Can Peace Be Preserved Across the Taiwan Strait?

Taiwan lies at the heart of the growing confrontation between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and it remains the only issue that could plausibly trigger a war between the two countries. Taiwan is claimed by the PRC as Chinese territory, and its government is unrecognized by all but a handful of states today. But it is also a prosperous liberal democracy of more than 23 million people, a major trading partner of both the U.S. and the PRC, and the source of more than 90 percent of the world’s most advanced semiconductor chips.

This talk will cover how the US-PRC-Taiwan relationship got to this point, what each side’s foremost interests and long-term strategies are, and how those have changed in recent years with Xi Jinping’s centralization of power and the shifting balance of economic and military power in the region. It will also touch on the current debates in Washington over Taiwan policy and how best to ensure that peace can be maintained across the Taiwan Strait for the indefinite future. 

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Kharis Templeman is a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a lecturer at the Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford University. His areas of expertise include democratic transitions and consolidations, comparative parties and elections, and the politics of Taiwan. He is the editor (with Larry Diamond and Yun-han Chu) of two books on Taiwan politics, and (with Netina Tan) a forthcoming volume on electoral malpractice in Asia. His other peer-reviewed research has been published in Comparative Political Studies, Ethnopolitics, Journal of Democracy, International Journal of Taiwan Studies, and Taiwan Journal of Democracy, along with several book chapters. He has also written on Taiwan policy issues for many outlets, including the Brookings Institution, Atlantic Council, Foreign Affairs, Taiwan Insight, War on the Rocks, and The Diplomat. 

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.