A Taibei Diary

In today's Taiwan one comes across a confident economic society. What is at stake is the Taiwanese polity, not because of any internal weaknesses but because the international situation has put a big question mark over its survival. There is a political discourse in Taiwan which is very close to cold war rhetoric. The counterpoint is still 'Communist China'. The logic of this situation is that the US will have an interventionist presence in the Taiwan Straits, which makes the future of the area, not just of Taiwan, far from easy to predict.