Book Launch: China’s Influence and the Centre-periphery Tug of War in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Indo-Pacific

Andrew J. Nathan, Wu Jieh-min

This session will be held using Microsoft Teams

Abstract

Bringing together a team of cutting-edge researchers based in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Indo-Pacific countries, this book focuses on the tug of war between China’s influence and forces of resistance in Hong Kong, Taiwan and selected countries in its surrounding jurisdictions.

China’s influence has met growing defiance from citizens in Hong Kong and Taiwan who fear the extinction of their valued local identities. However, the book shows that resistance to China’s influence is a global phenomenon, varying in motivation and intensity from region to region and country to country depending on the forms of China’s influence and the balances of forces in each society. The book also advances a concentric center-periphery framework for comparing different forms of extra-jurisdictional Chinese influence mechanisms, ranging from economic, military and diplomatic influences to united front operations.

This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of comparative politics, international relations, geopolitics, Chinese politics, Hong Kong-China relations, Taiwan and Asian politics.

Editors

Brian C.H. Fong is Associate Professor and Founding Associate Director of The Academy of Hong Kong Studies at The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.

Wu Jieh-min is Research Fellow at the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, and served as a Director at the Center for Contemporary China, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan.

Andrew J. Nathan is Class of 1919 Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, USA.

Speaker Biographies

Andrew J. Nathan is Class of 1919 Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. His teaching and research interests include Chinese politics and foreign policy, the comparative study of political participation and political culture, and human rights. Nathan’s books include Chinese Democracy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985); The Tiananmen Papers, co-edited with Perry Link (New York: PublicAffairs, 2001); China’s Search for Security, co-authored with Andrew Scobell (Columbia University Press, 2012); and Will China Democratize?, co-edited with Larry Diamond and Marc Plattner (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013). Nathan has served at Columbia as chair of the Department of Political Science, 2003-2006, chair of the Executive Committee of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, 2002-2003, and director of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, 1991-1995. He is currently chair of the Morningside Institutional Review Board (IRB). Off campus, he is the regular Asia and Pacific book reviewer for Foreign Affairs, a member of the steering committee of the Asian Barometer Survey, and a board member of Human Rights in China. He is a former member of the boards of the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, and Human Rights Watch.

Wu Jieh-min is a research fellow at the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, and served as a Director at the Center for Contemporary China, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. His research interests include political economy, political sociology, social movement, democratization, and civil society. His articles have been published in Chinese-language, English, and Japanese journals and edited volumes. He has published Rent-Seeking Developmental State in China: Taishang, Guangdong Model and Global Capitalism (NTU Press, 2019; English and Japanese editions under translation) and Third View of China (Rive Gauche, 2012); and (co-)edited China’s influence in the Centre-periphery Tug of War in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Indo-Pacific (Brian C.H. Fong, Wu Jieh-min, Andrew J. Nathan eds., Routledge, 2020), Anaconda in the Chandelier: Mechanisms of Influence and Resistance in the “China Factor” (Rive Gauche, 2017, Japanese editions under translation) and The Era of Significant Changes: Taiwan 1990-2010 (Rive Gauche, 2010/2014), and The Double Helix of Power and Capital: A Taiwanese Perspective of China/Cross-Strait Studies (Rive Gauche, 2013). He translated Albert O. Hirschman’s The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy into Chinese (The Journalist, 2002/Rive Gauche, 2013). He co-produced a documentary film Taiwanese Compatriots (Taibao) (Alleys Workshop, 1993), and published a poetry anthology, The Earthly Hound (Ink, 2017).

Organiser: SOAS Centre of Taiwan Studies

Contact email: ml156@soas.ac.uk