Where Kapur is most useful is in his account of Taiwan's relations with individual countries -- here his text is detailed, and contains information difficult to find elsewhere.
Kapur's analysis is invariably up-beat. He is very insistent, for example, on his belief that the international community is whole-heartedly, if not always openly, on Taiwan's side. All want good relations with such a flourishing economy, he implies, and in reality maintain them, even though they cannot be entirely above-board about it for fear of offending Beijing. "The fact of the matter is," he writes, "that the Island has relations in some form or other with the entire planet." (He capitalizes "Island" throughout the book). What he doesn't consider is which way nations might jump if they were forced to choose either Beijing or Taipei, not merely in diplomatic terms -- as they are now -- but in terms of trade as well.
He's also full of praise for Taiwan's development over 50 years from an agrarian economy to a successful and prosperous industrialized one. He details this, considers the standard of living here to be approximately equal to that in the more successful nations of southern Europe (presumably he means Spain and Italy), and asserts that only South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong can equal it among the rapidly developing regions of East Asia (he assumes, one imagines, that Japan is fully developed).
Even so, I have to return to the errors. In a key paragraph on page 213 we read, "On the other hand, China's normative goal of eventually integrating China completely to the Mainland is not feasible either." Clearly he means "integrating Taiwan" and "integrating China" is simply a blunder resulting from hasty work and lack of careful proof-reading.
Harish Kapur appears something of a maverick, and he's nothing if not versatile (an Internet search shows he submitted designs in the competition for the replacement World Trade Center buildings). Many readers living in Taiwan, however, will know more about the island's recent politics than Harish Kapur chooses to describe. Even so, this is a balanced and consistently optimistic account of Taiwan's achievements and current situation. It's well-intentioned and markedly Taiwan-friendly, albeit mildly eccentric in places. Newcomers to the subject could do a lot worse than give it a quick perusal.
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