Zhang, Jiajie

This commentary positions the Taiwanese response to COVID-19 in the larger geopolitical arena. It explores the politicized nature of the global pandemic through Taiwan’s relations with the US, China, the World Health Organization, and Southeast Asia, and reflects on the politico-economic environment Taiwan has to navigate post COVID-19. Discussion shows that the emergence of Taiwan as an exceptional entity in the containment of the virus is very much predicated on the failings of China and the US in their roles as world leaders. Moreover, as much as China needs Taiwan for its nationalistic narratives, the US is dependent on a defiant Taiwan to stall China’s progress in threatening its global hegemon status. However, despite scoring a geopolitical home run in its engagement with COVID-19, Taiwan is by and large a pawn in Sino-US relations. The commentary postulates that the political future of Taiwan is likely to be determined by geopolitical externalities beyond its control. Taiwan should not be too carried away by its success in balancing the US-China tightrope hitherto. So long as Taiwan remains a pawn in the contestation of global power between China and the US, its leaders have to tread carefully as to its future options.

On 23 January 2020, Singapore announced its first COVID-19 case, becoming one of the first countries to be affected by the virus outside China. The government acted swiftly, closed its borders, introduced circuit-breaking measures, and deployed public health and medical expertise in tackling the virus. Both technology and human resources were used extensively for contact tracing, quarantining, and pathogenic management. While all these measures helped in a successful containment initially, the second wave of COVID-19 cases emerged at the foreign worker dormitories, affecting thousands of workers. Singapore’s approach in tackling the situation shifted rapidly and began to involve civil society organizations and individuals in the fight against the virus. In this paper, we argue that while state-led technologies such asTraceTogether and Safe Entry helped in the techno-governance of bodies on the move, bottom-up digital solutions, and innovative engagement of individuals are equally crucial in building a smart and resilient Singapore.

Geopolitical studies on the subterranean have tended to portray underground spaces (including tunnels and caves) as closely imbricated with warfare, violence and militarism. This paper departs from existing literatures insofar as it explores how peaceful ideas and relationships can similarly be fostered through the subterranean realm. Using the case of the Zhaishan Tunnel located on the Taiwanese island of Kinmen, we demonstrate how this site has converted from a defensive structure against the military antagonisms from mainland China to one that is largely associated with rapprochement tourism for the cultivation of benign China-Taiwan relations. Specifically, by drawing on the concept of affective atmosphere, we argue that the elemental and material aspects of the tunnel have been strategically deployed to affectively shore up Chinese and Taiwanese visitors' collective memories in order to re-orientate their dispositions towards peaceful cross-strait futures. In so doing, we demonstrate how affective atmosphere can be analytically productive in examining the elemental and embodied dimensions of subterranean geopolitics. It not only enables critical appreciation of the ways in which different elemental materialities impact upon subjective feelings in/of subterranean spaces. More crucially, it also encourages incisive reflections into the agency and politics behind the conjoining of the elemental and bodily for the (re)making of subterranean geopolitics.

Volunteer tourism is considered an alternative form of tourism [Wearing, S. (2001). Volunteer tourism: Experiences that make a difference. Cambridge: Cabi Press], which focuses on the possibilities of a more sustainable development. Drawing on research in Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia and a fast-growing volunteer tourism destination, this paper challenges some premises of the conventional belief that volunteer tourism is a form of sustainable tourism. Using qualitative interviews with different volunteer tourism stakeholders, this paper examines volunteer tourism practices through the sustainability trinity framework (economy, culture and environment) and also extends the discussion to ethics of care by proposing the sustainability triangular pyramid. In doing so, this paper suggests the input of care can potentially strengthen the three pillars in the sustainability trinity, which might in turn help to build a more resilient future for the individuals and host communities in volunteer tourism as a whole.

This exploratory paper contributes to a theorization of the relationship between leisure travels and subjective well-being (SWB) among older adults. Although it is generally agreed that leisure travel contributes to one’s mental well-being, the processes that lead to various forms of well-being are often understudied. It is argued that a more nuanced understanding of these processes can lead to better appreciation of the meanings of travel for the older adults. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 30 older travellers to garner their thoughts on how leisure travels have contributed to their SWB. Through a thematic analysis of travel narratives, four recurring themes, namely (1) reminiscing the past, (2) bonding with family members, (3) rediscovering self and (4) forming informal networks of care (RBRiC), were identified as processes leading to various elements of SWB among older adults. Although non-exhaustive, these processes reveal the embodied meanings and experiences of travel for the individual and can potentially lead to more meaningful discussions on how various aspects of SWB are attained.

This article seeks to examine the interplay of material culture and identity politics during what we call the Great Rapprochement Era between China and Taiwan. It focuses on how the government and non-state actors dealt with sensitive histories and difficult heritages as manifested in their taming of Chiang Kai-shek for cross-strait tourists’ consumption. The article argues that as much as both governments strove to put ‘economics before politics’, there was evidently a great deal of political work that went into making an ‘inconvenient’ past more ‘palatable’. Discussion shows that despite the depoliticization of difficult heritages, and the domestication, commercialization and cartoonization of sensitive historical figures as manifested in tourism products, these practices were inherently political.