Always contentious and ever daunting, Taiwanese politics are often a point of confusion for ICLP students. As the recent U.S. beef scandal and the mercurial ECFA debate have shown, the hubbub that unfolds everyday in Taiwan's newspapers often leaves students and even teachers scratching their heads. On February 4th ICLP welcomed Brown Professor of East Asian Politics at Davidson College Shelley Rigger to shed light on these murky but critical questions.

　　A self-described “accidental Taiwan expert,” Ms. Rigger was forced to change the focus of her PhD while she was at Harvard from China's Islamic minorities to Taiwan politics after the Tiananmen massacre made it too difficult to travel to China and do research. “I was all revved up to go to China and start my research, but unfortunately I couldn't. At the time people said you can focus on Taiwan because you need a dissertation, but realistically speaking you need to get working on 'real' China because no one will be interested in Taiwan in 10 years,” she said.
 
　　Twenty years later Ms. Rigger laughingly admitted she has had trouble extricating herself from Taiwan politics because people “are so relentlessly interested in the subject.” Indeed given the hearty debate about Ma Ying-Jeou’s presidency and recent weapons sales to the U.S., Taiwan and cross-strait relations look to be a cornerstone of East Asian studies for the foreseeable future.

　　Ms. Rigger opened her sweeping discussion of Taiwanese politics (and by extension U.S.-China relations) by posing a simple question: why has China reacted so strongly to recent weapons sales that by experts' accounts – because the package lacks F-16s – represents a downgrade from what was expected?

　　Her not-so-simple answer is that continuing real progress on cross-straits relations has always been unsustainable, so it was only a matter of time before the relative opening up to China that has happened under Ma hit a wall. To make matters worse the recent economic downturn has hastened the falling out between the U.S. and China over trade and Chinese currency manipulation. And when U.S.-China relations sour, cross-straits relations are often quick to follow.

　　Still Ms. Rigger does not envision the current spat leading to the crisis some have predicted. “China has floated some trial balloons and they're getting a serious reaction and I imagine there may be adjustments in policy in response. But that won't be obvious because Chinese politicians are loath to back down in ways that are publicly visible,” she said.

　　But in the long term, she added, it's hard to see how any real breakthrough is possible. “It's as though Taiwan is attempting to navigate a fjord that just keeps narrowing,” she said. Where the ship will run aground is still unclear, but unless the Chinese are willing to settle for some sort of “unification lite,” Ms. Rigger projected it would be a long time before any meaningful resolution is hammered out. While that leaves Taiwan in the precarious political situation its citizens have become accustomed to, it means ICLP students looking to the future wouldn't be so ill-advised to become “intentional” Taiwan experts.