Lighthouse Taiwan

The Republic of Confusion Everyone in Taiwan knows who the enemy is — or so we’re told. But while Beijing rattles sabres, the greater threat may be internal: the part of Taiwan that still sees itself as part of China. Much has been made of the People's Republic's aggression — the encirclement drills, the cyber intrusions, the ominous talk of “reunification.” But the deeper crisis is psychological. A not insignificant share of Taiwan’s older generations still identifies not as Taiwanese, but as Chinese — not metaphorically, but quite literally. Ask them, and they will tell you so, sometimes in a language not native to this land. This is not simply nostalgia. It’s a consequence of deliberate policies of cultural displacement. After 1945, the Kuomintang regime fled the Chinese mainland and established its seat in Taiwan, not as a homeland but as a base of operations. The Taiwanese people, who had just emerged from fifty years of Japanese colonial rule, were subjected t...

Ghosts in the Genome: Why Taiwan’s Never-Smokers Are Getting Lung Cancer For years, doctrs in Taiwan have been puzzled by a recurring question: why are people who have never smoked developing lung cancer? A major international study published this week in Nature may finally offer an answer. By sequencing the complete genomes of lung tumours from never-smokers around the world, researchers have identified a rare genetic fingerprint linked to a once-common toxin— and it’s showing up almost exclusively in Taiwan . The mutation signature, known as SBS22a , is strongly associated with aristolochic acid , a natural compound found in some traditional herbal remedies. The acid has long been known to cause kidney failure and urinary tract cancers, and was banned in Taiwan in 2003. But now, for the first time, it has been linked to lung cancer . Of the 871 never-smoking lung cancer patients included in the global study—spanning 28 countries—nearly 90 per cent of those with SBS22...

The Quiet Transformation of Taiwan’s Defense Posture In recent months, U.S.–Taiwan security cooperation has become more visible and operationally focused than at any time in the past four decades. While headlines often fixate on high-profile visits or arms deals, the deeper story lies in the transformation of Taiwan’s defense institutions—changes that are already reshaping the island’s strategic posture in ways Beijing can neither ignore nor easily counter. The most consequential developments have come not through dramatic declarations but through quiet, ongoing military interactions. Open-source reporting confirms that small units of U.S. Army Special Forces—Green Berets—have conducted joint training with elite Taiwanese troops such as the 101st Amphibious Reconnaissance Battalion. These sessions emphasize asymmetric tactics including reconnaissance, urban warfare, and the deployment of Black Hornet nano-drones, reflecting a broader shift toward survivability and distributed lethality...

Taiwan’s Legal Break with China Has Finally Begun By  Professor Chiang Huang-chih On July 7, 2025, at the Asia-Pacific Research Forum jointly hosted by the International Law Association and the American Society of International Law, Taiwan's Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung delivered a carefully crafted speech that may mark a pivotal moment in Taiwan’s international legal identity. Speaking to dozens of international law experts from over twenty countries, Lin clarified a stance long overdue: that Taiwan’s sovereignty cannot—and should not—be judged through the outdated lens of the 1943 Cairo Declaration or the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. Instead, he affirmed that international legal determinations regarding Taiwan must rest upon the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, in which Japan renounced sovereignty over Taiwan without designating a recipient. This is no small shift in tone. For decades, the Republic of China (ROC) government in Taiwan sustained an ambiguous legal narrative—publ...

In her recent article “Georgia’s Warning for Ukraine,” former Georgian Foreign Minister Eka Tkeshelashvili outlines the dangerous consequences of a cease-fire unaccompanied by long-term security guarantees. Her country, once hailed as a democratic success story, has become a cautionary tale. After Russia’s 2008 invasion, the West opted to reset relations with Moscow rather than impose real costs. Georgia was left vulnerable, its territory fractured, its democratic institutions slowly co-opted, and its Euro-Atlantic aspirations indefinitely stalled. This story is deeply familiar to observers in Taiwan. The dynamics Tkeshelashvili describes—military intimidation, creeping influence, the erosion of sovereignty through gray-zone operations—are not limited to Georgia or Ukraine. They are part of a wider authoritarian strategy, one that stretches across Eurasia to the Indo-Pacific. If the West fails to learn from Georgia, and if it abandons Ukraine to a frozen conflict or a half-peace, it wi...

In an era of shifting geopolitics, Taiwan's position in the Indo-Pacific has grown more precarious and more central. But amidst rising tensions across the Taiwan Strait, a critical strategic question continues to lurk beneath the surface of political discourse: what is the future of the offshore islands of Kinmen and Matsu—and what do their identities reveal about Taiwan’s evolving place in the world? Recent remarks by Kuomintang (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu and Kinmen legislator Chen Yu-jen have reignited this debate. Chu, invoking the July 7th Marco Polo Bridge Incident—the start of China’s eight-year war against Japan—accused President Lai Ching-te of distorting the history of Taiwan’s retrocession to China after World War II. His reference is not only historically misplaced (Taiwan was part of the Japanese empire during that conflict), but also revealing in its deeper implication: the continued invocation of a Greater China narrative in Taiwan’s domestic politics. Chen’s comments ...

When Tsai Ing-wen hired a private chef for her presidential residence in 2016—on her own dime—she was mocked by domestic critics. The opposition Kuomintang (KMT) portrayed the move as indulgent, out-of-touch, even wasteful. They were equally baffled when she adopted several retired guide dogs into the presidential grounds. To the untrained eye, it all looked strange—unnecessary ornamentation for a serious head of state. But in international politics, appearances are rarely accidental. Tsai was crafting something deeper: a soft power strategy that relied on familiarity, warmth, and trust. A UK-educated legal scholar and veteran of international trade negotiations, she understood how to make Taiwan’s cause resonate in Western capitals—not just in policy rooms, but in gardens, dining rooms, and conversations that unfolded with a glass of wine in hand. During her presidency, the official residence quietly transformed into a soft diplomacy stage. State dinners were reimagined as intimate ga...