The University of Nottingham's Taiwan Studies Programme presents on online talk.

The Sunflower Movement in Taiwan and the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong in 2014 have often been regarded as the beginning of Taiwan-Hong Kong connection. The demands targeting China's influence and tactics of occupation certainly echoed each other's movement. Meanwhile, it was not just physical mobilisation that illustrates the connection of the two places, the digital dimension of online organisation and formation of public opinion and discourse became increasingly important as China cracked down on their interactions. The Connection came to a climax just before the covid pandemic started in late 2019 and early 2020.

The Anti-Extradition Movement in Hong Kong had significant impact on Taiwanese society, for instance the impact on Taiwan's 2020 presidential election.​ ​However, the Hong Kong migrants to Taiwan also generated the contentious debate about the Asylum Law in Taiwan. This webinar will reflect on the decade of Taiwan-Hong Kong (dis)connection through the lens of these social movement events and their political consequences.

Panelists include:

• Thomas B. Gold, University of California
• Maggie Shum, Keough School of Global Affairs,University of Notre Dame
• Adrian Chiu, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London
• Malte Kaeding, University of Surrey

Chaired by Dr. Chun-yi Lee, Taiwan Studies Programme, School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham

Speaker biographies

Thomas B. Gold is Professor of Sociology at the University of California. From 2000-2016 he served as Executive Director of the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies (IUP), a consortium of 14 American universities which administers an advanced Chinese language program at Tsinghua University in Beijing. (http://ieas.berkeley.edu/iup]. At Berkeley he has also served as Associate Dean of International and Area Studies, Founding Director of the Berkeley China Initiative, and Chair of the Center for Chinese Studies.

Prof Gold’s research focuses on many aspects of the societies of East Asia, primarily mainland China and Taiwan. In the largest sense, he examines the process of the emergence of the increasingly empowered and autonomous individual and a private sphere in societies which have combined traditional and modern forms of authoritarian rule. He explores this from many angles: youth and the life course; personal relations (guanxi, social capital), private business and entrepreneurship, popular culture, non-governmental organizations, and civil society.

Maggie Shum is a research and program associate of the Global Policy Initiative in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. She earned a PhD in political science from Notre Dame, specializing in comparative politics with a regional focus in Latin America, Brazil, and Hong Kong. She is interested in participatory policies, policy diffusion, political party organizations, contentious politics, and elections. Her dissertation “The Politics of Policy Diffusion: Party Organization Versus Individual Motivations in the Diffusion of Participatory Budgeting in Brazil” focuses on how participatory budgeting—a program heavily associated with the Workers’ Party—spread across Brazil and was adopted by politicians on both left and right.

Shum researches the relationship between the “stunted” party system development and the cycle of contentious politics in Hong Kong, especially in recent years. She also is conducting the survey research project “Hong Kong Voices in American Politics,” which focuses on Hong Kong-Americans’ political attitudes in the 2020 US election. Shum plays a role in the Comparative Assessment of Electoral Risk project, evaluating potential scenarios and their damage to democratic institutions and norm in the 2020 US election, and the Presidential Transition Index, which tracks and assesses the Trump-Biden transition. 

Shum has provided commentary on Hong Kong politics for the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog, America, La Tercera, Catholic News Service, and Mischiefs of Faction. She has interned at the National Endowment for Democracy and Freedom House, where she supported reports including “Freedom in the World ” (Hong Kong, China and Tibet), “Freedom in the Net” (China), and the China Media Bulletin.

Adrian Chiu  is a 4th-year PhD candidate at the Department of Politics and International Studies of School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. The working title of his PhD project is “Practice of post-handover party interactions between Hong Kong and Taiwan: A three-level ontological security framework”, comparing the interactions between conventional parties and movement parties.

His research interests include interactions between Hong Kong and Taiwan, Hong Kong diaspora, China’s foreign relations and international relations theories. He is also an editor for Taiwan Insight.

Malte Philipp Kaeding is Senior Lecturer in International Politics in the Department of Politics. Previously he lectured at the University of Heidelberg and Hong Kong Baptist University. He is the co-founder and co-convenor of the Hong Kong Studies Association and an Associate Fellow of the European Research Center on Contemporary Taiwan, University of Tübingen. Malte is also the director and co-producer of a documentary film on Hong Kong.