From Politics to Culture: Taiwanization Discourses and the Techno Nazha Performance

Abstract

This edited volume explores a Cold War topic, ‘cross-Strait relations’ - reterring to relations between Taiwan/the Republic of China (ROC) and mainland China/the People’s Republic of China (PRC) — but in a new context: ‘in an era of technological change’. Such a topic implies a paradox: that in an era of intense or even ‘hot’ technological change, characterized in part by the growth of global digital communication networks, cross-Strait relations are still defined by ‘cold’ networks, with little sign of a thaw in sight. On either side of the Strait, time is not just standing still, but has actually become repetitive. We are by now familiar with a regular pattern since 1993, a once-in-a-decade transfer of leadership of the PRC, and since 1996, presidential elections in Taiwan once every four years, it is often in the context of such leadership changes that scholars interested in cross-Strait relations tend to explore the potential for change.