Editorial Reviews

Perspectives on Political Science

"A concise but comprehensive study ... [T]he book is well researched and is very useful for those who are interested in PRC-ROC relations. ."

Review

STRONG ' ... an excellent, theoretically based, history of the development of Chinese and Taiwanese nationalism and their interaction.' /STRONG - EM NOD and Conversion, Newsletter of the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute /EM

Book Description

For China, Taiwan is next in line to be unified with the People's Republic after Hong Kong in 1997. China's claim on Taiwan is of great importance to the politics of Chinese Nationalism. However, the democratic challenge from Taiwan is very potent and its status and identity within the international community is crucial to its survival.

Taiwan and Chinese Nationalism gives a survey of how Taiwan's status has come to be a symbol for the legitimacy of the Chinese regime in the evolution of Chinese nationalism. It also demonstrates how this has been challenged by demands for democratization in Taiwan. The KMT regime is shown to have allowed sovereignty to be practised by the population of the island while maintaining the claim that it is a part of China. The result is a "post-nationalist" identity for the island in an intermediate state between independence and unification with PRC.