DSPO 22A12 - Understanding the Taiwan issue: the Making of a Territorial Dispute

Despite being one of Asia's most important hotbed of tensions, the Taiwan Strait is often clumsily covered by Western media – when it is not merely overshadowed by other regional geopolitical flashpoints such as the South China Sea or the Korean peninsula. Admittedly, addressing the case of Taiwan is no easy task; it requires to untangle interwoven and sometimes confusing political discourses on a disputed territory which is, furthermore, irreducible to any other around the globe. However, mastering the “Taiwan issue” ( Taiwan wenti 台灣問題) offers three significant advantages. First, it constitutes an essential prerequisite for understanding the political, economic, and social structuration of the Chinese-speaking region, or “Greater China” ( da Zhonghua 大中華). Second, it can serve as an original gateway to analyzing other sovereignty disputes by trying to draw out general lessons from a specific case. Third, it calls into question the delimitation of regional wholes in general and of insular territories in particular, the boundaries of which being less influenced by sheer geography than by motivations of its operators. Following a constructivist and non-judgmental approach, this course certainly does not intend to determine which side is right and which side is wrong, or to propose any concrete solution to end the conflict undermining the region. Rather, it aims at plunging students into the making of a territorial dispute by introducing, to paraphrase Michel Foucault, “a history of the way” the Taiwan Strait “poses a problem”.

Alexandre GANDIL

Séminaire

English

Autumn 2021-2022

To validate the course, the student is expected to pass the following assignment: 1°) Oral presentation (20% of the final grade). Each session, a group of 2 or 3 students will do an oral presentation (15-20 minutes) about the topic chosen during the first session. The main evaluation criteria are the ability to problematize the topic, to offer a structured demonstration, and to respect the time limit. A soft copy of the presentation outline with a properly formatted bibliography of the references used must be sent to the teacher the day before the session ( alexandre.gandil.scpo@analyse.urkund.com ). 2°) Class exam (20% of the final grade). Students will have to answer 4 course questions (500 words max. per answer). 3°) Final paper (40% of the final grade). Each student will have to write an essay (3,000-3,500 words, excluding bibliography) on one of the two topics proposed by the teacher. Paper will be due for the last session.

The main goal of “Understanding the ‘Taiwan issue': the making of a territorial dispute” lies in training students to critically process the complexity of a geopolitical flashpoint and in enabling them to explain it clearly without falling in the oversimplification trap. By the end of the course, students are therefore expected to: 1°) Gain a solid knowledge of the Taiwan Strait area and consequently address any topic relating to the “Taiwan issue” in a critical manner, through a constructivist and non-judgmental approach; 2°) Make an accurate, rigorous, and justified use of the comparative method when it comes to territorial disputes in general, and those pertaining to the People's Republic of China in particular; 3°) Consolidate their political science knowledge by mastering useful concepts for sovereignty disputes analysis (nationalism, nation state, identity, statehood, etc.) and calling into question the usefulness of the concept of insularity.