Yu-wen Chen

The Tug-of-war over Taiwan in the Us: a Case Study of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs Yu-wen Chen

This book explores the factors that have influenced the establishment and effectiveness of Taiwanese American grassroots lobbies on Capitol Hill through a case study of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs (FAPA), a notable non-state actor that has been actively advancing Taiwanese interests in the United States since 1982. In discussing the influence of FAPA, I undertake a comparative analysis of FAPA's five campaigns: its request to the Taiwan government to lift its blacklist policy, its urging of the US government to allow Taiwanese Americans to state "Taiwan" as their place of birth on their US passports, its promotion of Taiwan's participation in the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations, and its campaign in favor of the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act (TSEA) in 2000. The analysis provides a vigorous account of Taiwanese-American grass-root lobbies in the US, and may be of interests to those who study or care about Sino-Taiwanese relations, or anyone who look for empirical case studies on ethnic lobbies and grass-root lobbies in the US.