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Arc-continent collisions are a fundamental plate tectonic process that control continental growth, orogen development and the distribution of natural hazards and natural resources. This process actively occurs in Taiwan where the Luzon Volcanic Arc collides obliquely with the passive margin of the Eurasian Plate. An important characteristic of the arc-continent collision in Taiwan is that oblique convergence has produced an orogen that decreases in age from north to south. Investigation of the temporal evolution of the Taiwan orogen is therefore made possible through studies at different latitudes on the island. The first long-period magnetotelluric (MT) measurements in Taiwan were recorded at 82 locations on three profiles across south, central and north Taiwan during 2006-2007. These MT data were collected as a component of the TAIGER (Taiwan Integrated Geodynamics Research) project and are analyzed and interpreted in this thesis. The TAIGER project was initiated to: 1) collect multi-technique high resolution geophysical data required to unambiguously distinguish between end-member tectonic models proposed for central Taiwan, and 2) to investigate the orogen evolution by comparison of data collected at latitudes ranging from south to north Taiwan. In this thesis, the central Taiwan TAIGER MT data are shown to be inconsistent with orogen-scale thin-skinned tectonic models and instead support predictions of lithospheric-scale deformation (i.e. thick-skinned tectonics) beneath the Central Ranges. Similarity between resistivity models of central and southern Taiwan indicate that thick-skinned tectonics is occurring in both locations, and is therefore a persistent mode of deformation that operates as the orogen develops. The resistivity model for northern Taiwan is shown to be consistent with dewatering of the subducting Philippine slab, and with deformation described by the subducting indenter tectonic model. A global context for the Taiwan results is provided by comparison to the South Island of New Zealand that shares many similarities with the tectonic setting in Taiwan. MT resistivity models support lithospheric deformation beneath the Southern Alps, and the occurrence of fluid-based conductors in the Marlborough region caused by dewatering of the Pacific slab. / Geophysics

A structural model of the central and southern Western Foothills Fold and Thrust Belt (WFFTB) was constructed from serial balanced cross sections. The cross sections are constrained by published surface and subsurface geologic data and thermochronological data. The regional detachment zone is constrained by thrust focal mechanisms to a depth of 10-15 km. Because the current geometries observed within the WFFTB are influenced by the presence of pre-existing normal faults, the WFFTB overall is an inverted basin. Most of the faults of the Western Foothills started their activity before the deposition of the Cholan Fm (~3.5 Ma). There is not a strict forward-breaking thrust sequence in Taiwan. Out-of-sequence faulting may be due to localized erosion and fault inversion. A new regional structure, the sub-Yuching anticline, is identified in the southern WFFTB. The sub-Yuching anticline is a low ramp angle fault-bend-fold with a detachment at ~13 km. The sub-Yuching anticline explains the uplift of the Yuching and Tingpinglin synclines above their regional level and may lie above the continuation of the Manila trench beneath Taiwan. The estimated aggregate shortening for the easternmost fault of the WFFTB is about 40 km on the central and southern segments. The restored position of the preexisting normal faults places the current trace of the Western Foothills-Slate Belt boundary beneath the Coastal Range. The restoration of WFFTB’s rocks to their depositional locations also supports the tectonic model of a crustal-scale thin-skin collisional orogen and rejects a previous hypotheses favoring a deep rooted Central Range.

Direct links between Taiwan and China have been re-established since the end of 2008. At present, regular direct flights between airports in Taiwan and China are in operation. This reality is the culmination of negotiations between China and Taiwan. A number of obstacles in ideology and politics existed throughout the negotiations. Particularly salient to these obstacles were the discourse of the one-China principle, as well as the political strategies and ideologies of the Kuomintang and Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan. In addition, the influence of the media with regard to the resolution of ideological and political conflict was an important factor. Different news media outlets in Taiwan and China developed their own narratives of the development of cross-strait relations and negotiation of the Three Links. An analysis of news media perspectives offers insight into the complex nature of political communication in Taiwan and China.

In this thesis I look at the question of Taiwanese identity by focussing on characteristics that have come to be considered natural human identity attributes worldwide. I look at historical discourses that have depicted and constructed these attributes as essential to the nature of human beings. Biological theory, terminology, modes of classification, and conceptions of human being established in the natural sciences, and imported to the social sciences, have created a general international discursive regime that employs notions of blood relations, lineage, family, nation-ness, race, ethnicity an ongoing constructions and contestations of identity. The discourse on identity as a matter of heritage is echoed in the science of linguistics with the classification of languages into natural family groups. Linguistic group as an identity marker complicates and is complicated by the general discourse on identity also employing family talk. I try to show that the human being conceived principally as a biological being, became the focus of techniques of population control and institutional reproduction of social subjects in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Europe, especially with mass education, and that this process was replicated in the industrialization and modernization of Taiwan. In Taiwan, as in Europe, techniques of what Michel Foucault calls biopower were deployed in the process of strengthening the productive powers of the nation state in the international struggle of the survival of the national fittest. For Foucault the spatial and temporal patterns of interaction these institutional processes employed created the kind of social subject that is a precondition for capitalist expansion. In addition to the implicit training that modern institutions employ, there are also explicit educational programs that are grounded in scientific and social theories that modern societies propagate in the curricula of public systems of education. The Taiwanese learned that their identities, as Chinese citizens, were determined by blood lineage, that is, by racial association. I will explain that in China and Taiwan these positivistic, essentialist and biological ideas of identity, were picked up from the western biological and social sciences by Chinese intellectuals at the turn of the twentieth century. In combination with Confucian ideas on family these ideas were consciously selected by the Nationalist government in Taiwan and employed in the production of a specific form of Chinese citizenry in Taiwan. Reinforcing deeply entrenched discourses on race, long expressed in historical China, these biological and familial conceptions were deployed for political purposes in education programs designed to legitimise the right of the Nationalist government to rule China and then Taiwan. Finally, the metaphor of biological family that was employed in an understanding of nation-ness in Taiwan has also come to determine thinking about the natural association between languages, nations and races. In the science of linguistics, languages are depicted as having evolved in the same way races do. In these classifications, official national languages, which historically are the dialects of dominant social groups, are determinative of socio-economic class reproduction, being considered the summit to which all speakers of all secondary dialects are compelled to aspire. The question of language education for identity in Taiwan will be examined in light of these preconceptions, processes and programs. I show that language, nation and race have tended to be cast in discourse as naturally combined elements that determine identity. As a result of colonial educational processes these identity terms tend to be understood as both natural attributes and, as naturally adhering to each other. Nationalities, national or official languages, constructed races, and constructed ethnicities tend to be combined in a globalized discourse to produce dominant images of certain societies identities. The English language in Taiwan will be shown to be understood as a white language. In colonial discourse nations, races, ethnicities and language types have each been imbued with specific values and statuses. Therefore, dominant images that combine these attributes serve to create intra-national and international human hierarchies. In Taiwan, American English has the potential of raising the status of its learners in the national and international hierarchy toward the high point represented by America as the imperial centre. In Language and Symbolic Power (1991) Bourdieu describes attributes that distinguish groups as different forms of symbolic capital. I want to hold that the nation/social space of Taiwan represents one node within a global network where capitalist forces continue to entrench privilege and power of national and international elites whose place in this hierarchy, whose opportunities for material and social advantages, are determined by the relative statuses of their nations, races, ethnicities and languages. Black, brown, white and yellow people, speakers of specific official languages, or what are considered derivative dialects, are imbued with a matched set of symbolic forms of capital that have come to have specific social values. These help to determine specific life opportunities in different social settings. I focus on two related settings in Taiwan where expressions of different forms of symbolic capital have significance for Taiwanese identity. The first is the struggle between what have come to be understood as two ethnic groups in the latter half of the twentieth century that I will designate as mainlanders and islanders. The second is the context of English language teaching where certain accents and racial distinctions have come to play a part in the promotion of English as an important form of cultural capital. The struggle between the mainlanders and islanders will be shown to have affected relative opportunities for achieving English skills, to continue class stratification in Taiwan, and to further endanger traditional island cultures and languages.

In this thesis I look at the question of Taiwanese identity by focussing on characteristics that have come to be considered natural human identity attributes worldwide. I look at historical discourses that have depicted and constructed these attributes as essential to the nature of human beings. Biological theory, terminology, modes of classification, and conceptions of human being established in the natural sciences, and imported to the social sciences, have created a general international discursive regime that employs notions of blood relations, lineage, family, nation-ness, race, ethnicity an ongoing constructions and contestations of identity. The discourse on identity as a matter of heritage is echoed in the science of linguistics with the classification of languages into natural family groups. Linguistic group as an identity marker complicates and is complicated by the general discourse on identity also employing family talk. I try to show that the human being conceived principally as a biological being, became the focus of techniques of population control and institutional reproduction of social subjects in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Europe, especially with mass education, and that this process was replicated in the industrialization and modernization of Taiwan. In Taiwan, as in Europe, techniques of what Michel Foucault calls biopower were deployed in the process of strengthening the productive powers of the nation state in the international struggle of the survival of the national fittest. For Foucault the spatial and temporal patterns of interaction these institutional processes employed created the kind of social subject that is a precondition for capitalist expansion. In addition to the implicit training that modern institutions employ, there are also explicit educational programs that are grounded in scientific and social theories that modern societies propagate in the curricula of public systems of education. The Taiwanese learned that their identities, as Chinese citizens, were determined by blood lineage, that is, by racial association. I will explain that in China and Taiwan these positivistic, essentialist and biological ideas of identity, were picked up from the western biological and social sciences by Chinese intellectuals at the turn of the twentieth century. In combination with Confucian ideas on family these ideas were consciously selected by the Nationalist government in Taiwan and employed in the production of a specific form of Chinese citizenry in Taiwan. Reinforcing deeply entrenched discourses on race, long expressed in historical China, these biological and familial conceptions were deployed for political purposes in education programs designed to legitimise the right of the Nationalist government to rule China and then Taiwan. Finally, the metaphor of biological family that was employed in an understanding of nation-ness in Taiwan has also come to determine thinking about the natural association between languages, nations and races. In the science of linguistics, languages are depicted as having evolved in the same way races do. In these classifications, official national languages, which historically are the dialects of dominant social groups, are determinative of socio-economic class reproduction, being considered the summit to which all speakers of all secondary dialects are compelled to aspire. The question of language education for identity in Taiwan will be examined in light of these preconceptions, processes and programs. I show that language, nation and race have tended to be cast in discourse as naturally combined elements that determine identity. As a result of colonial educational processes these identity terms tend to be understood as both natural attributes and, as naturally adhering to each other. Nationalities, national or official languages, constructed races, and constructed ethnicities tend to be combined in a globalized discourse to produce dominant images of certain societies identities. The English language in Taiwan will be shown to be understood as a white language. In colonial discourse nations, races, ethnicities and language types have each been imbued with specific values and statuses. Therefore, dominant images that combine these attributes serve to create intra-national and international human hierarchies. In Taiwan, American English has the potential of raising the status of its learners in the national and international hierarchy toward the high point represented by America as the imperial centre. In Language and Symbolic Power (1991) Bourdieu describes attributes that distinguish groups as different forms of symbolic capital. I want to hold that the nation/social space of Taiwan represents one node within a global network where capitalist forces continue to entrench privilege and power of national and international elites whose place in this hierarchy, whose opportunities for material and social advantages, are determined by the relative statuses of their nations, races, ethnicities and languages. Black, brown, white and yellow people, speakers of specific official languages, or what are considered derivative dialects, are imbued with a matched set of symbolic forms of capital that have come to have specific social values. These help to determine specific life opportunities in different social settings. I focus on two related settings in Taiwan where expressions of different forms of symbolic capital have significance for Taiwanese identity. The first is the struggle between what have come to be understood as two ethnic groups in the latter half of the twentieth century that I will designate as mainlanders and islanders. The second is the context of English language teaching where certain accents and racial distinctions have come to play a part in the promotion of English as an important form of cultural capital. The struggle between the mainlanders and islanders will be shown to have affected relative opportunities for achieving English skills, to continue class stratification in Taiwan, and to further endanger traditional island cultures and languages.

Direct links between Taiwan and China have been re-established since the end of 2008. At present, regular direct flights between airports in Taiwan and China are in operation. This reality is the culmination of negotiations between China and Taiwan. A number of obstacles in ideology and politics existed throughout the negotiations. Particularly salient to these obstacles were the discourse of the one-China principle, as well as the political strategies and ideologies of the Kuomintang and Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan. In addition, the influence of the media with regard to the resolution of ideological and political conflict was an important factor. Different news media outlets in Taiwan and China developed their own narratives of the development of cross-strait relations and negotiation of the Three Links. An analysis of news media perspectives offers insight into the complex nature of political communication in Taiwan and China.

This thesis aims to examine the conditions for entrepreneurship in Taiwan by the occurrence of cultural phenomenon guanxi. Based on the concept of familiness and guanxi, the family is central in this study of family business. Traditional descriptions of the Asian culture claim that guanxi is vital in the business context. Though, recent studies indicate that significance of guanxi seems to be changing. Therefore the purpose of this thesis is to create an understanding of the importance and relevance of guanxi in the context of Taiwanese family business. By travelling to Kaohsiung, Taiwan to interview six managers of Taiwanese family firms this study’s empirical material was gathered for further processing based on a qualitative approach. This material led to the theoretical fields of social capital, familiness, Confucian culture and guanxi. Furthermore four propositions were modelled to test the expressions of guanxi in the visited companies. By testing these propositions a wide dissemination of perceptions about family and business was identified in the result. How guanxi is embodied in Taiwanese family business is due to how the owning family is structured and how the owning family choose to relate to international influences. The conclusion of this essay is therefore that guanxi is expressed by individual values in the company and is not as visible in the company it self as traditions would claim. The family is still central in Taiwanese culture and business, but how the importance of the family is expressed has changed with the development of guanxi.

The Republic of Palau and the Republic of China established diplomatic relations in December 1999. Since then, the relations between these two countries have grown to include economic relations and numerous exchanges of the people from both the Republic of Palau and the Republic of China. The relationship between the Republic of Palau and the Republic of China is a unique relationship because of the circumstances that surround it. Despite the circumstances, these two diplomatic allies have been able to foster a close relationship and help each other advance in their developments and goals through a complex interdependent relationship. / The Republic of Palau and the Republic of China established diplomatic relations in December 1999. Since then, the relations between these two countries have grown to include economic relations and numerous exchanges of the people from both the Republic of Palau and the Republic of China. The relationship between the Republic of Palau and the Republic of China is a unique relationship because of the circumstances that surround it. Despite the circumstances, these two diplomatic allies have been able to foster a close relationship and help each other advance in their developments and goals through a complex interdependent relationship.

The island of Taiwan, located around 160 km east of China, has existed amongst contention and confusion for centuries, with a complex history of foreign occupation beginning in the mid-seventeenth century with the Dutch and only ending after the Nationalist Chinese Party’s (the KMT’s) relocation in the mid-twentieth century, at which point the desire of the people to rule and be free in their own country began shifting the notions of Taiwan and the Taiwanese. It was at this juncture that the processes of democratization and national identity formation collided and have since progressed as an influential parallel to the present day, in which Taiwan is now an established democratic nation with the majority of its citizens identifying as Taiwanese, distinct from the periods of foreign rule in the past and the present threat from across the Strait. An analysis of this paralleled progression through history is essential to fully comprehending the deeply embedded notions of democracy and national identity on the island which are currently influential factors shaping the domestic outlook towards the continuing cross-strait dilemma. Drawing on the academic literature and data from ESC (Election Study Center) and TEDS (Taiwan Election and Democracy Studies), a synthesis of agent- and process- oriented approaches, which emphasizes the roles of political elites, civil society and historical context, will be employed in this study to explore the parallel of democratization and Taiwanization in postwar Taiwan. / The island of Taiwan, located around 160 km east of China, has existed amongst contention and confusion for centuries, with a complex history of foreign occupation beginning in the mid-seventeenth century with the Dutch and only ending after the Nationalist Chinese Party’s (the KMT’s) relocation in the mid-twentieth century, at which point the desire of the people to rule and be free in their own country began shifting the notions of Taiwan and the Taiwanese. It was at this juncture that the processes of democratization and national identity formation collided and have since progressed as an influential parallel to the present day, in which Taiwan is now an established democratic nation with the majority of its citizens identifying as Taiwanese, distinct from the periods of foreign rule in the past and the present threat from across the Strait. An analysis of this paralleled progression through history is essential to fully comprehending the deeply embedded notions of democracy and national identity on the island which are currently influential factors shaping the domestic outlook towards the continuing cross-strait dilemma. Drawing on the academic literature and data from ESC (Election Study Center) and TEDS (Taiwan Election and Democracy Studies), a synthesis of agent- and process- oriented approaches, which emphasizes the roles of political elites, civil society and historical context, will be employed in this study to explore the parallel of democratization and Taiwanization in postwar Taiwan.