Cross-strait economic integration and the transnationalization of Taiwan

This thesis provides a neo-Gramscian account of Cross-Strait economic integration (CSEI) between Taiwan and China and challenges the realist and liberal underpinnings which define the CSEI literature. I argue that rather than occurring between two separate state apparatuses which respond to an objective market-led integration process, that both the political and economic dimensions of CSEI should be understood as components of a single process. I theorize Taiwan’s policy parameter as confined by a Cross-Strait historical bloc in which Taiwan’s capitalist class and the Chinese Communist Party are hegemonic. I start by arguing that CSEI can only be understood in terms of social order and the social basis of Taiwan’s state and develop a regionally focused neo-Gramscian framework to account for it in terms of a Cross-Strait historical bloc. To better contextualize Taiwan’s contemporary social order parameters, I first examine the social basis which enabled and eventually diluted the bureaucratic autonomy on which the Kuomintang’s one-party rule was based between 1945 and 1988. Afterward, I examine the erosion of the KMT’s elite bureaucratic autonomy and the social order parameters set by Taiwan’s newly hegemonic Cross-Strait historical bloc between 1988 and 2000. I then examine the Democratic Progressive Party’s CSEI openings between 2001 and 2008 in the context of both its historical bloc confined policy parameter and an increasingly populist identity politics in Taiwan which diverted the citizenry’s attention from economic matters. I conclude by examining the unprecedented CSEI deepening which occurred since the KMT’s return to power in 2008 and argue that this is a culmination of the historical bloc’s long-term policy parameter. But, I also examine to what extent a capital-defined CSEI has spurred forth an increased contestation process and to what extent this may signal that a counter historical bloc is coming into shape in Taiwan.