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Congratulations to Helena Wu, Assistant Professor of Hong Kong Studies at the Department of Asian Studies, who received a Merit Award in the category of Social Sciences in the 2021 International Journal of Taiwan Studies Research Article Competition, for the article titled “Serving the ‘China Dream’? Taiwan as a National Object in Cross-Strait Communication” (co-authored with Dr. Simona A. Grano). The competition was sponsored by the European Association of Taiwan Studies and Taiwan Foundation for Democracy. The award includes a prize of US $300.
About the Article
The article “Serving the ‘China Dream’? Taiwan as a National Object in Cross-Strait Communication” was an outcome of the research collaboration of Dr. Helena Wu, Assistant Professor of Hong Kong Studies at the University of British Columbia, and Dr. Simona A. Grano, Director of the Taiwan Studies Project and Senior Lecturer at the University of Zurich.
The article presents a political discourse analysis of the narration of Taiwan by the People’s Republic of China through the analysis of the epistolary series “Letters to Taiwan Compatriots” released between 1950 and 2019. Drawing on the namesake letters issued by different bodies and the embedded messages relating to culture, ideology, the economy and others, the article explores the connection between narrative, political communication, and military operations during the Cross-strait crisis of the 1950s, China’s establishment of diplomatic relationship with foreign countries in the 1970s and China’s global rise in the last decade. The article will be published in the International Journal of Taiwan Studies.
Part of this research has been presented in the 2021 European Association of Taiwan Studies Annual Conference and was awarded the Best Presentation Prize.
About the Journal of Taiwan Studies Research Article Competition
The Journal of Taiwan Studies Research Article Competition was organized by the International Journal of Taiwan Studies (IJTS) and sponsored by the European Association of Taiwan Studies (EATS) and Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD). The award-winning articles were selected by independent judges through a rigorous process of blind reviews. The assessment criteria includes the paper’s relevance to the field, originality, clarity of methodology and quality of the writing and argument. Five papers were awarded in the 2021 competition.
The Journal of Taiwan Studies is the first internationally collaborative, multidisciplinary, and peer-reviewed academic research journal in English dedicated to all aspects of Taiwan studies, including social sciences, arts and humanities and topics which are interdisciplinary in nature.
