Feminist international relations theory helps mitigate tension between Tiawan and China, and vastly improves U.S. China relations.

(Chih-yu Shih is a political science professor at National Taiwan University and National Chair Professor of the Republic of China. He earned a Master of Public Policy degree from Harvard University and a PhD from the University of Denver. 2022, Eros of International Relations: Self-Feminizing and the Claiming of Postcolonial Chineseness. Pages 100-102. Hong Kong University Press. //CPSW – GHS-LHM)

The evolution of the past two decades has not appeared promising because nationalist politics in China and Taiwan rival each other, which culminated in a “self-othering” statist platform in Taiwan in the first half of 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic started in the city of Wuhan in China and then spread globally; the Taipei authorities, for their part, seized the opportunity to construct an equivalence between China and the virus that quickly led to the exclusion of Taiwan’s own legal citizens, who have been connected to China in one way or another. The reinforcement of the binary presumably demonstrates that Taiwan is Western rather than Chinese and incurs gendered, colonial, and illiberal consequences. In its long quest to become a member of the West, as opposed to a part of greater China, Taiwan’s anti-pandemic platform cashed in on the opportunities provided by the pandemic to stigmatize Chinese spouses of Taiwanese, usually wives, and their families. In fact, several thousand individuals, together with their children, who were visiting their Chinese relatives in Wuhan during the Chinese New Year festival became stuck in the city during the pandemic. Taiwan offered to take them back on government charter flights, an arrangement exclusively aimed at insinuating Taiwan’s independent statehood, which the sensitive Chinese authorities accordingly rejected. In addition, only parents who held a Taiwan passport were allowed entry and not their children—who were still waiting for their passports in a long queue—so many mothers were forced to remain with their children in Wuhan. The Taiwanese authorities proceeded to ban them from returning at all unless they took a Taiwanese charter flight “directly” from Wuhan, which was never available. After Wuhan’s reopening, however, these passport holders or Taiwan residents were still not allowed to enter Taiwan. In order to bar them from entry through indirect flight arrangements via a third transition point, the immigration authorities marked their passport electronically in the same way they do a persona non grata. When repeatedly asked during news conferences to compare those banned Taiwanese visiting Wuhan with other returnees, who were escaping far more serious pandemic conditions in the United States and Europe but allowed entry—initially without even observing 14 days of collective quarantine—the official reply was that the human rights of passengers from these countries must be respected. Deep in the background are the tens of thousands of families across the Taiwan Strait who, while practically providing immunity for Taiwan against an allegedly dangerous Chineseness, call into question official de-Sinicization campaigns. The pandemic has been a needed front for the government to strike back, substitute separation for immunity, and inflict self-othering. In fact, as the pandemic fades in China, the pro-independence authorities in Taipei proceed to ban any Chinese vaccines offered by various Chinese sources to Taiwan, despite the enormous difficulties for the Taiwanese to import vaccines elsewhere. Other than the KMT or the TPP, femininity has been vividly displayed in the cross-strait activities of Taiwanese businesspeople, families, students, and tourists in their endeavors to comply with the numerous regulations—set by both authorities that discourage their interactions—and win the support of their fellow citizens, who have become increasingly distrustful or hostile toward their counterparts across the strait. Even so, these involuntary political trespassers have been able to expand their network, benefit their acquaintances, and literally restrain Taiwanese politicians from exacerbating a decoupling policy, which has remained extreme rhetorical but much milder in practice. Postcolonial sensibilities, reflected in the quest for political autonomy from control and dominance, have consumed much of the political discourse on Taiwan and its future relations with China. Such sensibilities threaten to reduce Chinese nationalism anywhere to its feared irrelevance and apprehension regarding continuous Western imperialism in China. On the other hand, the same sensibilities prompt the pro-Taiwan independence forces, ironically, to desire a dependence on the United States and, to a lesser degree, Japan. China-Taiwan relations thus involve a number of complexities and ironies. In hindsight, all these sensibilities are essentially composed of two threads of discourse. The first thread reproduces the binary of the self and the other, mainly in territorial and legal terms. This binary comprises the rivalry between China and Taiwan as well as the rivalry between China and the United States. In the latter binary, Taiwan is merely a dependent of either China or the United States, in accordance with whether Beijing’s or Washington’s perspectives are adopted. It is this quest for dependence disguised as independence that creates the second thread of discourse and defines the scope of this book. In its samples, this chapter discovers both threads, which are discursively masculine and feminine. The masculine discourses are characterized by the sensibilities of political autonomy and/or rival ideologies, while the feminine discourses encompass a readiness for reconciliation, bridging, and adaptation on the one hand and a tolerance of inconsistency on the other. These discourses are respectively uttered by male and female professionals or entrepreneurs. The masculine discourses exemplify the strategy of side-taking between international rules or market performance and local conventions; they are metaphors for Taiwan’s choice between the United States and China, or China’s choice between internationalism and nationalism. International relations theory, as applied to Taiwan, echoes masculine discourses (D. Chang 2009), up to and including articulations by alleged feminists who mimic masculine values (Wei 2019). The feminine discourses are, however, unfamiliar to international relations theory (Chan 2000; Chowdhry and Ling 2010). They engender relational identities and reflect practices that either postpone a decision on where to draw the binary or deliberately alternate between the two elements indefinitely. Self-feminizing is intrinsic during alternation because the dependent relationship improvised threatens neither side. A self-feminizing approach improvises the relationships between the United States and China indirectly, and facilitates the constitution of their relational identities by way of the same dependent other. In practice, such consciously enacted femininity is ubiquitous. It can be argued that the self-feminizing of female professionals and entrepreneurs, which keeps the international and local from direct confrontation, points to a non-solution as a solution to seemingly rival identities. The potential confrontation can be caused by either divergent ideologies or competing people: local accountants, enclaved refugees, migrant workers, and colonized populations are examples of consciously low-profiled practitioners improvising non-threatening relationships that cut across politically correct binaries. Although these binaries are used to support hierarchy and dominance, the self-feminizing agencies enable epistemological equality between all competitors and rivals, who resemble each other in their relational sensibilities and responsibilities, albeit differing in kind, toward the common feminized dependents. One plausible consequence of self-feminizing, then, is emancipation from the pressure to enforce universal norms and rules. That said, the 25-year-old archives reveal the need for caution against any optimism about emancipation, as none of the male interviewees on the list practiced noticeable self-feminizing at the time. This lacuna of male participation may have already changed today, as more women plays leading roles in international sectors. However, the opposite can also be true if more women in the capacity of branch head or government head take on masculine values in their roles. Will there be more transgender strategists due to a more balanced mix of cisgender leaders, or vice versa? This could be answered by undertaking follow-up research in the future on the strategizing style of female CEOs and male CFOs in Taiwan’s international sector. The result could have serious cultural implications for anyone concerned with the prospects of emancipation from the masculine rivalry in the sovereign world.