism that was then sweeping the empire. In addition to encountering Japanese thinkers, Lee read voluminously among western classics in translation, developing an especial fondness for Thomas Carlyle. According to Kagan, Carlyle put words to Lee's feeling that true heroism created a new world order, driven by the energetic, questing spirit. Finally, Lee's Christianity is also treated as an important shaper of Lee's social action (for years, whenever possible, he gave humble sermons in local churches on Sundays even as a high ranking politician). Kagan returns to these resources again and again in explaining Lee's cryptic, contradictory, utterances and his freewheeling, apparently aimless, yet purposeful behavior.

Thus, this is not a critical biography in the sense that it attempts to separate itself from the moral world of the subject it treats and to exhaustively examine what many might argue are key controversies or episodes in Lee's career. Kagan's reading of Lee's life is extremely sympathetic, and may be open to charges of hagiography. He is seldom directly critical of Lee's actions, often explaining what some might see mere political horse-trading as evidence of Lee's greatness. For example, Lee's support of mainlander Ma Ying-jeou for Taipei mayor in 1998 is presented as a demonstration of Lee's success in "breaking through the ethnic, geographical, and political division between mainlanders and Taiwanese" - yet Kagan never discusses Lee's controversial removal of that same Ma Ying-jeou from his post as Minister of Justice, a move that critics have slammed ever since as a sop to the political corruption on which they allege Lee depended. However, as Kagan points out, many of these controversies have been treated elsewhere in great detail.

Despite its weaknesses and its resolutely pro-Lee point of view -unlike many commentators on Lee Kagan is commendably up front in staking out his position on the historical importance of Lee's life and career - this is a rich, entertaining, and educational work. The sections on Lee's upbringing and early life are absolutely fascinating - Lee's service in the Japanese army took him to both Taiwan, where he fired anti-aircraft guns against US attackers, and to Japan, where he helped clean up after the horrific Tokyo firebombing of March, 1945. Kagan hits his stride in his portrayal of Lee's foreign and domestic policy in the 1990s, a period offering many of the same themes that we see today: the President of Taiwan being labeled "provocative" and "a troublemaker" for attempting to break out of the constrictions placed on Taiwan by the US and China. It was Lee himself carried out the first phases of the removal of the Chiang family cult from public life, a fact often lost in the current debates. Kagan also faithfully reconstructs both the headiness of the post martial law period, with its future full of promise, and its fragility, under threat by hardliners in the KMT bent on suppressing the rising democratic feeling. Finally, Kagan sheds much light on the combination of relationships, luck, and achievement that brought Lee safely through the ranks of the KMT to deliver him to the Presidency at a critical moment in the nation's history, and on his relationship with President Chiang Ching-kuo, who in certain respects was much like Lee.

Looking back on Lee's career, it seems incredible that Lee, who hung with a cabal of independence firebrands at Cornell, including Peter Huang, would-be assassin of Chiang Ching-kuo during his 1970 visit to the US, and David Tsai, prominent in US-based Taiwanese exile group World United Formosans for Independence, escaped imprisonment and execution. It also seems incredible, at least to this reader, that anyone who bothered to look into Lee's background could ever imagine that Lee would be an obedient servant of the KMT fantasy that Taiwan belongs to China. Yet during the early 1990s rumors swirled at home and abroad on precisely these points, a major tribute to the master politician that is Lee Teng-hui: Lee had sold out to black gold, Lee was a secret independence supporter, Lee was a Machiavellian power-monger, Lee was a KMT spy. As Kagan's biography of one of the greatest statesmen of the twentieth century so firmly demonstrates, they were all true, and they were not true at all. ... Read more