ABSTRACT
This volume has undertaken a thorough preliminary analysis of China’s political and social impact on Taiwan. A number of research questions are formulated in the Introduction as a guide to the various chapters:
What precisely is the China impact on Taiwan in the research area with which each author is concerned?
To what extent is Taiwan’s political and social space constrained and/or enlarged by the China impact?
What kinds of challenges and/or opportunities arise from the China impact for Taiwan’s future, and how should Taiwan respond to them?
These questions have been addressed in the individual chapters, and it is now the task of the editor, in these concluding remarks, to highlight the ‘deep structure’ or, to express this less ambitiously, the core issues of the China impact as these have been identified and analysed by the authors who have contributed to this volume. This will involve cutting across the three thematic blocs – domestic politics, society and security – in which the chapters have been categorized. Four core issues present themselves.