Hoover Institution
Date: April 9, 2020
By: Hoover Institution, Stanford University

Negative perceptions about the People’s Republic of China during the COVID-19 crisis have greatly enhanced Taiwan’s position globally and have set the small island nation on a collision course with Beijing, argued Taipei-based policy analyst J. Michael Cole in a Hoover Institution webinar on Friday, April 9.

The discussion was part of a series of events within Hoover’s Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific project, chaired by Senior Fellow Larry Diamond and managed by Visiting Fellow Glenn Tiffert.

Cole argued that the pandemic has raised tensions in cross-strait relations that had already been intensified by the 2016 Taiwan election, which swept the independence-oriented Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) into power in the Legislative Yuan, and its leader Tsai Ing-Wen into the presidency.

The DPP’s domination of national politics came in the wake of the 2014 Sunflower Movement, when activist students occupied the Legislative and Executive Yuans to protest a free-trade agreement that was being negotiated with Beijing.    [FULL  STORY]