“Washington-Taipei-Beijing Relations at a Crossroads: the 2024 Elections and Geostrategic Implications from the Individual, Domestic, and International Levels of Analysis”

The 2023 Taiwan & Asia Program Conference at the
Ramapo College of New Jersey,
November 4-5, 2023

Conference Schedule

The Ramapo College of New Jersey hosts the 2023 Taiwan & Asia Program Conference, which is sponsored by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO) in Washington D.C. The conference format is in-person.  Contact the TAP Conference Coordinator, Prof. Dean P. Chen (dchen@ramapo.edu), if you have any questions.

For nearly three years in office, the Biden administration has persisted in strengthening US- Taiwan relations while assembling a coalition of like-minded global and regional allies/partners to jointly counter the PRC’s increasingly autocratic and bellicose behaviors. Though the Biden- Xi face-to-face meeting at the 2022 G-20 meeting in Bali calmed their rising tensions to some extent, the US has remained steadfast in the pursuit of a competitive approach towards China, which is identified by the Biden administration’s newly released National Security Strategy (NSS) and National Defense Strategy (NDS) papers as America’s most “consequential challenge” and the “only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it.” The PRC’s spy balloon incursions into continental America in early 2023 further plunged the brittle US- Chinese relations to yet another low point. In this context, Washington’s strategic, economic, high-tech and normative ties with Taipei will continue to deepen, to the chagrins of Beijing, which has also escalated its coercive campaigns and so-called gray-zone operations to intimidate and pressure Taiwan. The January and November 2024 General/Presidential Elections in Taiwan and the US, respectively, will introduce new uncertainties and variables to the increasingly intricate US-Taiwan-China strategic balance. How will the election outcomes from both Taiwan and the US potentially affect and shape their ties with the PRC, domestic politics, socioeconomic changes, as well as the broader contours of the Indo-Pacific region? The three levels of analysis—individual, domestic, and international—may provide useful lenses to approach these questions, but the conference theme is open to all methodological approaches and theoretical paradigms that also address issues pertaining to U.S., Taiwan, and China political institutions, electoral and identity politics, state-societal relations, high-tech rivalry, international political economy, etc.

Conference Location:

Ramapo College of New Jersey
505 Ramapo Valley Road
Mahwah, NJ 07430