To speak the unspeakable: Can Taiwan really decolonise its international relations and knowledge production about China?
In this keynote speech, Julie Yu-Wen Chen will provoke debate on the interlocking of knowledge production about China and Taiwan with realpolitik. Taiwan has its unique path for becoming a site for China-watching. This presentation first provides an overview of Taiwan’s capacity for China-watching. Second, it examines the development of so-called Taiwan studies and explores their connection to China studies, Chinese studies, or Sinology. Third, it discusses the interlocking of Taiwan studies and China studies in Taiwan with the newly minted knowledge realm of the Indo-Pacific in the contemporary era. Taiwan may have no choice but to be part of it in this irreversible trend. But this exercise of bringing Taiwan further into the Indo-Pacific realm is challenging because Taiwan’s international relations and knowledge production are unable to move toward genuine decolonisation. Taiwan may have attempted to decolonise the One China discourse and may have succeeded to some extent, but can it decolonise Japan and the USA? What aspects of decolonisation should be stressed? Can geopolitical interests trump the need for decolonisation? This presentation will provoke debate and stimulate ideas on these issues.
Julie Yu-Wen Chen
Julie Yu-Wen Chen, a Tainan-born Finn, is Professor of Chinese Studies at the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki. Trained as a political scientist, Julie specialises in International Relations and China. Her research focuses on an interdisciplinary approach to exploring China’s relations with the rest of the world, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region and the post-Soviet sphere (including Central Asia and Central and Eastern Europe).
Julie serves as one of the Editors of the Journal of Chinese Political Science, which is one of the top journals in both Political Science and Area Studies categories. From 2023-2025, Julie is in the EU twinning project “The EU in the Volatile Indo-Pacific Region (EUVIP)” where she leads the preparatory research and provides counselling to junior researchers.
Julie had been an academic nomad and formerly held academic positions at Palacký University Olomouc (Czech Republic), Nazarbayev University (Kazakhstan), University College Cork (Ireland) and Academia Sinica (Taiwan). In addition, she was visiting scholar at La Trobe University (Australia), University of Virginia (USA), University of Tokyo (Japan), University of Tübingen (Germany), University of Nottingham (UK), University of Macau (China), St. Petersburg State University (Russia), and Mahidol University (Thailand). In 2011, she provided testimony in the public hearing of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on “China’s Foreign Policy: Challenges and Players” in Washington D.C. She has published in peer-reviewed academic journals such as Globalizations, Problems of Post-Communism, Journal of Chinese Political Science, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Asia Europe Journal and Asian Survey.