The Other Taiwan: 1945 to the Present (review)

526 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 1996 Murray A. Rubinstein, editor. The Other Taiwan: 1945 to the Present. Armonk and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1994. xiii, 486 pp. Hardcover $60.00, isbn 1-56324-192-7. Paperback $22.50, isbn 1-56324-193-5. According to the editor Murray Rubinstein, the seventeen essays by fourteen scholars or observers, compiled in The Other Taiwan: 1945 to the Present, are intended to represent voices that speak to the needs ofdisenfranchised or disaffected groups. The summary on the back cover also indicates that this collection offers a decidedly revisionist portrait of "the Taiwan miracle." But many readers might be misled by these striking statements if they expect to find here only one "other" unified image of the postwar Taiwan development experience. Instead, individual essays indeed portray many different aspects ofdevelopment and change in Taiwan, either coexistent with Taiwan's economic success or as the consequences ofit. Some are descriptive, some explanatory, and some critical; as a whole, the essays presented here call for a more vigorous theoretical reassessment ofthe multifaceted issues related to four decades ofsocial change in Taiwan. In the Introduction, the editor does a fine job providing a useful historical sketch of the successive waves in Taiwan's miracle-making process, with the initiation of an export-oriented economic growth beginning in the 1960s, followed by social and political change in the 1980s. The subsequent chapters tackle "the complex effects this radical socioeconomic transformation has truly produced . . . [and] the ways in which different segments of the society have responded to these wide-ranging changes" (p. 11). But he fails to provide an explicit analytical perspective to integrate the major arguments presented in various essays that are supposed to cover the complex effects ofTaiwan's radical transformation. Though it is not difficult to comprehend the pragmatic reason for including the contents of the seven parts of the book, it would certainly have helped if some theoretical rationale could have been laid out in the introductory essay. As a result , the reader is left confused as to what the mainstream discourse of the "Taiwan miracle" really is and what constitutes the "revisionist" view. Nevertheless, a brief introduction to each part is useful in guiding the reader into the substantive discussion in the essays that follow. Also, it is clear that the seventeen chapters of the book can equip readers with the knowledge necessary to reassess Taiwan's development experience and to understand better the complex issues involved. The following profound issues are discussed by various authors: the deep-rooted factionalism and its impact on the island's democratic future; the enduring yet disguised informal economy behind rapid industrialization; the future of a vulnerable agriculture in the face of a national policy biased toward urbanization , industrialization, and the powerful pressure of international trade Reviews 527 pressure; the worsening environmental problems and the rise ofthe environmental movement to cope with Taiwan's ecological crisis; the necessity for redefinition ofgender relations in redefining the position ofwomen and empowering them in a society that is still male-dominated; the rising Taiwanese identity and a newly politicized division between the residents ofTaiwan and the Chinese on the mainland ; and, finally, the cultural struggle ofthe aboriginal people to develop their own ethnic identification in the course of rapid political and economic change. The overall quality and depth ofmost of the chapters are good, though some fall short ofclear focus or theoretical vigor. For example, Alan Wachman in his chapter has done an excellentjob in tracing the political evolution that shaped the emergence of a Taiwan consciousness, but he does not pay sufficient attention to the internalization of the external PRC factor in the fostering ofa "new" national identity since the 1980s. Hai-yuan Chu's essay is rich in utilizing empirical survey data to portray the social mood, but inadequate in tackling the central theme of how Confucianism has reconciled with pluralism. The two chapters on the environmental movement, by Jack Williams and David Chen, are rather superficial in their analysis of the rising environmental consciousness, since they lack firsthand knowledge ofthe local grassroots anti-pollution protests that have taken place since the 1980s. Hsiu-lien...