On War and Love During COVID-19: An Interview with Chien-ting Lin (Part 1)
The Taiwan Gazette interviews Taiwan-based cultural studies scholar Chien-ting Lin to discuss how Taiwan’s treatment of Mainland Chinese students (lusheng) during COVID-19 can be understood in terms of war and love.
Chien-Ting Lin teaches in the English Department of National Central University in Chungli, Taiwan. He received his Ph.D. in literature and cultural studies from University of California, San Diego. His research fields include literary and cultural studies of science and medicine; inter-Asia cultural studies; critical race studies; studies of empires, militarism and neocolonialism; and transpacific (post) cold war studies. He has published his research in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, Review of International American Studies, and Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies. He is currently working on his book project tentatively entitled Fugitive Subjects of “Secret Doctors”: Politics of Life and Labor in Taiwan’s Medical Modernity, in which he investigates transpacific colonial and neocolonial formations of knowledge, labor and life politics within different periods of Taiwan’s medical modernization.
Divided into two parts, this interview is the fourth piece of our special series: Lusheng in Taiwan: Contradictions and Anticipations.
Interviewed and transcribed by Sabrina Teng-io Chung
Copyedited by Matthew Mucha
Photography by Lisanto 李奕良/Unsplash
“COVID-19, as a catalyst, has returned us to deflected cold war problematics in view of the escalating U.S.-China conflict punctuated by the trade war. . . Embedded within the already polarized confrontation between U.S. and China in sync with epidemic control as a life-and-death battle, Taiwan constitutes a critical site mediating the global politics of pandemic/war.”
-- Chien-ting Lin, “In Times of War and Love” (2020)
Taiwan Gazette: We are glad that you are willing to join us today. We invited you as our interviewee because we are interested in your work on transpacific medical modernity. Can you briefly discuss your past research, focusing on why you find the issue of transpacific medical modernity important? How is your past research related to your latest article on Taiwan’s treatment of lusheng? And why is that article entitled “In Times of War and Love”?
Chien-ting Lin: Thank you so much for having me. I am glad to have this opportunity to share my thoughts and perspectives on lusheng in relation to the global pandemic. I think it is important to have a critical discussion of the issue. At the same time, I am also worried about this opportunity. As we have seen, most discourses about Taiwan in the English-speaking world were introduced as a certain mode of knowledge. I am hoping that my interview will serve as a critical intervention into these discourses, expressing different but related thoughts on Taiwan.
When the COVID-19 epidemic was turning into a global phenomenon, affecting the lives of everyone with serious ramifications, I couldn’t help but keep thinking and reading about it. My research focuses on medical modernity, but it also deals with the politics of disease, health, and medical development. The pandemic has exposed us to existing problems regarding medical modernity and its unevenness, especially in terms of the public accessibility of health care and the divisions of racialized labor in the medical world. These problems are part and parcel of the structural problems of capitalism and neoliberalism. It is the privatization and commodification of healthcare and medicine that have created the uneven development of medical modernity we are facing today.
I was personally affected but also intellectually triggered by these issues. I am based in Taiwan. When the pandemic first started, I followed the various discourses, knowledge, and government reactions about and in response to the situation. And I couldn’t help but see this as a manifestation of the Cold War. The Cold War has been the focal point of my analysis in understanding what I mean by transpacific medical modernity. I have always been trying to examine the lingering Cold War effects in transpacific Asia. People tend to think that we are living in a post-Cold War era—that the Cold War has already passed. The pandemic, however, exposes the Cold War effects in Asia in a twofold manner. For one, the Taiwanese government has reinforced a strict regulation on border control, creating a kind of Sinophobic exclusion that can be justified in the name of disease and epidemic prevention. In our everyday life, we have seen daily news reports of confirmed cases and death counts, and state-imposed interruptions of economic, cultural, and social activities. The government has enacted all these measures to cultivate a sense of emergency among the people—that we are now living in crisis mode, and we have to follow the rules. This of course recalls certain wartime conditions. On another note, we can see, from an international perspective, how governments in each country competed with each other, showing how effectively they were managing the crisis and lowering the number of confirmed cases and deaths. This says to me that the Cold War has never been a local event. It is a global phenomenon but with very regional implications.
Taiwan is really an interesting case to me. What we can see here is a war without a war, or a war within a war whose effects are particularly pronounced in the case of lusheng. As I mentioned earlier, we are compelled to live under normalized conditions in Taiwan. The discussion of wartime conditions in Taiwan might not make sense precisely because of this process of normalization: with the containment of the initial COVID-19 outbreak, there was almost no interruption of daily activities and a minimal rise in death rate and the number of confirmed cases. Yet the Cold War conditions manifest itself clearly when we look at how the government operated in relation to lusheng. We are living in a war, but it is normalized in our daily life and mentality. That mentality is clearly expressed through the public resentment against Chinese bodies, which are particularized and racialized as disease carriers and contagious populations. And in its implementation of the rule of law, the government enacted a process of sovereign nationalization: it is a sovereign logic that suspends the rule of law to make an exception when it comes to lusheng.
To understand what I am referring to as sovereign nationalization, we can look at the government’s decision to ban lusheng from returning to Taiwan in January 2020. As soon as the ban was introduced, we were informed that the disease originated from Wuhan, Hubei, and that the government had immediately taken measures to ban people from China. At the same time, students from Hong Kong and Macau were still allowed entry to Taiwan. In the government’s immediate response to lusheng, the virus was made synonymous with national origins. We all know that the virus does not come with national origins. It has to do with travel history, or the routes by which people move around.
There was certainly criticism against the government’s treatment of lusheng. But the public discourse has been very supportive of the government’s decision. Whatever criticism that has been voiced has become the target of public discourse. So, it is interesting for me to see how the Cold War conditions were manifested through the public’s strong support of state power. This is also connected to what I called the “sedated Cold War conditions of anti-Chinese sentiments.”
In my article, I maintain that the Taiwanese public’s anti-Chinese sentiment is not simply triggered by COVID-19. Rather, COVID-19 makes evident or exposes the longer geohistorical conditions that produce and sustain anti-Chinese sentiments. It was the discourse of disease prevention that reanimated these preexisting anti-Chinese sentiments. This is very troubling for me because once and again we can see how the government cited such a scientific discourse to justify its actions and decisions. At the same time, we can also see how the government has been unfailingly targeting racialized groups such as lusheng or others who have ties to China and Chineseness. The racialized groups or populations in turn serve as the surrogate target of attack and racism, and the state was able to exonerate its liabilities for the violence it perpetuated. This is the Cold War formation for me.
Taiwan Gazette: Are you suggesting that the Taiwanese government is trying to disavow its racist treatment of lusheng vis-à-vis the scientific discourse of disease prevention?
Chien-ting Lin: I wouldn’t say that the scientific discourse or data that the government cited and used is unauthorized or unsound. What I am suggesting is that the government was able to reproduce the racialized violence against lusheng because of Cold War conditions made explicit by the pandemic. These conditions are linked to the longer histories of racialization and racism that are generally denied in Taiwan - and that denial is more than just a conscious decision. It operates as a colonial unconscious. People tend to deny or disavow the effects of racial formations produced by the Cold War divisions between China and Taiwan. These effects continue to subjugate lusheng to racialized violence in Taiwan.
Here, the transpacific analytic is important because it helps us unravel the Cold War genealogies of racialized violence of which the Taiwanese public’s anti-Chinese sentiment is a part. The transpacific analytic allows us to reexamine the longer histories of imperial formations and Cold War entanglements between the US, China, and Taiwan.
During the pandemic, we can see the rise of Sinophobia in Western countries such as the US, Canada, and Australia and even in Asian countries including Singapore and Malaysia. We can definitely see the rise of incidents where racialized Chinese bodies were under attack. In Taiwan, however, people don’t really see the violence directed against lusheng as racism. I believe this disavowal of racism has something to do with the Cold War divisions that obscure the fact that Taiwan has become a site of mediation where Western discourse, knowledge, and power formation have been mobilized to counter China. In other words, the competition between the US and China is mediated through Taiwan.
That is how the transpacific analytic is important. We do not only look at two different sides of the Pacific but instead reexamine the entangled histories of imperialism, settler colonialism, and orientalism that are usually hidden from view. We need to arrive at a historical understanding that the disavowed histories of racialized violence are in fact constitutive of the geopolitical development of Taiwan. Without such an understanding, we cannot see how our responses to China have become a site of mediation which sustains Cold War conditions.
Taiwan Gazette: I am interested to know how US settler colonialism in the Pacific might be linked to the transpacific racialized formation between Taiwan, China and the US. How might Hawai‘i and Guam fit into your discussion of disavowed racism? Do you think that they are connected to our understanding of the pandemic in terms of war, militarism, or militarized interconnectedness?
Chien-ting Lin: I definitely think so. A body of research has been produced to address the question of settler colonialism in transpacific formations. In our current moment, more research has to be produced to show clearly how all these are interconnected. I couldn’t simply state the claims. But I could provide partial observations to this question.
For example, there was a Navy cluster outbreak in April 2020. Perhaps I should clarify, despite public concerns, the government still decided to let the crew of the Dunmu fleet to embark on its annual mission. The visit to Palau, though not the first time, as some observe, might have to do with the US military exercise in the Pacific, especially concerning the intensified conflict and territorial disputes in the South China Sea, but it's never been officially confirmed.
What is important to observe in this incident is that Taiwan continuously serves as a strategic site of US military operations against the rise of China; and that Taiwan's Dunmu fleet visit in Palau as a routine itinerary suggests Taiwan's long involvement in the US militarized deployment in the Western Pacific and its colonization of the indigenous populations.
With this incident, we can see how the Cold War conditions in Taiwan are linked to the histories of transpacific militarized settler colonialism. Yet again, this kind of settler colonial formation remains largely oblivious to Taiwan’s perspective. People don’t really see how Taiwan is linked to the entangled histories of militarism and settler colonial formations in the Pacific; not to mention that Taiwan constitutes part of the island chain of military bases in the Pacific. More research about these Cold War entanglements needs to be produced, and we need to further advance a historical understanding and critical analysis of those histories. This is one example that immediately comes to my mind when it comes to settler colonialism.
Taiwan Gazette: In your discussion of the Taiwanese public’s disavowed racism against lusheng, you referred specifically to the term ‘colonial unconscious’. I am wondering if we can further unravel the settler colonial implications of this colonial unconscious. How can we address the question of settler colonial unconscious in Taiwan? Has Taiwan’s position within the US settler colonial regime been disavowed? I am asking this question because, for me, the Taiwanese public is quite aware that their country is protected by the US military. Yet little discussion has been made about Taiwan’s militarized interconnectedness with the other Pacific islands where US military infrastructures are hosted. Moreover, people seem largely unaware of the militarized violence directed towards themselves. Why would they even disavow their own experiences of violence?
Chien-ting Lin: I can’t say that I have an answer, but we can exchange our thoughts on that question. I totally agree that there is a significant lack of historical understanding about the militarized histories between settler colonies and military bases in the Pacific. It is important for us to reckon with the fact that we are part and parcel of the linked histories of violence. We are within the historical formations that sustain the violence of militarism. Colonial unconscious certainly enables the Taiwanese public’s acceptance of US military protection. In turn, this uncritical acceptance of US militarism continues to reproduce uneven effects of violence which differentially affect and subjugate various racialized groups and populations. I am hoping that, if anything, my essay and the research that we do can unravel the entangled yet disavowed histories of violence and address the question of how we can begin to reckon with the histories of violence and loss.
As for why we couldn’t see the violence of US militarism in Taiwan - just very tentatively, based on my research, this has to do with the Cold War problematic which brings about the compartmentalization of histories and nationalization of historiography in Asia. The Cold War problematic has largely prevented us from critically examining the developmentalist narrative of postcolonial state formations. Under the workings of such compartmentalization and nationalization, we cannot really see the Cold War entanglements or militarized interconnectedness between different sites of violence. This is where the transpacific analytic and inter-Asia referencing become important to me. The imperialist and colonial conditions that the Japanese empire and U.S. empire kept intact in Asia and the Pacific have very much informed postcolonial state formation and the ways knowledge is produced nationalistically in the region. These conditions further prevent us from arriving at a transregional and transnational understanding of our positions within the longer histories of imperialism and colonialism. But of course, imperialist forces wouldn’t be happy if we begin to see these linked histories, because doing so would expose the limits of their formations.
The case of lusheng is related to what I was describing earlier - that the disavowal of racism is an effect of knowledge and power. It is precisely under such an effect that we cannot see the question of race and racism when it comes to Taiwan’s treatment of lusheng. We tend to reduce the problem to the level of individual responses. It’s not; it’s linked to the structural problems of imperialism and racism.
Taiwan Gazette: In addition to the transpacific analytic, you also mentioned how inter-Asia referencing can help us understand the sedated Cold War conditions in Taiwan, conditions that were manifested or reanimated through Taiwan’s racialized treatment of lusheng. Can you explain to us what inter-Asia referencing means? Why does it matter?
Chien-ting Lin: To address your question, I will need to take a detour here. Personally, I have been engaging in inter-Asia cultural studies for quite a while. Before it became commonly known as a field of academic knowledge production, the inter-Asia project was an activist movement that seeks to advance decolonial reflections on Western-centric historiographies of Asia. The project can be understood as a collective where not only Asia-based knowledge producers and activists but also those critical masses elsewhere can engage in transformative and reflexive conversations about their interconnected histories and experiences. For me, inter-Asia referencing embodies this kind of organized activism among different Asian regions. There have been a lot of collaborative projects and organized activism that reexamine Taiwan’s relation to places like Okinawa, South Korea, Indonesia, India, and more. Inter-Asia referencing really encourages us to direct focus on Taiwan’s relation to the interconnected histories of Asia.
On another note, the transpacific analytic helps me understand that the tasks of decolonization, deimperialization, and de-Americanization that are central to the inter-Asia project do not simply call for a total dismissal of the West. Put differently, the inter-Asia project neither seeks to wrest Asia from the West, nor does it treat the West as a homogeneous entity. Instead, we need to reckon with the uneven effects that Western knowledge/power formations have exerted upon inter-Asian states and societies. We need to take into considerations the radical genealogies of Afro-Asian internationalism, black radical tradition, postcolonial feminism, and more. Inter-Asia referencing is important because it allows us to consider these radical genealogies in relation to each other.
With the publication of my essay in the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies journal, I hope to gesture towards a critical understanding of these connections. For example, I used the term “sedated” to describe the Cold War conditions in Taiwan from an inter-Asia perspective. The Cold War conditions in Taiwan are “sedated” when compared to that of Okinawa, South Korea, or the Philippines—places where we can see active histories of organized activism against imperialism and colonialism. As I have already mentioned, these histories remain largely disavowed in Taiwan. Yet, COVID-19 makes evident and exposes the knowledge/power effects of the Cold War problematic in Taiwan.
Here is Part 2 of the interview.
