It is alienating to live smoothly for two months in Taiwan and be told in a joking manner by people living in Europe whom you hear on the phone or Zoom/Skype/Meetings things like “ah, haven’t the Chinese landed yet?”. After making the joke they usually get serious and ask things like … read more

I have been in Taiwan for a month with my wife and son, we will return home at the end of August. For work I have been visiting Taiwan regularly for about 15 years, I have people here whom I consider family and I feel at home in Taipei. For an East Asian history lover like me, Taiwan is one of the … read more

Koxinga was a brilliant and sadistic 17th century leader you may not know. Koxinga (real name Zheng Chenggong) was born in 1624. The son of the self-made man who was the head of a East Asia commercial-pirate empire (at the time, things were nuanced) larger than the English and Dutch East India … read more

On the one hand there is Taiwan, a democracy that the Economist ranks tenth in the world and first in Asia (Democracy Index 2022); on the other hand there is China, a superpower that is a totalitarian regime, i.e. a social system in which political power permeates every sphere of society, in a total … read more

Before the covid pandemic I used to go to Taiwan every three months, plus I spent the summers of 2018 and 2019 there with my family. Now, after this little three-year pandemic break, I have just gone there and plan to start visiting frequently again. I was curious to take the pulse of the situation … read more

Xi Jinping and the totalitarian Chinese government say openly and like a broken record that Taiwan is an inseparable part of China and will inevitably be reunited with the motherland, by good means or bad. In addition to being statements that are not very faithful to historical reality and that do … read more