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
Photography by Kon Karampelas/Unsplash

Taiwan Gazette: So far, our discussion has revolved around the issues of war, militarism, and militarized interconnectedness. Perhaps we can move on to the discussion of love—another focal point of analysis in your article? Can you share with us, for example, how queer theory informs your ideas and thoughts about love in times of COVID-19?

Chien-ting Lin: Thank you for this question. I like the question of love.

Taiwan Gazette: It is very interesting that in addition to lusheng, your article also directs attention to the predicaments of another racialized Chinese group: lupei (陸配; Mainland Chinese spouses of Taiwanese national) and xiaoming (小明; children of Mainland Chinese and Taiwanese couples). You also made a reference to the legalization of gay marriage in Taiwan.

Chien-ting Lin: Yes, if I may, my article is trying to offer a queer reading of the situation. My investigation into the question of love is closely linked to my past and ongoing research on intimacy. During the pandemic, we can observe how forms of intimacy change and evolve for better or for worse. The most notable example might be the proliferation of social distancing rules that have significantly impeded human interactions. Queer lives under COVID-19 might be another example. These subjects do not live under heteronormative conditions of intimacy and care. We need to account for the ways COVID-19 and its normalizing measures affect the intimate relations of queer lives. Moreover, we can also see an intensification of labor performed by caretakers for the sick, elderly, and disabled both within and beyond family structures. These caretakers are more vulnerable to COVID-19 infections because of their intensified labor and working conditions. All these examples are related to the question of love, care, and intimacy.  

My latest article is based upon my research on intimacy and the COVID-19-related news and information that I gathered. As I was writing the piece, I came across the news about xiaoming. By definition, xiaoming are the children of Mainland Chinese and Taiwanese couples. During the lunar New Year vacation last year, some of these xiaoming returned to China for family reunions. Similar to lusheng, they were banned from returning to Taiwan due to the government’s COVID-19 preventive measures. There was a heated debate about whether the government should facilitate the return of xiaoming to Taiwan out of humanitarian concerns. The underlying assumption of such concerns is that xiaoming are members of the Taiwanese family. Regardless of citizenship, these family members should receive government assistance and humanitarian aid.     

At the same time, however, public paranoia was high as the return of xiaoming was imaginatively conjoined with the scenario of a potential COVID-19 outbreak in Taiwan. Here, the case of xiaoming can offer us interesting observations about the economy of feelings. As we can see, the Taiwanese public directed their fear, hostility, and paranoia towards family reunifications involving Chinese nationals. Like lusheng, xiaoming were made synonymous with the virus which should be banned from Taiwan at all cost. However, a similar outburst of paranoia against families that involve, say, American nationals, will be mostly unlikely. What I am suggesting is that the ban against Chinese nationals makes no sense at all. The virus has nothing to do with national origins but travel histories.  

In the end, COVID-19 preventive measures overrode humanitarian concerns. Xiaoming and their family were not offered any government assistance and family separations were kept intact. From the case of xiaoming, we can see how family and love, war and racism are interconnected issues. Certain forms of intimacy are racialized, pathologized, and rendered inconsequential. I was very uncomfortable with the government’s unfair treatment of these racialized Chinese populations. And what we now call the Taiwan Model precisely emerged out of these exclusionary practices.

The emergence of the Taiwan Model has something to do with the ways Taiwan positions and presents itself as a democratic nation which has developed a successful epidemic prevention model. As opposed to China whose experiences of COVID-19 containment have been understood in relation to its authoritarian governance—Taiwan emerges as a liberal and democratic nation whose epidemic preventive measures garners some international recognition. However, underlying this imaginary dichotomy between China and Taiwan, authoritarianism and liberalism is the transpacific histories of Cold War formations, racialization, and imperialism. COVID-19 makes evident how Taiwan operates as a site mediating anti-Chinese sentiments, thinking, and practices. From the vantage point of our current historical moment, it is not difficult to observe that the liberal model of governance has very much failed in the U.S. By contrast, Taiwan manages to set itself as an example of how a liberal and democratic ally of the U.S. can contain the disease without becoming authoritarian. Of course, understanding Taiwan’s success as such is only possible when we overlook or disavow the government’s violence against racialized Chinese populations including lusheng, xiaoming, and lupei.   

So, with the emergence of the Taiwan Model, we can see a rise of families-in-separation across the Taiwan Strait. In my article, I tried to examine the geopolitical complexity of the question of love by relating the case of xiaoming with two other examples of family-in-separation.

The first example concerns gay marriage. In May 2020, the rights advocacy group Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights (TAPCPR) launched a fundraising campaign to promote the legalization of transnational gay marriage. At that moment, Taiwan’s legislation only recognized the marriage rights of foreign spouses from another gay nation—a country where gay marriage is legalized. TAPCPR released an online music video, “Across the Ocean to See You” (飄洋過海來看你), to raise public awareness about the then legislation’s inadequacies.

The video features a Japanese and Taiwanese gay couple whose family formation has yet to be recognized. I found the music video’s representation of queer family-in-separation problematic in two ways. For one, we can see a colonial unconscious guiding the music video’s rendering of queer love, intimacy, and separation. The music video promotes not only the romantic unification between a transnational gay couple but also the nation they represent. In other words, what we have is a gay version of colonial histories between Taiwan and Japan. For another, the music video displaces another story of love, marriage, and separation. In fact, the video is a remaking of a song whose origin dates back to the 1990s. Bearing the same title, the original song portrays a non-normative love story between a woman from Taiwan and a married man from mainland China. We can easily see how the non-normative intimate relationship of this cross-strait couple speaks to the larger history of separation between mainland China and Taiwan. Yet the very geopolitical context and historical meaning of the original song is displaced by TAPCPR’s remade version that promotes transnational gay marriage.

By reading such cultural representations of queer intimacy in relation to the case of lupei and xiaoming, I was trying to critically reflect upon our dichotomized responses to different forms of intimacy. On the one hand, the family separation confronting lupei and xiaoming was legitimized on the ground of COVID-19 preventive measures. On the other, a public awareness campaign was raised during the pandemic to promote transnational gay marriage—a promotion that displaces the geopolitical and historical meanings of a non-normative love story between Taiwan and China. For me, these contrasting family formations allow us to understand the ways in which Taiwan remakes itself as a new race/nation during COVID-19. Thanks to the exclusionary practices and historical displacements that the Taiwan Model and “gay model” enact, Taiwan emerges in the international world-system as a progressive or advanced race/nation distinguishable from authoritarian and backward China.   

I should clarify that by critiquing the progressive development of this new Taiwanese race/nation, my article does not aim to promote a Greater China imagination. Rather, it seeks to uncover the operations of a historical denial that renders unintelligible the many interactions, exchanges, and contacts between peoples across the Taiwan Strait. Here, we can perhaps turn our focus to the second example of family-in-separation that informs my analysis of the case of xiaoming. My second example concerns the longer histories of Cold War divisions separating Taiwan from China. The retreat of Kuomintang troops from China to Taiwan in 1949 brought forward countless families-in-separation across the Strait. Among the displaced Chinese population that relocated to Taiwan with the KMT regime were soldiers and civilians who did not know that they would live in exile for years and separate from parents and spouses. An understanding of the stories of separation surrounding xiaoming and lupei should be situated within these longer histories of Cold War divisions.      

The politics of love in times of COVID-19 needs to be historicized so that the Cold War genealogies of separation and division can be learned. We need to critically reexamine how the progressive narrative of a new Taiwanese race/nation is built upon our pathologizing of the Chinese race, nation, and family intimacies. In Taiwan, Cold War conditions and COVID-19 preventive measures work to set China, Chineseness, and Chinese family formations in opposition to the modern, progressive, and democratic Taiwanese race/nation. We definitely need to understand the knowledge effects and power configurations that make possible families-in-separation. This is a far stretch but I hope my answer makes sense. There is so much to talk about. I could only condense the discussion a bit.

Taiwan Gazette: So, two gay figures—one from Taiwan, another from Japan—are featured in the remade music video that you mentioned. Do you think that the video is trying to hierarchize the relationship between Taiwan and Japan in terms of their progressiveness in gay rights advocacy?

Chien-ting Lin: This is an interesting question. When watching the video, I didn’t really see that kind of hierarchization at all. The main target of the video has been the Taiwanese government and its limited recognition of transnational gay marriage rights. We definitely need to be critical about Japanese state formation and marriage law. In the music video though, Japan is still romanticized as a figure of true love for Taiwan. It is the Japanese gay figure whose frequent visits to Taiwan are questioned by the Taiwanese custom officers.

Taiwan Gazette: I was just wondering why a Japanese figure is represented in the music video. Why not someone from Hong Kong or elsewhere?

Chien-ting Lin: I think the music video’s preference of a Japanese figure is both symbolic and allegorical. According to the information TAPCPR released, the remade video is based on a true story. Regardless of the information’s truthfulness, you can still see that underlying this gay romance is the longer histories of colonial intimacy between Taiwan and Japan. From our current geohistorical vantage point, it will be hard to imagine the portrayal of true love between a Taiwanese and Mainland Chinese gay couple in TAPCPR campaigns. The foreign spouse could probably be someone from North America, someone who embodies Western modernity or anything opposite to backwardness, underdevelopment, and authoritarianism.  

To me, this is precisely why the remade music video should be read in relation to the stories of xiaoming, lupei, and laobin (elderly veterans). The music video makes evident the genealogical histories of Cold War divisions and separations that we probably should reexamine in our times. It really shows the trajectory of Taiwanese development in marriage law and family formation from WWII to the current moment where gay marriage is legalized in Taiwan.

Last year, I came across the news about how Taiwan was one of the few countries where a gay parade could be held during the pandemic. I was like, oh god! I was so tired of this kind of discourse. The celebratory discourse of Taiwanese pride and progressiveness is related to my analysis of war and love in times of COVID-19.

Taiwan Gazette: From the beginning of our interview, I have been trying to position you as a scholar. Can you share with me your thoughts about the situation of lusheng from your position as a professor? Can you talk a little bit about your teaching experiences and interactions with students?

Chien-ting Lin: This is our final week. This semester I structured my class “Introduction to Cultural Studies” around the issue of the pandemic. I tried to encourage students to understand the biopolitics of the pandemic in relation to the historical trajectories of colonialism, imperialism, and orientalism. As a cultural studies scholar teaching cultural studies, I am hoping to show students what cultural studies means. Cultural studies is not a field of intellectual formation based exclusively in the ivory tower of academia. Rather, it encourages our critical reflection of the mediated everyday life. It allows us to engage with cultures, histories, and knowledge/power formations politically and affectively. My students and I talked about lusheng and the relationship between the U.S., Taiwan, and China—all of which are implicated in the development of Taiwan.   

I am glad that I taught this class because it was a great opportunity for me to engage with students. These days students tend to position themselves as Taiwanese without considering the formation of their national identity and sentiments in relation to the genealogical histories of Cold War divisions. I am not saying that students should not identify themselves as Taiwanese. What I am suggesting is that such an identification needs to be contextualized and historicized. Identity is not a given. So, in many ways, my class also provided an opportunity for students to reflect upon their identity formations and accountabilities they have for each other. I taught them about lusheng, lupei, and xiaoming. At times students were a bit uncomfortable with my teaching because they thought I was trying to defend lusheng and China. I was hoping that students could at least reckon with their own Chinese complex—whether it is a kind of anti-Chinese sentiment or Taiwanese nationalist pride. It is important that we do not take our identity formations and nationalist sentiments for granted.

By developing a critical and genealogical perspective of history, culture, and knowledge/power formations, students could try to understand the question of China in more complicated terms. They could understand how racism and racialized violence do not operate at the individual level but are interwoven with the transpacific histories of colonialism, imperialism, and orientalism.

Some of my students did amazing final papers and presentations for the class. I encouraged them to submit creative projects with critical introductions attached. Some made videos, others did creative writings. They developed critical introductions to their work using ideas and concepts that they learned from class. Being able to teach these students is both a challenging and rewarding experience to me.

Taiwan Gazette: Have you ever encountered any student confrontations or disputes in your class?

Chien-ting Lin: There might be resistance but certainly not open confrontations. I was trying to be as understanding and open as possible. I was asking students to cultivate critical perspectives and develop substantial and historical understandings of knowledge formations and power relations. I was not trying to convert my students to my own belief system. I showed them that I too have to reckon with my own ideologies, values, and problems. This is an important learning and unlearning process. I was lucky to have a lot of engaging and smart students in the class. It’s been a very rewarding experience to teach them.

Taiwan Gazette: Outside of the classroom, have your views on Taiwan’s handling of lusheng and racialized Chinese populations ever been challenged?

Chien-ting Lin: It happens usually when I present my work at academic conferences. This year I encountered aggressive responses towards my analysis of China and medicine. The topic of lusheng is an even more sensitive one. Whenever you try to deliver a critical analysis of the issue, people tend to politicize your voice in a way that disregards the substantial research and academic importance of your work. Of course, the work of cultural studies has always been political. Yet the kind of aggressive responses that I encountered politicize your work by setting you up in certain questions regarding oppositional politics. This kind of politicized disregard of research is unavoidable at our current geohistorical moment. But I would say that sometimes you just can’t compromise. Knowledge cannot be compromised. You need to stand for what you say. That form of politicized disregard of research always comes with some kind of aggressive masculinity. But I guess I am tough enough to deal with it.  

Taiwan Gazette: In the beginning of our interview, you mentioned that you are trying to intervene into the ways Taiwan is introduced as a mode of knowledge in the English-speaking world. You tried to complicate that mode of knowledge with your analysis of Taiwan’s treatment of the pandemic, lusheng, and its disavowal of racism. And we are ending our interview with a discussion of the politicized disregard of research and the form of aggressive masculinity it entails. Can you arrive at a concluding statement concerning how knowledge production about Taiwan can be productive? I am asking this question because your article was published in the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies journal. Wouldn’t its readership simply agree with your analysis? In other words, are we producing knowledge in our own academic comfort zone? If so, how are we going to intervene into the existing modes of knowledge production about Taiwan and its relation with China?   

Chien-ting Lin: To be honest, I wouldn’t say that the readership of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies journal would agree with my analysis. Readers will understand where my training comes from in terms of my inter-Asia perspective. But when it comes to the question of China, people really have strong feelings in Taiwan. They would not completely disagree with me, but they might be enraged. Within academia, it seems that we can talk about a number of things. Things could be tricky when it comes to the question of China.

That’s why I am glad that we are having this interview. In the English-speaking world, Taiwan is represented and positioned in certain ways. For example, Taiwan is positioned in relation to Hong Kong nowadays in terms of their similar struggles against Chinese imperialism and authoritarianism.  

In our discussion, we mentioned that Taiwan has its own historical formations that sustain the violence of imperialism, settler colonialism, and racism across the Pacific. As critical scholars, we need to expose the workings of such formations. I am not trying to deny the asymmetrical power relations between Taiwan and other Asian states such as China. I am saying that it would be problematic if we simply understand Taiwan through its victimized nationhood. The problems of colonialism, imperialism, and racism need to be addressed.

For me, the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies journal is a good outlet for my article because it is an English-language publication. It involves knowledge formations that present critical challenges to the Westernized or Americanized ways of knowledge production. I was hoping that my article could generate new conversations and understandings about Taiwan and its treatment of racialized Chinese populations.

Teaching provides me with another outlet to share my thoughts. Of course, you can say that there is always an asymmetrical power relation between professors and students. But in my case, I also deliver talks and engage with the public at different venues. Last weekend I joined the annual gathering of the Gender/Sexuality Rights Association Taiwan (G/STRAT). I spoke to the public alongside other activist groups including Taiwan International Workers’ Association (TIWA), a rights advocacy group for sex workers, and many others. After my talk, I received comments and questions from the public. We had had a very substantial discussion and debate about certain issues. This is how I imagine what we as scholars and activists could do. To address your question, knowledge production is always a site of contestation, a site that we could work on. 

Perhaps I should further clarify that my critique of Taiwan’s liberal mode of governance does not immediately entail my disregard, exoneration, or endorsement of Chinese state power. It is important to stress that my analysis is a situated critique. I was trying to unravel the complex power/knowledge formations in Taiwan and understand such formations in relation to other places.   

In the case of lusheng, we can see the operation of a structural power imbalance between the Taiwanese and Chinese state. Under the effect of such an asymmetrical power relation, lusheng become the surrogate target of racist violence. Targeting lusheng as such however will not help us overcome the problems of structural power imbalance across the Strait. In Taiwan, lusheng are made entirely synonymous with the racialized Chinese state. They tend to be treated as if they are an undifferentiated whole of Chinese ethnicity and race. I am not simply suggesting that we separate the Chinese people from the State but to its contrary, we need to examine the complex ways of how they are mutually and unevenly constituted and mediated through each other.  I am hoping that my article and our interview could generate some interventionist effect into this mode of thinking.