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Trade Politics and the Challenge of Democratic Governance under Ma Ying-jeou

  • Yun-han Chu

On October 17-18, 2014 the Taiwan Democracy Project at CDDRL, with the generous support of the Taipei Economic and Culture Office, hosted its annual conference at Stanford University to examine the politics of polarization in Taiwan.

This conference brought together specialists from Taiwan, the U.S., and elsewhere in Asia to examine the sources and implications of this political polarization in comparative perspective. It will include a special case study of the Trade in Services Agreement with China that triggered this past year’s protests, as well as a more general overview of the politics of trade liberalization in Taiwan, prospects for Taiwan’s integration into the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other regional trade agreements, and a consideration of the implications for Taiwan’s long-term democratic future.

Yun-han Chu (朱雲漢) is Professor of Political Science at National Taiwan University, Research Fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Political Science, and President of the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation. Dr. Chu’s research and teaching career has focused on the political economy of East Asian newly-industrialized countries (NIC's), democratization, and comparative mass political behavior. He served for eleven years as Director of Programs at the Institute for National Policy Research in Taipei, and from 1994 until 1997 was Coordinator of the Political Science section of the National Science Council.p Dr. Chu is a three-time recipient of the National Science Council's Outstanding Research Award. He was elected Academician by Academia Sinica, the highest academic honor the country bestows on individual scholars.  Publications to his credit include more than one hundred journal articles and edited volume chapters, as well as fifteen books and edited volumes. He is also a current editorial board member for several major research journals, and he was previously the president of the Chinese Association of Political Science (2003-2005) and a member of the Council of American Political Science Association (2009-2011). Dr. Chu received his Ph.D. in political science (1987) from the University of Minnesota.