Required background readings
Harry Harding, “Change and Continuity in America’s Taiwan Policy”
Lin Hsiao-ting, “The Accidental State: The Making of Taiwan,” Hoover Digest ( Summer 2016).
Week 1.October 27: The exclusion of Taiwan from the American defense perimeter after the Chinese Civil War
Required readings
Russell D. Buhite, "’Major Interests’": American Policy toward China, Taiwan, and Korea, 1945-1950, Pacific Historical Review , 47 (1978), pp. 425-451.
Recommended reading from primary sources
Dean Acheson, “Speech on the Far East (excerpts),” National Press, Club, January 12, 1950.
Week 2. November 3: The American security commitment to Taiwan during the Cold War
Required readings
Shannon Tiezzi, “How Eisenhower Saved Taiwan,” The Diplomat, July 29, 2015.
Kenneth T. Young, Negotiating with the Chinese Communists, ch. 4, “Impasse over the Renunciation of Force and over Taiwan.”
Leonard H. D. Gordon, “United States Opposition to Use of Force in the Taiwan Strait, 1954-1962,” Journal of American History (1985), pp. 637-660.
Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, “John Foster Dulles and the Taiwan Roots of the Two China Policy,” in Richard H. Immerman (ed.), John Foster Dulles and the Diplomacy of the Cold War, ch. 9
Richard Bush, At Cross Purposes: U.S.-Taiwan Relations Since 1942, ch. 4, “The Status of the ROC and Taiwan,1950-1972”
Harvey Feldman, “President Reagan's Six Assurances to Taiwan and Their Meaning Today”
Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, Strait Talk, “The Origins of Strategic Ambiguity.”
Recommended readings from primary sources
“Taiwan’s Bomb,” National Security Archive Briefing Book, January 10, 2019
David Albright and Andrea Stricker, Taiwan’s Former Nuclear Weapons Program: Nuclear Weapons on Demand.
Week 3. November 10: The normalization of U.S.-China relations and America’s “One China Policy”
Required readings from secondary sources
Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, “Taiwan Expendable? Nixon and Kissinger Go to China,” Journal of American History, 92 (2005), pp. 109-135.
Richard Bush, At Cross Purposes: U.S.-Taiwan Relations Since 1942,ch. 5, “The ‘Sacred Texts’ of United States-China-Taiwan Relations.”
Required readings from primary sources
1972 Shanghai Communique
1978 Normalization Communique
1979 Taiwan Relations Act
1982 August ’82 Communique, Six Assurances, and the “Reagan Codicil”
2020 Remarks by HHS [Health and Human Services] Secretary Alex Azar at National Taiwan University,” August 11, 2020
2020 “U.S. Under Secretary of State Krach wraps up Taiwan visit,” Focus Taiwan, September 19, 2020
Recommended readings from secondary sources
Harvey Feldman, “President Reagan's Six Assurances to Taiwan and Their Meaning Today”
Alan D. Romberg, Rein in at the Brink of the Precipice: American Policy Toward Taiwan and U.S.-PRC.
Richard C. Bush, “A One-China Policy Primer,” Brookings Institution, December 13, 2016.
Recommended readings from primary sources
[From the National Security Archive website]:
1971 Declassified Memorandum of Conversation between Chou En-lai, Henry Kissinger, and others [on drafting the Shanghai Communique]
William Burr, “Nixon’s Trip to China,” National Security Archive Briefing Book, December 11, 2003.
“Taiwan’s Bomb,” National Security Archive Briefing Book, January 10, 2019
Week 4. November 17: U.S.-China relations from cooperation to rivalry
Required readings
Harry Harding, “Has U.S. China Policy Failed?” Washington Quarterly
Harry Harding, “China and the U.S. from Partners to Competitors.”
Week 5. November 24: China’s Taiwan policy: carrots and sticks
Required readings
Huang Jing and Li Xiaoting, Inseparable Separation: The Making of China’s Taiwan Policy, Introduction.
Chen-yuan Tung, Assessment of China’s Taiwan Policy under the Third Generation Leadership,” Asian Survey, 45 ((2005), pp. 344-61.
Wei-chin Lee, “ "Multiple Shades of China’s Taiwan Policy after the 19th Party Congress,” Journal of Asian and African Studies, 55 (2020),, pp. 201-20.
Xin Qiang, “Selective Engagement: Mainland China’s Dual-Track Taiwan
Policy,” Contemporary China, 29 (2020), pp. 535–552.
Recommended readings
Ian Easton, The Chinese Invasion Threat: Taiwan’s Defense and American Strategy in Asia.
Tanner Greer, “Why I Fear for Taiwan”
Week 6. December 1: The U.S. and Taiwan reconsider their relationship in Cold War 2.0
Required readings
John Mearsheimer, “Say Goodbye to Taiwan”
Nancy Tucker and Bonnie Glaser, “Should the United States Abandon Taiwan?”
Richard Haass and David Sacks, “American Support for Taiwan Must be Unambiguous.”
Syaru Shirley Lin, “How Taiwan’s High-Income Trap Shapes its Options in the U.S.-China Competition,” in Ashley J, Tellis, Alison Szalwinski, and Michael Willis (eds.), Strategic Asia 2020: Sino-U.S. Competition for Influence, pp. 133-60.
Parris Chang, “US Needs Formal Ties with Taiwan.”
Derek Grossman and Brandon Alexander Millan, “Taiwan’s KMT May Have a Serious '1992 Consensus' Problem.” RAND Blog, September 25, 2020.
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