A Tale of Two Taiwans: Discourse Gaps on Taiwan Affairs between DC and Taipei – Part III

This is Part three of a three part series on A Tale of Two Taiwans.

***

What opportunities can both sides create or support to reduce the discourse gaps between Washington and Taipei? Based on information gathered from the interviews as well as from personal experience, the author recommends that both sides build up their respective policy education ecosystems, strengthen supporting infrastructures for research, and position Taiwan in new discourse domains through highlighting local voices and experts as well as recognizing Taiwan’s contributions to fields beyond geopolitics and geoeconomics.

Investing in education ecosystems: the policy education value chain

In this author’s view, both Washington and Taipei are in critical need of investment into their respective policy research and education ecosystems. While there are numerous new and long-standing educational exchanges taking place between both sides, particularly at the college and university level, both sides must invest specific attention to policy education in academia and in professional spaces. Loosely applying Michael Porter’s seminal concept of value chains to policy education, the author considers that developing a policy education value chain[1] framework – highlighting inputs (student recruitment and preparation), operations (education opportunities), outputs (research and employment, and supporting infrastructure – can be useful to determine strengths and weaknesses of the education ecosystems in Washington and Taipei, and identify opportunities for growth and collaboration to ultimately reduce Taiwan discourse drift and enrich mutual understanding.

Based on the author’s past experience as a program administrator in education, one key underserved area in Washington’s policy education ecosystem is how students are being prepared (or not!) to pursue careers in foreign affairs research or practice – in other words, the input and supporting infrastructure in Washington’s policy education value chain. To address this, the author advocates for greater engagement between the research and policy communities in Washington, and K-12 learning communities across the United States. There are types of activities that can provide students with greater exposure and awareness to professional applications of foreign affairs interests and area studies skills.

For example, the author previously worked on a project in which the George Washington University faculty and staff collaborated directly with Maryland public middle schools to design and carry out a Taiwan Strait Crisis simulation for middle school students that incorporated live online lectures with policy experts and created new curriculum materials for the classroom on policy research, diplomacy, and U.S. policy toward Taiwan. The simulation, which received overwhelmingly positive reception from the teachers and students alike, gave students a practical task-based opportunity to develop policy research and discourse skills, and got students to engage directly in current policy debates regarding Taiwan. In other words, the simulation brought Taiwan discourse directly into new educational spaces, and some of these students may well be inspired by the experience to pursue a later career in Taiwan affairs. In this way, K-12 classrooms are invaluable spaces in which Taiwan discourse can happen early and often, and in doing so classrooms can reduce discourse drift on Taiwan. 

Taiwan’s policy education ecosystem suffers from limited entry points that connect research and policy communities, and lacks crucial pipelines that connect students and researchers directly to professional applications of policy research – speaking to the output and infrastructure elements of the policy education value chain. These are historic strengths in Washington, where its policy education ecosystem has fluid entry points between research and policy spaces, through which individuals with interests or skills in foreign affairs-related work can engage in policy discourse directly via public service and government, or indirectly via the institutions that are adjacent to or advise government. In Washington, there is also an increasing number of organizations with established equity or growing interest in Taiwan affairs that are creating regular policy research output on Taiwan issues. In contrast, echoing Fang-Yu Chen’s earlier insight, apart from a few notable exceptions including CAPRI, there is no meaningful policy research and education community in Taipei generating regular output on foreign affairs, and no significant entry points between the research and policy professional communities.

One way to address this crucial shortcoming is to establish an independent professional research institution in Taipei with a mission to examine and report on U.S. politics, policy, and society. The creation of such an institution would serve to better inform the Taiwanese public and policy research communities on U.S. political developments and culture. In doing so, this institution can make significant contributions to proactively link Taiwan discourse between Washington and Taipei. Such an institution can also serve as an entry point for U.S. and Taiwan researchers and practitioners to engage in policy dialogue and exchange through hosting visiting U.S. delegations and through being a career outlet for Taiwanese and international foreign affairs professionals. Additionally, recalling that Taiwan’s foreign affairs bureaucracy invests enormous attention on the United States, this new research institution can provide invaluable support to Taiwan’s government agencies by both supporting professional development opportunities for Taiwanese foreign affairs professionals and by providing additional research output and intellectual capital focused on U.S. affairs. As such, creating such a center in Taipei would do much to bridge the U.S.-Taiwan research and policy communities, generate more informed public policy debate in Taiwan, and reduce Taiwan discourse drift between the two sides. 

Improving U.S.-Taiwan research infrastructure: professional exchanges and data

In addition to building up the input and output components of the policy education value chains in Washington and Taipei, there are several ways to improve the supporting infrastructure of human and intellectual resources in both places that can also address Taiwan discourse gaps. This article will highlight two in particular: professional exchanges and publicly accessible data. 

Regarding exchanges, whereas the U.S. and Taiwan have engaged in robust professional and educational exchanges for decades, one area that has received little attention is working-level exchanges between managers, administrators, and staffers at policy, research, and non-profit organizations. Echoing the sentiments that Taiwan Digital Diplomacy Association Founder and President  Chiayo Kuo shared earlier, significant information gaps still persist particularly among Taiwanese civil society organizations regarding U.S. government and non-governmental organization structures and practices. Similar gaps exist among U.S.-based organizations, such as what Robert Sutter noted regarding little understanding or analysis among Washington circles regarding Taiwan’s Legislative-Executive dynamics. 

An exciting development on this front is the creation of the Taiwan Fellowship Program, a professional exchange program, modeled after the successful Mansfield Fellowship Program, that is designed to recruit U.S. federal employees to go on a year of Mandarin Chinese language study followed by a year of working within a Taiwanese government office or NGO. Implementation of this program has stalled, however, and a group of U.S. Senators penned a letter urging the Department of State and the American Institute in Taiwan to recruit the first cohort and roll out the program as soon as possible. Through implementing more short-term and long-term professional exchanges in public and non-profit sectors such as the Taiwan Fellowship Program, Washington and Taipei can encourage greater information-sharing between working-level staffers in policy research and education organizations. Such programs can emphasize understanding organizational structure and culture, agenda-setting, and developing project-focused collaborations between intuitions on both sides that would contribute to narrowing gaps of Taiwan discourse at the organizational level. 

Another key improvement in research support infrastructure for both sides to invest in is accessibility of public policy information and data. Regarding public policy information, sustaining regular and frequent working-level exchanges between research and civil society groups in a way that extends to staffers and program administrators in addition to established experts and director-level administrators would make invaluable near- and long-term contributions to mutual understanding of Taiwan policy discourse at an operational level. In these exchanges, greater attention can be given to developing and reinforcing shared industry language and standards in areas including grant-writing and project management for research programs.

Relatedly, both sides should develop more language programs that emphasize professional, task-based application of language skills for fields such as diplomacy, foreign affairs, and organizational management. As this author has previously written, the U.S.-Taiwan Education Initiative, which has already facilitated a significant increase in bilateral language and academic exchange programs, can and should be utilized by public agencies and stakeholders on both sides to establish these industry-focused language programs.

Connected to reducing language barriers is improving accessibility of data. Multiple interviews indicated that Taiwan in particular must make stronger efforts in providing English-language information on public agency websites that are consistently updated and detail-rich. To this end, Taiwan’s public agencies can, under the purview of meeting its Bilingual 2030 Policy goals, conduct and update accordingly a coordinated and comprehensive review of data availability and accessibility on public websites or databases. While seemingly granular, these supporting infrastructure improvements provide essential tools through which those engaged in Taiwan discourse in Washington and Taipei can do so efficiently and mutually enriching.

How we talk about Taiwan matters: positioning Taiwan intentionally in policy discourse

In conjunction with the above recommendations, we collectively in the broader Taiwan Studies community must, wherever feasible and in whichever space(s) we can reach, must craft policy discourse agendas that position Taiwan on its own terms and highlight Taiwan affairs as an intersectional topic that cuts across traditional and new international affairs topics. One critical way Taiwan affairs agendas must be improved is through greater engagement with local voices and Taiwan specialists who represent the wide array of social, political, cultural, identity, and other dimensions that are present in both sides. In addition to each of the scholars and practitioners the author interviewed for this article, there are many experts and organizations based in Taiwan, as well as the Taiwan affairs community on X (Twitter), who have long been publishing meaningful content on Taiwan affairs for international audiences – including Ketagalan Media and US Taiwan Watch. Taiwan discourse in Washington and Taipei would benefit immensely from greater integration of local voices and Taiwan specialists in leading conversations about Taiwan affairs.

It is important to reflect on where Taiwan can be a relevant stakeholder in foreign affairs and public policy discourse. The Taiwan policy communities in Washington and Taipei stand to benefit from thinking about Taiwan beyond the traditional lens of geopolitics and geoeconomics. Just to highlight one such area in which the author is highly engaged, Taiwan is a major actor in digital democracy research and the global civic technology space. Former Minister of Digital Affairs Audrey Tang did much to promote globally Taiwan’s digital democracy experience, from using a live-stream telepresence robot to enter into a 2017 United Nations Internet Governance Forum meeting, to engaging in numerous interviews with global media platforms advocating for digital democracy.

Also highlighting Taiwan’s contributions to the field of digital democracy is g0v, one of Taiwan’s key civic technology grassroots movements which since 2012 has organized dozens of hackathons as well as several international summits on digital democracy and governance, each of which have since blossomed into other projects and platforms, including US Taiwan Watch. Additionally, g0v has developed digital tools to enable citizens to engage government directly in public decision-making and accountability, such as vTaiwan, a decentralized open consultation platform perhaps most famous for its role in shaping Taiwan government’s regulations on the ride-sharing app Uber. Newer civic tech applications in Taiwan, such as Talk to the City’s use of AI to scale-up democratic deliberations in public policy analysis, are further placing Taiwan at the forefront of technology and democracy discourse. Along with Code for Japan and Code for Korea, g0v co-hosts the annual Face the Ocean hackathon, where civic technology community members meet for hackathons, presentations, knowledge-sharing, and collaborative activities. Digital governance and civic technology is just one research and policy area where Taiwan is making invaluable contributions to discourse beyond geopolitics and geoeconomics.

While this investigation merely scratches the surface at best on the manifestations and drivers of the “two Taiwans” discourse drift in Taiwan affairs between Washington and Taipei, this author hopes that this series offers some ways to encourage more conversations on how to recognize and address these gaps. More research on this topic will undoubtedly generate new and promising perspectives in Taiwan affairs.

(1) For the purposes of this article to generate discussions, the policy education value chain concept is only very loosely introduced and defined. The author encourages deeper study and development of the applicability of value chains concepts to policy education.

(Feature photo by Jack Brind on Uplash)