fulbright Taiwan online journal

fulbright Taiwan online journal

Day: August 2, 2018

A Day in the Field with Kristina Chyn

Follow conservation biologist, Kristina Chyn, through Taiwan’s jungles as she conducts fieldwork for Fulbright fellowship research project. Explore different wildlife sampling methods in the day and night time and encounter several amazing frogs, lizards, and snakes! Her project explores the impact of roads on wildlife in Taiwan, and she conducts fieldwork to sample several locations in mountainous Nantou county of Taiwan to gain a better understanding of how roads can impact populations and communities of reptiles and amphibians.

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Chinese Energy Security and the South China Sea

     Oil has been a critical national resource since the early 20th century, when the British Empire began using oil to power its ships, and Parliament voted to acquire a majority stake in a Persian oil firm in order to ensure that it would be able to maintain access to oil for the Royal Navy.[1] With the development of the oil-powered airplane and tank, oil became even more important to strategic planning, and many nations created their own state-owned oil companies to ensure continued access to foreign oil. After the close of the Second World War, it was discovered that the Middle East had large reserves of easily-tapped oil. Not coincidentally, this was when the United States first established a foothold in the region, promising “U.S. military aid to any state in the region that came under attack from Soviet or Soviet-backed forces.”[2] The West’s dependence on Middle Eastern oil was revealed in 1973, when the Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OPEC) cut off all petroleum exports to the United States and decreased its exports to other countries in response to American support for Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.[3] Defense correspondent Michael T. Klare writes that from that

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Inside Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement

“Say goodbye to Taiwan,” wrote political scientist John Mearsheimer in a widely read article in the March-April 2014 issue of The National Interest.1 Threatened by China’s rising economic might and abandoned by a weakening United States, one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies was facing, in his “realist” analysis, an almost inevitable annexation via economic if not military force. “Time,” he wrote, “is running out for the little island coveted by its gigantic, growing neighbor.” But only days after publication, on March 18, activists and armchair analysts alike said hello to a new reality. That evening, the assembly hall of Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan was stormed by a motley crew led by students from the “Black Island Nation Youth,” a loosely organized student political action committee formed the previous year. The several hundred occupiers repelled police efforts to eject them, escorted out the few officers on duty, and barricaded the doors with seats tied together with rope. None of them expected that the occupation, later known as the 318 or Sunflower Movement, would last twenty-four days, spawn the biggest pro-democracy protest rally in the island’s history, reframe popular discourse about Taiwan’s political and social trajectory, precipitate the midterm electoral defeat of the ruling party,

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One Belt One Road and China’s Energy Security

     The Belt and Road Initiative, initially known as One Belt One Road, is China’s latest national development strategy, which aims to: Promote the connectivity of Asian, European and African continents and their adjacent seas, establish and strengthen partnerships among the countries along the Belt and Road, set up all-dimensional, multi-tiered and composite connectivity networks, and realize diversified, independent, balanced and sustainable development in these countries.[1] The initiative is composed of six sections: the Eurasian Land Bridge, the China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor, the China-Central Asia-West Asia Economic Corridor, the China-Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, and the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor.      The “Cooperation Priorities” put forth in the 2015 “Visions and Actions” plan are: policy coordination, facilities connectivity, unimpeded trade, financial integration, and people-to-people bond.[2] The relationship between One Belt One Road and China’s energy policy first becomes apparent through these priorities. Under “facilities connectivity”, the plan states that “[w]e should promote cooperation in the connectivity of energy infrastructure, work in concert to ensure the security of oil and gas pipelines and other transport routes…”[3] In the next section titled “unimpeded trade”, the plan also encourages: “[C]ooperation in the exploration and development of coal, oil, gas, metal

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From Raleigh to Taipei: Insights Gained Abroad

     Having been an international educator for more than ten years, my entire career has been focused on supporting and enhancing internationalization efforts at various institutions.  Several years ago, I attended a session on the Fulbright International Education Administrators (IEA) seminars at a NAFSA conference. In this session, attendees mentioned the invaluable opportunity they had to participate in the Germany seminar.  Little did I know that I, too, would be afforded such an opportunity of tremendous personal and professional value. Senator J. William Fulbright had a vision to make the world a more peaceful and friendly place through his programs. I believe the Fulbright IEA seminar is a prime example how we, as international educators, can help bring “a little more knowledge, a little more reason, and a little more compassion into world affairs” through unwavering commitment to our work, institutions, faculty and students.      Upon learning that I had been accepted into the program, I was thrilled to make my second trip to Asia.  I first went to Asia a few years ago when I visited Florida Atlantic University’s exchange partner, Chulalongkorn University, in Bangkok, Thailand; it was a memorable, first-hand experience of an Asian culture that

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Research & Reflections

fulbright taiwan online journal