I've read through @oliverwkim and @JenKuanWang's paper. In short, this empirical study is groundbreaking. It provides evidence for what some historians have been arguing: Taiwan's land reform success has been exaggerated and turned into a miracle narrative. Thread (1/15)

https://twitter.com/oliverwkim/status/1830985359687327919

Kim and Wang challenge the standard narrative of land reform, mirrored most recently in Joe Studwell's problematic How Asia Works (something I've criticized in my own published work as well as other threads with prominent Twitter "economists."). (2/15)prchistory.org/wp-content/upl…

One of my PhD students, Col. Steve Li, wrote his doctoral dissertation on this conundrum: “Why so little?” digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/… A short thread of some of his findings:

https://twitter.com/JohnCulver689/status/1561355610549112832

A lot has to do with how Taiwanese politicians and the public understand defense, which isn’t necessarily the same as US advisers do. As an example, one party for decades believed (still believes) the best defense was maintaining good relations with your dangerous neighbor.

There are lots of unevidenced claims in this thread, from a China expert who has no expertise on Taiwan judging by the claim that Weibo is “an important cross-Strait communications tool.” A thread: /1

https://twitter.com/WilliamHOverhol/status/1554912209125490688

There’s a problem of agency. Pelosi may have been a catalyst, but all of the actions undertaken here were undertaken unilaterally by Beijing. All of these actions are part of Beijing’s repertoire of threats utilized regularly in the past two decades to intimidate Taiwan. /2

Pelosi’s visit to the Jingmei Human Rights Museum is an notable stop for a short itinerary. It shows the importance of Taiwan’s historical past under authoritarian rule and why the US values Taiwan not (just) as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” but as a shining city on a hill.

https://twitter.com/Cheng_yi_Huang/status/1554504134816321536

That’s not to say there aren’t hawks in the US who see Taiwan purely in realist terms, or who see Taiwan’s human rights turnaround purely as a foil to China. But this historical experience is an important part of the current US-Taiwan relationship and Taiwan’s national identity.

This article makes a number of major, false assertions about Taiwanese history. The lack of research and ignorance of Taiwan society and history is shocking for a publication that claims "academic rigor." A thread: 1/

https://twitter.com/AndrewMMacLeod/status/1546951033804713984

The groundwork for the author's broader ideological position is that Taiwan is not an "independent" state. This logic follows from his assertion that Taiwan claims to govern all of China. This is false. It has not claimed this for decades. 2/

Why are some Taiwanese nostalgic for the Japanese colonial period despite being colonized subjects? It’s about postcolonialism, trauma, and memory: how societies remember their pasts through the lens of the present. A long, scholarly thread: (1/n)

https://twitter.com/dearclarissa/status/1405210267911299072

Responses to this quoted thread believe that these Taiwanese are duped victims of propaganda or rapacious beneficiaries of a colonial regime that enriched them. While propaganda existed and some (but not all) Taiwanese benefited economically under Japanese rule, these (2/n)

This paper blew up on Twitter. There are economists and historians waging arguments left and right. My take on why historians find this paper so problematic, and what economists who are calling historians "bullies" or "poor at empirical methods" are missing: 1/n

https://twitter.com/ecmaEditors/status/1305868975289532426

It's true that for many historians, this type of econometric analysis is foreign. The attempt to quantify individuality and a frontier experience would seem bonkers to most historians. How do you quantify an experience? It's not something most historians would attempt. 2/n

Lee Teng-hui symbolized Taiwan's modern changes, not just through democratization and identity formation, but also as a paradigmatic developmental state technocrat. Through understanding Lee's rise, we can also understand the ROC state and the emergence of Taiwan. A thread: 1/n

https://twitter.com/heguisen/status/1288810053445787649

Lee was an agricultural economist in the Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction, the main agricultural policy making body in the Republic of China. Its policies drove decades of agricultural productivity growth that undergirded the Taiwan economic miracle decades later. 2/n

This CSIS brief on "decoupling" US interests from Huawei and its effect on the Taiwan economy, makes a number of one-sided assertions about the nature of PRC-Taiwan economic ties and of Taiwan's economy. A thread: 1/n

https://twitter.com/BeijingPalmer/status/1287858065723858946

The author, Kennedy, argues against decoupling, which he says is would harm the US economy as well as US security interests in East Asia. This is fundamentally an IR interdependence argument, which has been made before to justify trade liberalization. 2/n

As a historian of Taiwan, I'm lucky to be at an institution where I can teach a dedicated Taiwan Studies graduate seminar. I'm sharing my syllabus here (abridged) in case others might be interested in reading some of my favorite scholarship on different aspects of Taiwan. 1/n A few highlights: this course is designed to be an introduction to Taiwan Studies through major social science and humanities themes, such as empire and colonialism (and postcolonialism), gender and labor, capitalism and development, etc. 2/n

A thread on HK, China, and the intersection of capital and authoritarian politics. The article below shows the disbelief among foreign businessmen and investors that the new national security law would change capitalism-as-usual in HK. They may be wrong. 1/n

https://twitter.com/benjaminbland/status/1278926657273819138

This disbelief among foreign investors makes sense: they are used to operating in neoliberal havens where capitalist interests take precedence over "politics." This is one of the crowning achievements of the past 4 decades and "globalization." 2/n

A more serious thread on decolonization, authoritarianism, and the zombie of the Republic of China that just won't die 1/

https://twitter.com/jamestwotree/status/1216351476919914497

The idea of "Chineseness" is not an exclusive national sphere, meaning that being Chinese is not merely because you have a PRC passport or an ROC passport that one can be "Chinese." It's a term that spans ethnicity, identity, race, diaspora, language, culture, ancestry, etc. 2/