One China, Many Taiwans: The Geopolitics of Cross-Strait Tourism
Online seminar, which can be viewed at the China Centre
One China, Many Taiwans shows how tourism performs and transforms territory. In 2008, as the People’s Republic of China pointed over a thousand missiles across the Taiwan Strait, it sent millions of tourists in the same direction with the encouragement of Taiwan’s politicians and businesspeople. Contrary to the PRC’s efforts to use tourism to incorporate Taiwan into an imaginary ‘One China’, tourism aggravated tensions between the two polities, polarized Taiwanese society, and pushed Taiwanese popular sentiment farther toward support for national self-determination. The book’s ethnographic treatment of tourism as a political technology provides a new lens for social scientists and area specialists to examine the geopolitics of tourism, which has transformed the globe.

Ian Rowen is Associate Professor in the Department of Taiwan Culture, Languages and Literature at National Taiwan Normal University. He is the author of One China, Many Taiwans: The Geopolitics of Cross-Strait Tourism (Cornell University Press, 2022), and the editor of Transitions in Taiwan: Stories of the White Terror (Cambria Press, 2021). Previously an assistant professor of Geography and Sociology at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, he earned his PhD in Geography from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Date: 6 March 2023, 13:00 (Monday, 8th week, Hilary 2023)
Venue: Dickson Poon Building, Canterbury Road OX2 6LU
Venue Details: Kin-ku Cheng Lecture Theatre (lower ground floor)
Speakers: Speaker to be announced
Organising department: Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Organisers: Professor Denise van der Kamp (University of Oxford), Dr Yi Lu (University of Oxford), Dr Coraline Jortay (University of Oxford), Professor Henrietta Harrison (University of Oxford), Dr Chigusa Yamaura (University of Oxford), Dr Giulia Falato (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address: information@chinese.ox.ac.uk
Host: Dr Ssu-Han Yu (University of Oxford)
Part of: China Studies Seminar series
Booking required?: Required
Booking url: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/oxford-taiwan-studies-seminar-iv-tickets-562581946747
Cost: Free
Audience: Public
Editor: Clare Orchard