Taiwan's rocky road to independence and democracy

By Isabelle Cheng, Senior Lecturer in East Asian and International Development Studies, University of Portsmouth

Published in 1946, the novel Orphan of Asia, by Taiwanese author Wu Zhou-liu, tells the story of Hu Tai-ming. Born in Japan-occupied Taiwan, brought up in the Chinese tradition, Hu is forced into the Japanese educational system. Eventually he finds himself excluded by the Japanese, and witnessing the horror of the war between China and Japan, he feels disowned by both and alienated from his home in Taiwan.

In 1983, when pop music had opened a critical space for political expression in authoritarian…

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