Reviewing Recent Scholarship on Cold War Taiwan

I recently reviewed two articles offering some new insights into Taiwan’s Cold War-era diplomacy and international relations. The reviews are accessible on H-Diplo via the links below:

Charles Kraus, review of “Shifting Political Calculation: The Secret Taiwan-Soviet Talks, 1963-1971,” by Xiang Zhai and Ruping Xiao, H-Diplo (July 27, 2016).

Charles Kraus, review of “Exile Island: Xinjiang Refugees and the ‘One China’ Policy in Nationalist Taiwan, 1949-1971,” by Justin Jacobs, H-Diplo (July 1, 2016).

The articles are very different but both are broadly concerned with Taiwan’s international position after 1949 and the ROC’s efforts to manage international relations to its own benefit (and to the CCP’s detriment). Given the difficulty of accessing foreign policy records on the Mainland right now, as well as the general dearth of scholarship on Cold War Taiwan, I think the pair of articles shows the promise of researching recent international history from the perspective of Taiwan.