The year 2026 marks the 30th anniversary of Taiwan’s first direct presidential election. This 1996 election which was widely viewed as a milestone event in Taiwan’s democratization process, occurred at a time of heightened cross-strait relations. China held a series of military exercises and missile tests in the Taiwan Strait that were designed to influence and undermine Taiwan’s historic elections. In this lecture I will examine how Taiwan’s major parties discussed relations with China in their political communication during the election campaign period. Did their positions match the common media stereotypes of Taiwan’s party politics? Was it essentially a referendum on unification or independence? Were Taiwan’s parties highly polarized on relations with China or did they take relatively convergent positions? Although the focus of the lecture will be on the 1996 election, I will briefly touch upon Taiwan’s most recent presidential election in 2024 and compare how the way the parties discuss relations with China has changed three decades later.

DAFYDD J. FELL is a Professor of Comparative Politics at the Department of Politics and International Studies of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He is also the Director of the SOAS Centre of Taiwan Studies. In 2004 he helped establish the European Association of Taiwan Studies. He has published numerous articles on political parties and electioneering in Taiwan. His first book was Party Politics in Taiwan (Routledge, 2005), which analyzed party change in the first fifteen years of multi-party competition. His second book was Government and Politics in Taiwan (Routledge, 2011) and the second edition was published in early 2018. He has edited a number of volumes on Taiwan, with the most recent Taiwan Studies Revisited, published in 2019, Taiwan’s Economic and Diplomatic Challenges and Opportunities (2021) and Taiwan’s Contemporary Indigenous Peoples (2021). His latest single authored book was Taiwan’s Green Parties (Routledge 2021) and he is currently working with two co-authors on a forthcoming Chinese version of the book. In 2025 he co-authored a new book that examines the history of Taiwan’s sugar railways titled The Twilight Years of Taiwan’s Sugar Railways. He is also the book series editor for the Routledge Research on Taiwan Series.

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• DATE: Wednesday, May 27, 2026
• TIME: 18:30-20:00
• LOCATION:SIN 1, Department for East Asian Studies/Chinese Studies, Altes AKH, Campus, Spitalgasse 2, Yard 2, Entrance 2.3