This thesis is an exploratory research that analysis Japan’s current Taiwan position. This was done by examining four themes: 1. The evolving place of Taiwan in Japan’s security policy and...Show moreThis thesis is an exploratory research that analysis Japan’s current Taiwan position. This was done by examining four themes: 1. The evolving place of Taiwan in Japan’s security policy and political discourse. 2. The development of Japan’s security policy and the turn towards a more sovereign security policy of Japan. 3. The development and strengthening of the U.S.-Japan alliance. And, 4. the introduction of the FOIP strategy. These themes were extracted from the literature. However, the literature in this field is quickly outdated. Besides no author in the literature did examine the four themes together with regard to Japan’s Taiwan position. Research was done through text analysis and comparative analysis. All themes show that Japan increasingly promotes values like: democracy, respect for human rights, the rule of law, and a capitalist economy, which it shares with the U.S. and Taiwan. Although, by now, Japan more openly supports Taiwan as a democracy, no costly signalling towards Taiwan was done since no explicit cost was attached to the signals. Instead, I argued that Japan did send a costly signal to the U.S. by explicitly stating that the alliance is unwavering and that Japan and the U.S. together are increasingly promoting their shared (universal) values. The value politics that Japan and the U.S. envision can be seen in a broader spectrum of countries and alliances promoting values. China, for example, promotes its own values. Values that clash with the shared values that the U.S. and Japan promote. Since value’s legitimize actions to protect those value and two different value systems vie for their influence on Taiwan and both see the other as an infringement on their own value system, the Taiwan issue is cause for serious concern.Show less
This research finds itself in the literature on the collective historical memory in China, a field within Sino-Japanese relations. Current scholarship in this sub-field has also discussed China’s...Show moreThis research finds itself in the literature on the collective historical memory in China, a field within Sino-Japanese relations. Current scholarship in this sub-field has also discussed China’s national identity (e.g., Suzuki 2007), official historical narratives (e.g., Vickers 2013), and the space for alternative narratives (e.g., Wang and Chew 2021). Recent studies have identified changes in China’s official history discourse, most notably the transition from a victimhood narrative to one of triumph (e.g., Mitter 2020). Based on these existing papers, it appears that the space for alternative narratives is an unsaturated topic compared to identity politics and official historical discourse, despite its potential for researching a wide variety of niche case studies. Authors that have already explored this topic, like Denton (2014) and Wang and Chew (2021), suggest that, besides the party-state, other factors like the market, popular culture, and the internet also influence this space for alternative narratives. This research explores the medium of cinema to learn how the production of a historical war drama comes about and what that says about the environment for memory-making in China. In particular, I analyze the Chinese war film ‘The Eight Hundred’ in the context of alternative historical memory. Uncovering the construction process of historical memory in China will provide insight into the practices of non-state actors. As such, the research question of this thesis is: How are the state and market currently involved in the process of memory-making through the production of historical war films in China?Show less
This thesis addresses the complexities in China-Africa Relations. It specifically looks at how processes of knowledge production and network-building shape China-Africa relations. This is done by...Show moreThis thesis addresses the complexities in China-Africa Relations. It specifically looks at how processes of knowledge production and network-building shape China-Africa relations. This is done by testing two formulated hypothesis in two case-studies: the first focuses on the institutional FOCAC framework, the second looks at Sino-Tanzania relations in the realm of knowledge (infra)structure. As a theoretical framework social constructivism is employed, which is further refined by the Actor Network Theory. The case studies reveal that (1) the space in which processes of knowledge production and networking-building take place within China-Africa relations is socially constructed and highly dynamic; and (2) that actors and agency thereby often overrule structure which makes dualistic concepts of soft and hard development difficult labels to apply.Show less
