.jpg)
Chinese migrants, often also referred to as overseas Chinese, have been crucial to the economic development of China and Taiwan as well as their major national political movements of the 20th and 21st centuries. The competition between the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) over overseas Chinese people’s support for their respective regimes grew particularly fierce during the Cold War.
Concurrently, exiles from the Republic of China (ROC) formed a resistance movement against the KMT’s brutal authoritarian regime in Taiwan, supporting democratic forces on the island and eventually helping the historic establishment of an opposition party, the Democratic Progressive Party. Today, overseas communities are split over their formal membership in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the ROC—albeit this distinction is not recognized by the PRC—and their emotional ties regarding their ancestry. So-called “overseas Taiwanese” (i.e., people of Taiwanese ancestry or descent who live or were born outside of Taiwan), on the other hand, are further divided over their differences on nationalist ideas, as well as on the concrete steps Taiwan should undertake for securing its political future as a democratic country. For political parties in Taiwan, the overseas communities remain an important—yet often overlooked—constituency.
In this lecture, students will gain advanced theoretical and empirical knowledge about transnational ties between political parties and constituencies abroad and learn why political parties in Taiwan continue sustaining close relationships with overseas communities across the globe. Through dynamic and student-centered teaching methods, students will be prompted into critical thinking about various conceptualizations in the study of Chinese migration and political transnationalism in contemporary Taiwan.
About the speaker:
Julia Marinaccio is a political scientist with a focus on China and Taiwan. She has work experience at several European universities and is currently employed as EU project manager at the Carinthia University of Applied Sciences. Her research interests lie in political representation and mobilization, ideology politics, cross-Strait relations, climate and environmental governance.