What repressive strategies do dictators use to maintain regime stability as anti-government movements rise under conditions of economic growth? We investigate the changing function of authoritarian repression and the ways in which dictators accommodated rising opposition during Taiwan’s period of authoritarian rule. Using time-series data spanning 39 years (1949–1988), this article analyses the relationship between economic development, opposition movements, and shifts in repression strategies under the Kuomintang (KMT) rule. Drawing on historical documents and statistical analysis, we argue that economic development influences patterns of repression. With economic growth, autocrats tend to adopt selective repression rather than indiscriminate violence (e.g., mass killings), as the latter risks inciting greater social unrest and endangering regime stability. Using an additive dynamic linear model (ADLM), our findings suggest that economic development, when coupled with rising social movements, compels dictators to rely on less severe yet more targeted forms of coercion. While this adaptation may temporarily bolster regime control amid economic growth and social unrest, it may ultimately undermine the foundation of long-term authoritarian resilience. This work bridges the gap between repression literature and modernisation theory by demonstrating that authoritarian decision-making in repressive policies plays a crucial role in shaping the fate of both dictatorships and opposition movements.

Thought reform campaigns aimed at the psychological transformation of captives have long been tools to enhance national security and political legitimacy in East Asia. Fusing Soviet concepts of human perfectibility and Confucian ideals of transformation through education, sophisticated systems have evolved to convert political opponents. Whether labelled as tenkō in Japan, ‘self-renovation’ in Nationalist China, or ‘new learning’ in the People’s Republic of China, these programmes shared the fundamental goal of pressuring individuals to renounce previous beliefs and adopt state-sanctioned ideologies. This article examines how Japanese war crimes prisoners, political dissidents, and former Chinese Nationalist officers experienced these campaigns. Despite differences in implementation, each regime used confession, group study, and psychological coercion. This historical perspective is particularly relevant today as China’s leadership continues to weaponise historical narratives – including the ‘correct’ understandings of WWII history – with implications for contemporary tensions between China and Taiwan.

Taiwanese politics is often characterized as being dominated by two camps: the “blue” camp, which supports the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), and the “green” camp, which supports the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). However, a substantial portion of the electorate identifies as independent, representing one of the largest but least studied groups in Taiwan’s political landscape. This study examines how independent voters differed from partisan voters in their responses to one of the most defining political moments in recent years, the legislative reform, and the subsequent Bluebird movement, one of the largest social protests in Taiwan since 2014. Drawing on two waves of original survey data, we find that independents were more likely to adopt the KMT’s framing of the protests and related legislative reforms. However, independent voters had greater support than blue camp supporters for democratic practices, despite their alignment over the Bluebird movement. These findings advance understanding of Taiwan’s electoral blocs, the dynamics of movement–party relations and the contours of democratic support among its citizens.

For much of imperial Chinese history, chroniclers and explorers understood a maritime land called Liuqiu to be the Ryūkyūs. In the early twentieth century, however, a new dynastic history claimed that Liuqiu was in fact Taiwan. This article explores how and why an uncontested and unambiguous understanding of Chinese maritime history was suddenly rewritten in the modern world, becoming the accepted interpretation and shaping twenty-first century geopolitics. While scholars have weighed the veracity of Liuqiu as either Taiwan or Ryūkyū, this article focuses on how the Liuqiu–Taiwan thesis was produced and transmitted, showing how scientific methodology, imperialism, and nationalism worked to reshape geographical history. The article further contributes to an understanding of the shaping of the borders and claims of the modern Chinese nation: whereas scholars have investigated late Qing and early Republican debates over the western frontier and ethnicities, this article shows that questions over Taiwan were just as important.

This study compares educational foundations in the Chinese Mainland and Taiwan systematically and empirically using a complete evaluation index-system tool based on corporate governance theory that involves both static governance structures and dynamic governance mechanisms. Understanding the differences between foundations in the Mainland and Taiwan can affect government policy and foundation management methods. A group decision making-analytic hierarchy process (GDM-AHP) alongside an evaluation index value of foundation governance (EIVFG) model established a weight coefficient of the evaluation index system, yielding EIVFG scores. Despite having similar EIVFG scores, foundations in the Mainland and Taiwan have distinct governance structures. The governance mechanisms of foundations are more important than their governance structures, and Taiwanese educational foundations are more mature than Mainland foundations with regard to their underlying governance mechanisms. These findings underscore the importance of policies that employ the principles of fairness and impartiality (rather than requiring legal inspections) and that establish thereby an environment of mutual trust that fosters foundations’ maturity and growth.

Taiwan is regarded as the vanguard of LGBT+ rights in Asia. We conducted a scoping review to map research on LGBT+ inclusion in Taiwan, identify knowledge gaps and propose future directions for research and policy. Results indicate a predominant focus on health, with the over-representation of gay men and exclusion of lesbian and bisexual women and transgender/gender diverse people. Despite being the first Asian jurisdiction to legalise same-sex marriage, insufficient policy protections were evidenced concerning family formation, adoption, and parenting, with family systems that largely exclude LGBT+ people. Findings reveal pervasive discrimination and exclusion in education, an economic system that restricts LGBT+ people’s employment opportunities and advancement, and a healthcare system that lacks competencies in serving LGBT+ people. Future research on LGBT+ inclusion in Taiwan should address understudied populations, provide disaggregated data on LGBT+ individuals, and advance evidence to support policy protections in education, economic, family, health, and political domains.

This article explores the intersection of Cold War geopolitics, cultural psychiatry, and migration in Taiwan from the mid-1940s to the 1970s. Building on recent scholarship in cultural psychiatry and Cold War science, it examines how geopolitical tensions shaped psychiatric knowledge production in East Asia. Focusing on the psychological and social impact of the 1949 mass migration, when over a million Chinese immigrants arrived in Taiwan, alongside the clinical and academic work of Taiwanese psychiatrists, the study highlights how migration and societal upheaval became central research concerns. Operating under the authoritarian Kuomintang regime and within the constraints and opportunities of international politics, Taiwanese psychiatrists – most of whom were native-born with colonial backgrounds – drew on intellectual traditions from imperial Japan, fascist Germany, and the Cold War Western bloc. Navigating both global psychiatric discourses and local concerns, they positioned themselves as key contributors to the international development of psychiatric research. While their portrayals of Chinese character structure and family dynamics sometimes reflected essentialist views, their work also demonstrated a nuanced awareness of historical change and contemporary realities during a period of intense political repression and uncertainty. By analysing archival sources and medical texts, this article illuminates the complex interplay between geopolitics and psychiatric knowledge production in Cold War Taiwan.

Despite ongoing affective polarization in the United States, support for Taiwan has somehow remained unscathed; Democrats and Republicans unanimously endorse US-Taiwan foreign policy. This is reflected both in public opinion surveys of American voters and support for Taiwan from elected officials. Theories of foreign policy and public opinion suggest that whether voters take top-down or bottom-up cues on foreign policy, we should expect some level of polarization on a salient issue like Taiwan. Utilizing two preregistered survey experiments in the United States, this study tests how robust bipartisan support for Taiwan persists when Taiwan is framed as either a Republican or Democratic issue. When presented as a partisan issue, do American voters still support Taiwan? Contrary to theoretical expectations, Taiwan presents a complex reality. Some foreign policy issues related to Taiwan can become partisan when framed along party lines while others remain bipartisan. Specifically, support for diplomatic and military policy may be affected by partisan framing, but support for economic policy remains bipartisan. This study contributes to theories of public opinion and foreign policy, particularly for scholars focused on US-Taiwan and US-China relations.

A well-defined territorial boundary is essential for the design and implementation of social policies, as it defines the scope of the political community. In states where territorial boundaries are contested, the contours of sovereignty remains ambiguous. This paper studies the effects of contested perceptions of territory on welfare states. The paper distinguishes between institutional solidarity (support for formal welfare arrangements) and intergenerational social solidarity (willingness to help the other generation at a personal cost) and argues that territorial state identity independently influences both, aside from national identities and nationalism. Employing Taiwan’s social security reform as the case, and using observational data derived from the 2019 nationally representative Taiwan Image Survey alongside data from an original survey administered in Taiwan in 2023, the article demonstrates that territorial state identity enhances support for both institutional solidarity and intergenerational social solidarity. This effect persists even when controlling for nationalism. This research underscores the importance of recognising territorial boundaries consistent with the welfare apparatus for the sustainability of welfare states.

Research informed by sociological neoinstitutionalism often frames organizational reactions to legal norms as either loose coupling, where formal legal commitments are only weakly aligned with actual practices, or tight coupling, where strong internal or external compliance pressures drive close alignment. This article introduces a third pattern – contentious coupling – where some organizational members attempt to realign practices with legal commitments, but these very efforts provoke pushback from others, resulting in substantive yet constrained success. This paradox is key to understanding the widespread yet limited effects of legal rights. I illustrate contentious coupling by examining how international human rights law has shaped solitary confinement reform in Taiwan. While hierarchical enforcement led by rights advocates and policymakers has successfully reduced prolonged solitary confinement, it has also alienated frontline correctional officers by triggering a sense of relative deprivation and perception of hypocrisy, encapsulated in their complaints of a “human rights upsurge.” In response, these officers engage in two forms of passive resistance – formalistic care and resistance spillover – both of which undermine the authority of human rights and hinder their capacity to transform correctional culture.

From the 1950s to the 1980s, disputes about fishing rights and practices that emerged due to decolonisation processes and the expansion of maritime boundaries shaped diplomatic relations between Taiwan and Pacific polities. Whether legal or illegal, fisheries provided a space where Taiwan and Pacific locales engaged at state and non-state levels. Using newspapers and archival materials, this article examines how the Taiwanese fishing community in American Samoa became intertwined in American Samoan society and complicated state-level relationships. This legal fishing community then expanded into illegal fishing incidents in Tuvalu, Niue, and the Cook Islands, again shaping Taiwan-Pacific relations. Taiwan’s fisheries history demonstrates beyond-the-state encounters for Taiwan, overseas Chinese communities in the Pacific, colonised and independent Pacific locales, and colonial powers. It contributes to global history understandings of a deep relationality between histories of the Pacific Rim and Oceania that have been separated in historical analysis.