Project Details
Projekt
Unyielding Empire: China’s Quest to Peripheralize Taiwan
Applicant
Professor Dr. Gunter Schubert
Subject Area
Political Science
Term
since 2026
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 550231771
It has been a characteristic of past empires to control and, if possible, incorporate their immediate peripheries into the imperial heartland. Taiwan, which until the 19th century was considered part of the loosely defined frontier of the Chinese empire, is now more exposed to the territorial reach of the contemporary Chinese empire than any other polity in China’s periphery. Indeed, although the People's Republic of China (PRC) officially claims that Taiwan is part of it, the island republic has yet to be incorporated into the imperial center. This claim is uncompromising, as the Xi Jinping regime has made Taiwan the linchpin of the party-state's legitimacy. The case of Taiwan is therefore crucial for studying China’s imperial practices in the contemporary era. Without Taiwan, the legitimacy of the Chinese empire is at stake. At the same time, Taiwan’s importance in the production of high-end chips and the ongoing restructuring of global semiconductor supply and value chains has given it particular prominence in the US-China conflict, making China’s imperial quest for the island a matter of international concern. Examining the case of Taiwan is therefore critical to grasping some of the key implications of the novel Chinese empire that is unfolding. By focusing on Taiwan as a single case, this project makes an important contribution to our understanding of contemporary Chinese imperial practices of consolidating the imperial center, a process characterized by inhibited, i.e., ideologically compromised, policy learning due to Taiwan’s ideological centrality to the empire’s quest for political legitimacy. The project traces China’s efforts to peripheralize its "renegade province" through: a) establishing control over economic structures, particularly by gaining or maintaining access to the cutting-edge technologies of Taiwan’s semiconductor and AI-related industries; b) creating intermediaries by establishing technology networks linking Taiwanese and Chinese entrepreneurs in these industries (and beyond); and c) pursuing a divide and rule strategy, by fostering close ties with influential KMT politicians and Taiwanese businesspeople (Taishang) with strong commercial stakes in the Chinese mainland to drive a wedge between Taiwan’s political and economic elites. The project draws on document analysis and extensive fieldwork in both China and Taiwan, based primarily on semi-structured interviews with policymakers and entrepreneurs. Moreover, it will integrate ongoing research on China’s efforts to build an autonomous semiconductor supply and value chain and AI-driven industry in China proper. Thus, this project highlights both the PRC’s efforts to gain autonomy from Taiwan and to make it more dependent on China, not only to consolidate the imperial center, but also to deprive the "West" of access to a major player in the evolving "chip war".
DFG Programme
Research Units
