Prof. Michael Szonyi (Harvard University)

After almost half a century of being on the front line of the global Cold War and the unfinished Chinese Civil War, in the early twenty-first century the people of the offshore islands of Quemoy/Kinmen and Matsu now find themselves on a different kind of front line: the front line of evolving Cross-Straits relations. An unexpected consequence for local society on these small islands in the Taiwan Straits has been that virtually every local interest and issue has become entangled in some way with the larger Cross-Straits relationship. The current rise of China suggests that the same entanglement may increasingly shape politics in the rest of Taiwan, elsewhere in the region, and beyond.