Author(s):
Ian Rowen* - University of Colorado at Boulder
Abstract:
How is tourism reconfiguring cross-Strait relations? Over 1 million
Chinese tourists visited Taiwan in 2011, even as China continues to
point over 1000 ballistic missiles at what it considers a breakaway
province. This marks a profound regional change, with direct tour
arrivals from China only permitted to arrive in Taiwan starting in
2008 after decades of tension and travel bans. This paper uses tourism
as a lens to analyze spatial politics between China and Taiwan, to
examine Chinese tourist practices in Taiwan, and to explore the
relationship between tourism and state territoriality in general.
Scholars have suggested that the Chinese state (PRC) deploys tourism
as a tool of foreign policy and a platform to project authority over
national history and identity. Tourism has been used to strengthen
ties with overseas Chinese, as well as to articulate discourses of
nationalism, modernity, and in the current case of Taiwan, even
territorial extent.
Based on ethnography at iconic tourist sites in Taiwan, this paper
explores representational themes about Taiwan and its political
relationship with China, the territorializing effects of tourism, and
the possibility that tourism is aggravating contradictions between the different territorialization programs of the PRC and Taiwan.
