ABSTRACT
It is perhaps no accident that the first work of fiction I read about Taiwan after moving there in 2005 was an English translation of Wu Cho-liu’s (吳濁流) novel Orphan of Asia (亞細亞的孤兒), a work that has often been described as a formative element of “Taiwanese consciousness.” Taiwan was an orphan at the time of the novel’s completion in 1945 (first published in Japanese as Ajia no koji, アジアの 孤児) and is no less a one more than half a century later. Despite its extraordinary successes in modernization and democratization, Taiwan remains a little understood and often ignored member of the international community. Given the size of its economy (ranked twenty-first and an important player in the global supply chain) and the risks that its unresolved status could spark major hostilities in the Asia-Pacific, perhaps leading to armed conflict between the U.S. and China, Taiwan arguably punches well below its weight when it comes to making its voice heard. As Chi Pang-yuan (齊邦媛), the editor of the English translation of Wu’s novel, wrote in the foreword, “During the second half of the twentieth century, Taiwan developed into a democratic reality, looking forward to international understanding of our efforts.” That understanding, sadly, has yet to materialize.
