Fresh from months lecturing across Europe and North America, Taiwan hand Bruce Jacobs, professor of Asian languages and cultures at Monash University in Melbourne, argued in Taipei last week that size doesn’t matter — or to be more precise, that Taiwan isn’t, despite the popular view, “small.” As he sees it, the realization that Taiwan is in fact a “middle power” could have implications not only for how we look at Taiwan, but perhaps more importantly, for its ability to forge a path for itself.
With Typhoon Soulik homing in on Thursday, its structure more than twice the size of Taiwan proper, it was easy to think that Jacobs had perhaps lost all sense of proportion after traveling large expanses of territory in recent months. Or maybe not.
“Its [Taiwan’s] population, equal to that of Australia, is larger than two-thirds of the world’s nations and its area is greater than two-fifths of the world’s nations,” Jacobs told the foreign correspondents’ club in Taipei, adding that combined with its advanced economy, Taiwan was — and should act as — “an important world ‘middle power.’”
photo: j. Michael Cole, Taipei Times
In saying so, he was clearly contradicting what other academics who have written about Taiwan, including the eminent Shelley Rigger in her book Why Taiwan Matters: Small Island, Global Powerhouse, had argued.
Jacobs was on to something here, and perhaps he was reminding us of the mistake we had all committed — Taiwanese included — by looking at Taiwan solely from the perspective of the 800lb gorilla in its immediate neighborhood. Size is indeed contingent on what an object is compared to. In other words, it is relative. And it is also as much a term of geography as it is a state of mind.
He didn’t say much more about size, but a few hours before he was set to return to Australia, I contacted him again and sought to hear more of his views on the subject.
Starting from the position that the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration behaved as if Taiwan was in fact a small power, I asked Jacobs whether attempts by the Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) administrations to behave like a middle power, with their emphasis on official diplomacy, had backfired and perhaps forced the Ma administration to downsize Taiwan for the sake of better relations with China and the rest of the world. Put differently, I asked him whether the international community itself wanted Taiwan to be small.
Of course, what I really was doing was tiptoeing around the adjective that Washington has often used to describe Chen — “troublemaker” — and Jacobs saw right through my tactic.
“I don’t think that is correct. Chen was called a troublemaker because he was seen to have interfered in the China-US relationship. I don’t believe the George W. Bush administration’s attitude was correct,” he said.
Paul Wolfowitz, Bush’s deputy secretary of defense, had told me something similar when he described Washington’s attitude toward Taiwan during those heady years. The Bush administration, busy waging two wars, had not paid enough attention to Taiwan’s needs and had perhaps treated Chen unfairly by calling him a troublemaker.
So perhaps Taiwan would get away with it if it sought to punch at its weight for once. But for this to be possible, Jacobs tells us, a whole mindset needs to be changed through articles, books and the willingness of Taiwanese officials — the very same people who when representing the nation abroad constantly use the terms “small” and “tiny” to describe their country — to recognize the fact that their employer is in fact a sizeable member of the international community.
If I could add one thing to Jacobs’ views on size, it would be that besides the need for thinkers and officials to educate the world about Taiwan’s true size, Taiwanese themselves need to be better informed about the rest of the world, if only so that they can cultivate the mindset that their nation in fact isn’t a small dot lost in an immense ocean, but that it can be heard abroad, if only its people are confident and realistic enough about their own national power.
Size is a state of mind, Jacobs tells us, and he thinks — hopes — that Taiwanese can think big.
Taiwan’s semiconductor industry consumes electricity at rates that would strain most national grids. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) alone accounted for more than 9 percent, or 2,590 megawatts (MW), of the nation’s power demand last year. The factories that produce chips for the world’s phones and servers run around the clock. They cannot tolerate blackouts. Yet Taiwan imports 97 percent of its energy, with liquefied natural gas reserves measured in days. Underground, Taiwan has options. Studies from National Taiwan University estimate recoverable geothermal resources at more than 33,000 MW. Current installed capacity stands below 10 MW. OBSTACLES Despite Taiwan’s significant geothermal potential, the
In our discussions of tourism in Taiwan we often criticize the government’s addiction to promoting food and shopping, while ignoring Taiwan’s underdeveloped trekking and adventure travel opportunities. This discussion, however, is decidedly land-focused. When was the last time a port entered into it? Last week I encountered journalist and travel writer Cameron Dueck, who had sailed to Taiwan in 2023-24, and was full of tales. Like everyone who visits, he and his partner Fiona Ching loved our island nation and had nothing but wonderful experiences on land. But he had little positive to say about the way Taiwan has organized its
The entire Li Zhenxiu (李貞秀) saga has been an ugly, complicated mess. Born in China’s Hunan Province, she moved to work in Shenzhen, where she met her future Taiwanese husband. Most accounts have her arriving in Taiwan and marrying somewhere between 1993 and 1999. She built a successful career in Taiwan in the tech industry before founding her own company. She also served in high-ranking positions on various environmentally-focused tech associations. She says she was inspired by the founding of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) in 2019 by Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), and began volunteering for the party soon after. Ko
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) returned from her trip to meet People’s Republic of China (PRC) dictator Xi Jinping (習近平) bearing “a gift” for the people of Taiwan: 10 measures the PRC proposed to “facilitate the peaceful development of cross-strait relations.” “China on Sunday unveiled 10 new incentive measures for Taiwan,” wrote Reuters, wrongly. The PRC’s longstanding habit with Taiwan relations is to repackage already extant or once-existing policies and declare that they are “new.” The list forwarded by Cheng reflects that practice. NEW MEASURES? Note the first item: establishing regular communication mechanisms between the Chinese Communist Party
RSS