Wei-Chin Lee, the editor of this collaborative volume, has faced a number of challenges. The first was to create a sense of cohesion in what is, at first glance, a set of very different essays. The second and related challenge was to set up specific sections on related topics that reinforce each other even as they stand alone. The third—and perhaps the most difficult—challenge was to present a volume that says something new and different so that a number of related, but distinct, audiences will understand, appreciate, and make use of this book in the classroom and in other venues. To put it simply, Lee had to give us a book that will compete in a very competitive scholarly marketplace. In this he has succeeded, as may be seen from a survey of the three major sections of Taiwan's Politics in the 21st Century.
The first focuses on Taiwan's domestic politics. John Hsieh gives us a clear-eyed examination of the way the Guomindang (or KMT) has evolved from a Leninist-style party that dominated a one-party totalitarian state to a political party that has adjusted to the very different political climate of a democratic multi-party state. He charts this process over time and concludes with a portrait of what the KMT of Ma Ying-jeou is like in 2010. Shelley Rigger gives us a carefully thought-through study of the Democratic Progressive Party, the major challenger of KMT dominance. Rigger knows that party well after decades of research and writing, and her essay is a pitch-perfect introduction to that complex political entity and a marvel of clarity. The third article, by Huo-yan Shyu, attempts to track and discern the attitudes of the people of Taiwan to the Republic of China's now twenty-year-old democratic political system and its major players. On the whole the piece works, but all too often discussions of methodology obscure the flow of the narrative and the analysis of that carefully collected data of which the author is so fond.
In the second section, the political economy of the Republic on Taiwan is examined from two different perspectives. The first is a large-scale piece by one of the masters of the realm of the Taiwanese political economy, Cal Clark. Clark and his co-author Alexander C. Tan have worked through a clearly stated core thesis—that Taiwan's present day challenges are the unintended costs of its previous successes. The detailed and comprehensive argument for the “cost of success” theory is a strong challenge to more mainstream and positive views of the Taiwanese developmental process. This article will begin an important dialogue on the whole topic of the “Taiwan Miracle” in months and years to come.
Joseph Wong's piece focuses on one element of the miracle—the development of the biotech sector. By doing so, Wong reinforces the Clark/Tan argument but also makes a case for the continued viability of the Taiwan Model writ large. Wong shows that Taiwanese scientists and entrepreneurs have seen the need to chart out different directions for their nation's development even as they transfer previous hi-tech sectors to the PRC. This process of reinvention is necessary, Wong suggests, for Taiwan's future economic survival.
The last section deals with issues of Cross-Strait relations and the US–ROC relationship. Each of the four articles is well presented. The most fascinating is Quansheng Zhao and Guoli Liu's “Beijing's Shifting Positions in the New Era of Cross-Taiwan Strait Relations.” This is a comprehensive and well-written piece that will be useful for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students alike. I also see it as a conclusion of sorts for Inseparable Separation: The Making of China's Taiwan Policy, the powerful new study by Jing Huang and Xiaoting Li (World Scientific, 2010; see review in this volume). Wei-Chin Lee's own piece on the relationship between the United States and the Chen Shui-bian administration is yet another strong and very readable article that adds much to the considerable value of the book as a whole.
The ten essays in this cohesive volume are marked by a sense of shared purpose that will engage the reader and make him or her read the book in its entirety. This is all too rare a quality in such edited volumes and shows how well the editor worked with each author. Wei-Chin Lee has triumphed over the challenges I suggested he faced at the opening of this review. He and his very able set of contributors have given us a strong edited volume on Taiwan's present day political development and Taiwan's relationships with both China and the United States.
