Visualizing affective democracy: Learning community in China and Taiwan through images of foreigners
Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
10-2023
Abstract
In the past few years, cross-strait relations have been in the news again, especially in terms of China’s hard power reunification strategy and its sharp power influence operations. Indeed, much ink has been spilled about what lessons Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has for a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Taiwan’s presidential election in January 2024 has also led to increased analysis on Beijing’s use disinformation, misinformation, and other influence operations to favor candidates more friendly to the PRC. Indeed, Chinese military’s daily testing of Taiwan’s air and sea defense is both a hard power and a sharp power strategy because it wears down both material capabilities and psychological endurance. This article contextualizes and analyzes recent China-Taiwan tensions by examining the soft power of how Beijing and Taipei construct political community through compulsory education. While much research examines history and geography textbooks to show how China and Taiwan have engaged in nation-building—specifically building Chinese or Taiwanese nationalism—over the past decades, this article takes a broader view of identity beyond nationalism to focus on how civic education textbooks work to build community in local, national, and global space. Importantly, it compares Chinese and Taiwanese textbooks to see how they imagine their nations and the world in different ways.
Keywords
Affective democracy, cross-Strait relations, nationalism, textbooks, International relations, China, Taiwan, nation-building, identity
Discipline
Asian Studies | International Relations
Research Areas
Political Science
Publication
Asan Forum
First Page
1
Last Page
27
ISSN
2288-5757
Publisher
Asan Institute for Policy Studies
Citation
CALLAHAN, William A..(2023). Visualizing affective democracy: Learning community in China and Taiwan through images of foreigners. Asan Forum, , 1-27.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/4162
Copyright Owner and License
Publisher
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://theasanforum.org/visualizing-affective-democracy-learning-community-in-china-and-taiwan-through-images-of-foreigners/
