The Island by Dire Straits

This book investigates Taiwan’s role in the twists and turns in its relationship with China from 1987 to 2004. It employs the methods of both case studies and the VAR (vector autoregression) time-series analysis to assess the impact of the following four factors on Taiwan’s actions toward China: (1) the democratic transition in Taiwan, (2) Taiwan’s electoral politics, (3) cross-Strait economic exchanges, and (4) U.S. Taiwan Policy. It thus provides a theoretical approach to understanding the Taiwan-China relations in the past two decades.