Oxford scholar publishes response paper to Taiwan president’s LSE dissertation

Oxford scholar publishes reaction paper to hard copy of Taiwan president Tsai's LSE dissertation

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/09/19
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — As doubters continue to come out of the woodwork demanding proof of

President Tsai Ing-wen's (蔡英文) London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) Ph.D. dissertation, a University of Oxford scholar has published a response paper based on a hard copy of the work.

In response to the controversy, Hsu Yung-tai (徐永泰), a University of Oxford professor who holds a masters in modern history and Ph.D. in economic history from the esteemed university, got access to a hard copy of the dissertation and published a reaction essay to it in the World Journal on Wednesday (Sept. 18). In the rambling response paper, he describes his experience with the work in the LSE library and then gives a general impression about each section and an overall presentation of the document.

Hsu pointed out that Tsai's dissertation has not been available in the school's library since it was first published in 1983 until June of this year. The dissertation cannot be checked out, but it can be viewed in the LSE Women's Library Reading Room with certain restrictions, such as no photography of the pages or quoting of their contents and frequent monitoring by a librarian.

The Oxford scholar said that he accessed a copy of the dissertation at 1:50 p.m. in the afternoon on Mid-Autumn Festival (Sept. 13), after going through a number of bureaucratic hurdles, and finished poring over it by 4 p.m. The dissertation was bound in a hard, black cover and presciently titled in embossed gold lettering, "Unfair Trade Practices and Safeguarding Actions," with the author listed as Ing-wen Tsai.    [FULL  STORY]