Lecture Abstract:
Triggered by the Sunflower Movement in spring 2014, cross-strait relations have seen considerable change from the early years of the Ma Ying-jeou administration when a new era of cross-strait peace and integration was ushered in, bolstered by numerous bilateral agreements and intensifying human interaction across the Taiwan strait. On November 7th, 2015, the leaders of Taiwan and China, Ma Ying-jeou and Xi Jinping, shook hands in a historic meeting in Singapore. However, the ruling KMT faces defeat in the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for January 16th, 2016, and the future of cross-strait relations is once again uncertain. How could that happen? The seminar revisits the major achievements in Taiwan’s China policy during the Ma Ying-jeou era and discusses the limits concerning political rapprochement across the Taiwan Strait.
About the Speaker:
Gunter Schubert (舒耕德) holds the Chair of Greater China Studies at Tübingen University’s Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies. He is an internationally renowned expert on the political systems of the PRC and Taiwan. He has published extensively on PRC local governance and policy implementation, Taiwanese domestic politics, Taiwanese entrepreneurs in mainland China. One of his current research projects investigates the changing relationship between local Chinese governments and domestic private entrepreneurs.
This seminar is co-organised by RSIS and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS), Nanyang Technological University.