'. . . a welcome book, of particular use to graduate schools.' - A.J.H. Latham, Asia Pacific Business Review Over the past four decades, Taiwan has achieved remarkable economic growth. In this important book, a distinguished group of contributors employs a comparative perspective to explore the reasons behind and the lessons to be learned from Taiwan's success.

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.

Most colonies became independent countries after the end of World War II, while few of them became modernized even after decades of their independence. Taiwan is one of the few to become a modern state with remarkable achievements in its economic, socio-cultural, and political development. In 1921, Taiwanese intellectuals initiated a Petition Movement for the Establishment of a Taiwanese Parliament under the colonial government. Leaders of the enlightenment also established the Taiwan Cultural Association (TCA) on October 17, 1921. These two movements led to a series of socio-cultural, political, and economic developments during the past century. This book addresses the path and trajectory of the emergence of Taiwan from a colony to a modern state in the past century. It contains four major sections on identity and political developments and explores international relations, economic development. educational and societal development, and culture and literature development. This thorough exploration will prove invaluable to graduate and undergraduate students in Taiwan history, literature, and the cultural and political economy of development as well as students studying East Asia. It offers the same wealth of information to researchers and practitioners in Taiwan-China-US trilateral relations and in cultural anthropology and practices in East Asia politics and business.

This book offers a political economy analysis of the development and degradation of freedom of the press in Taiwan since 1949, exploring how state-business elites and foreign hegemons interacted to shape the evolution of Taiwan’s media. It examines why freedoms increased alongside democratization in the 1990s but deteriorated after the second peaceful turnover of power in 2008 and why significant improvements accompanied Taiwan’s close economic connections with the US during the Cold War, only to become eroded as the country developed deeper economic ties with China in the 21st century. Presenting both a domestic and international perspective, this study of the controversial case of Taiwan ultimately argues in favor of three factors. First, state power is not the only threat to press freedom, as corporate organizations and market forces may also play a role in curtailing it. Second, cross-national economic connections do not always improve human and civil rights but may cause damage when they involve more powerful authoritarian countries. Third, just as norms diffuse from liberal contexts to repressive states, repressive norms are also likely to diffuse from powerful authoritarian countries to more liberal but politically and economically weaker ones. Providing a new viewpoint on China’s media control overseas, The Political Economy of Press Freedom will be useful for students and scholars of Chinese Studies and Taiwan Studies as well as comparative politics, international relations and Media Studies.

Known as the Taiwan Miracle, the Republic of China on Taiwan (R.O.C.) has, over the past thirty-five years, experienced one of the world's highest rates of economic growth. Arguing that major theoretical frameworks for analyzing international political economy are often too simplistic in that they omit key factors or overly generalize from relationships found only in limited situations, Clark uses a detailed case history of the R.O.C. 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. The United States and other advanced industrial economies whose past successes have created economic and political barriers to future adaptation can be better understood in terms of the characteristics of R.O.C.'s development strategy. Part I of the three-part work focuses on environment, first discussing various paradigms and theories about development and then presenting an historical overview of Taiwan. The second part investigates Taiwan's international role, political development, and rapid economic growth. The volume closes with a chapter devoted to the implications of the Taiwan experience and political economy paradigms. Eight figures and thirty-five tables illustrate facets of Taiwan's development, including government structure, indicators of agricultural development, industrialization, educational progress, and export performance, among others. Because of the detailed presentations of political economy theories and their variants, especially in relation to economic and political development in Taiwan, this volume would be an excellent choice for courses in political economy, developing societies, Asian politics, and international relations theory, as well as libraries serving students in these areas.