SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

How the UK learnt to deal with Taiwan: Trade and politics 1960-1980

Abstract:

This lecture describes the fraught process through which the British government came to terms with pressure to open up trade with Taiwan, while the Foreign Office struggled to maintain the fiction that Britain could not recognize or deal with the ROC for fear of Beijing. This aptly named ‘preemptive cringe’ towards Beijing caused tension with powerful UK interests such as the CBI as well as MPs and diplomats in other capitals, but could be understood in terms of continuing fears for the future of Hong Kong. Meanwhile the British Consulate in Tamsui, which until 1972 had continued to operate after the de-recognition of the ROC,  played a difficult game handling MPs who began to visit Taiwan against the wishes of the Foreign Office, while having to issuing visas via Hong Kong. Throughout, both commercial interests and Trade Ministers feared that other countries were ahead of them in opening up the growing Taiwan market, while the grudgingly accredited Taiwan Representative Office in London was the proverbial ‘thorn in their side’ of the FO.  Nevertheless, by the 1970s the situation was eased by the foundation of the Anglo-Taiwan Trade Association (ATTA) after which even KMT Ministers began to appear in London, though always under the fiction that they were not really ‘Ministers’ but simply ‘trade experts’, who would meet officials here ‘by accident’ at lunch parties of the ATTA.  This sometimes farcical situation, with everyone looking over their shoulders and the KMT always craftily seeking ‘official’ contacts on their own agenda, is a fertile field for study now that the relevant archives are opening up.

About the speaker:

Michael (Rand) Hoare is a research associate at the Centre of Taiwan Studies, SOAS. He became a 'freelance academic' some thirty years ago after early retirement from a career teaching National Science in London University. Having studied Chinese language at the University of Westminster (then PCL) and the Mandarin Centre in Taipei, he took up Chinese socio-political history with a speciality of UK-Taiwan relations. Within this he researched the '228' events, the history of Taiwan Prisoners of War, the Cross-Strait crises, and more recently the Japanese colonial period. He has also lectured at the Academia Sinica, the European Association of Taiwan Studies, as well as SOAS on many occasions. In what has been a parallel career as Historian of Science he has published on the history of Geodesy (The Quest for the True Figure of the Earth, 2005) and on Lexicography (In the Oxford History of English Lexicography, 2000) as well as papers on the relation of Science and Literature. His Intimate Chinese: From Grammar to Fluency was published in Taipei in 2012. He is married to Lin Man-Chiu, a prominent Children's Literature author.