Knowledge production in the era of neo-liberal globalization: reflections on the changing academic conditions in Taiwan

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Knowledge production in the era of

neo

‐liberal globalization: reflections on the

changing academic conditions in Taiwan

Kuan‐Hsing Chen , Sechin Y.S. Chien & Translated by Tao‐lin Hwang Published online: 06 Aug 2009.

To cite this article: Kuan‐Hsing Chen , Sechin Y.S. Chien & Translated by Tao‐lin Hwang (2009) Knowledge

production in the era of neo‐liberal globalization: reflections on the changing academic conditions in Taiwan, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 10:2, 206-228, DOI: 10.1080/14649370902823363

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Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Volume 10, Number 2, 2009

Knowledge production in the era of neo-liberal globalization:

reflections on the changing academic conditions in Taiwan

1

Kuan-Hsing CHEN and Sechin Y.S. CHIEN (Translated by Tao-lin HWANG)

Taylor and Francis Ltd RIAC_A_382506.sgm 10.1080/14649370902823363 Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 1464-9373 (print)/1469-8447 (online) Original Article 2009 Taylor & Francis 10 2 000000June 2009 Kuan HsingCHEN chenkh@mail.nctu.edu.tw

ABSTRACT This essay is an intervention to interrupt the blind adoption of the Social Science

Cita-tion Index (SSCI) by Taiwan’s academic regime to evaluate scholarly work. Situating the changing local conditions of knowledge production in the larger context of neo-liberal globalization, we trace the trajectory of implementing the new evaluation system and then pinpoint the critical impacts on intellectual work in this wave of ‘internationalizing’ research and publication promoted by the state bureaucracy. We argue for an alternative vision of globalization that is locally grounded, multicul-turally nurturing and democratically driven.

KEYWORDS: knowledge, neo-liberal, globalization, professionalism, academic, SSCI

We now encounter the second fallacy – ranking, or our propensity for ordering complex vari-ation as a gradual ascending scale… But ranking requires a criterion for assigning all indi-viduals to their proper status in the single series. And what better criterion than an objective number?

Numbers suggest, constrain, and refute; they do not, by themselves, specify the content of scientific theories. Theories are built upon the interpretation of numbers, and interpreters are often trapped by their own rhetorics. They believe in their own objectivity, and fail to discern the prejudice that leads them to one interpretation among many consistent with their numbers. (Gould 1984: 26, 74)

Introductory remarks

For several years now, Taiwan’s government and academic leadership have taken a keen interest in erecting various regulations for the whole range of academia, with the aim of strengthening scholarly evaluation systems (including promotion and appointment exten-sion processes for academic employments, review processes of scholarly publications, performance evaluations of universities, etc). As intended, the results of these evaluations, combined with the degrees of internationalization and English use of the evaluees, are to be used in deciding budget appropriation, individual rewards, and ‘phase-out proce-dures’ of university departments. Notwithstanding the good intentions, these stipulations have encountered extensive opposition from all quarters of the academia, as they have been misguided by prejudices, stereotypes, and ignorance, and failed to take into account the undeniable differences among disciplines, the specific conditions of academic ecology in Taiwan, and the intrinsic requirements and external environments of academic devel-opment. Not unexpectedly, the most vociferous objections have come from the junior, newly appointed members of the profession. While needing to constantly prove their qualifications, they must accept being evaluated by rules they have no say in the making; worse, if they happen to work in institutions or universities that are predominantly in the

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Knowledge production in the era of neo-liberal globalization 207

fields of natural sciences and engineering, their evaluations are made according to the criteria commonly used in those fields (e.g., journal articles, as opposed to monographs, are given more weight, and then for articles, those published in foreign journals count more in the scale of scholarly contribution). When subjected to such unfair procedures, these young scholars, being so low on the echelon, have no resort but to abide. But this is not to say that all is well, for among junior teachers and researchers has arisen an

unhealthy attitude of despair and resentment.2_{In view of all this, it is our conviction that,}

for the sake of the orderly development of Taiwan’s academia and providing fair and healthy working conditions for academic workers, the issues of scholarly evaluation must

be thoroughly examined through public discourse,3 with academic workers putting in

their opinions and participating in the decision making. With this purpose in mind, we

have convened this conference,4 intending it to serve as a starting point for more

discus-sions and debates, and hoping that a well-considered consensus will be reached gradually during the process. As Taiwan has come to congratulate itself for having entered the democratic age, it is all the more obligatory for us in the academic world to see to the further realization of the promises of democracy. Surely, at this age and time, the processes and rules of scholarly evaluation can no longer be matters to be dictated by those few in the leadership position; surely, these matters ought to be decided openly by the whole academic community.

And yet, as academic workers, our concerns are not to be confined to the administrative level; we have to go beyond rules and stipulations. As we see it, scholarly evaluation is not merely a matter of academic administration and scholarly quality control; rather, it is linked with the political economy of knowledge production. Only with an understanding of this political economy, by analyzing and elucidating the dynamics of current mode of scholarly production, can we make sense of the rationales of the evaluation measures instituted by the academic administrative system, and the visions supposedly embodied in these policy changes. To address the whole picture in this way is the only meaningful action in the face of endless and petty measures put forth by the system while we do not have recourse to an effective public forum.

Perhaps our troubled thought can be phrased roughly as follows: with the growing trend of globalization, exactly what new challenges and predicaments await the humani-ties and social sciences? From our stance as academic workers, we cannot fail to realize that, in order to begin to address this question, we have to raise the level of discussion, broaden the scope of concern, and historicize the issue. We would maintain that, to make any meaningful examination of scholarly evaluation system, we must deal with the central issue of ‘knowledge production in the era of neo-liberal globalization.’ And it is toward this that we would like to present in this paper some preliminary thoughts for our colleagues’ deliberation.

The subsequent discussion is divided into several parts. In the second section, we will first locate the driving force behind the current wave of reform in scholarly evaluation system; we will then point out the present and potential directions of change swaying the humanities and social sciences. The third section will focus on scholarly evaluation itself, with an emphasis upon the controversies surrounding the issue of T/SSCI. We decide to dwell at length on this subject not merely because it has raised pervasive concern among our academic colleagues; we do so for the further reason that, only by bringing the T/SSCI issue to the fore, can we be able to discern the guiding ideas implicit in the institutionaliza-tion of the new system and its likely long-term effects on scholarship and culture. In the fourth section, we will delineate the momentum of neo-liberal globalization. With this as a framework for discussion, we will offer our thinking about the right way of globalization and internationalization for Taiwan’s scholarship, and we will maintain that, in light of the specific historical and cultural contexts, the process of scholarship internationalization

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208 Kuan-Hsing Chen and Sechin Y.S. Chien

should be multifaceted, without unduly regarding the use of English or the ranking by SSCI as the most important criterion of globalization.

Finally, informed by all this, our perspective in the fifth section will take a broader range. In our concluding remarks we will go beyond Taiwan, cross political and cultural boundaries, and try to make linkage and dialogue with international academic communities operating on various levels. We hope this will serve some purpose in bringing us all together in searching for the possibility of knowledge production under globalizing, post-colonial, multicultural conditions.

We should point out once again that we do not presume to cover all aspects of the issue; in this paper we are more concerned with opening up discussion.

Knowledge production: dynamics and driving forces of changes

The global cold-war structure came quickly into existence after the end of the Second World War. In East Asia, in order to contain the expansion of the socialist camp (North Korea, China, and North Vietnam), the United States decided to extend the capitalist world’s anti-communist defense line and cooperate with the area’s authoritarian military regimes, thereby incorporating Japan, South Korea, Okinawa, and Taiwan into its regional arena of military deployment. The long-lasting Cold-War order, it should be pointed out, reigned not merely in the military and international-political realms; it also shackled the mind by an anti-communist, pro-American ideology, with enduring impacts on our poli-tics, society, and culture, and indelible imprints on our thoughts, bodies, and desires. With regard to the cultural sphere, Taiwan was a unique case among East Asian nations, having had little pre-war cultural contact with the US. Subsequently, however, the relationship with the US would soon become the predominant, if not the only, factor in Taiwan’s deal-ings with foreign countries – and this came as a result of several causes: the establishment of the post-second World War Cold-War order; the continuation of the Chinese civil war; the anti-Japanese, pro-American mind-set of the Nationalist regime; and the foregone conclusion of the separation of the two Koreas. According to the data published by Taiwan’s Ministry of Education, before 1990 80–90% of all persons pursuing advanced education in foreign countries had gone to the US, making up the largest foreign student body in that country for a period of time. The situation has certainly changed lately, but the number of students going to the US for further studies still account for a half of the total. Thus, the majority of Taiwan’s post-war elite had the experience of studying and studying in the US. As a consequence, the American model of democracy with which the elite were inculcated has had a near monopoly on the political imagination in Taiwan: witness the no-holds-barred incursion by Hollywood into the mass-culture market; or take the supposed stronghold of counter-culture, even here all things American have become the order of the day. To put it briefly, in post-war Taiwan, Americanization – or depen-dency on America – has been pervasive and deep-rooted. By the same token and to the same degree, Taiwan’s academic production has been an imitation of the American system. But academic production in American universities has been thoroughly dictated by the Cold-War order and subservient to the national ideology (Chomsky et al. 1997). Once the American way of doing things was put upon the pedestal, then every aspect of the scholarly profession would be just a slavish copying of the American version (or, to be more precise, the paradigm predominant in American universities within the Cold-War regimentation), as in academic standards and institutions, the division of the disciplines, and even the adoption or translation of textbooks. Since the American-educated elite were intellectually imbued with Cold-War ideology, it is no surprise that the anti-communist, pro-American outlook has been so dominant in the knowledge production of Taiwan’s academia.

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By the late 1980s, with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the ensuing collapse of East European socialist regimes, the death knell was sounded for the global Cold-War system which had been in place for almost half a century – that is, as far as its European and American arenas were concerned. Subsequently, a neo-liberal globalizing dynamic, spear-headed by the US, quickly gathered momentum and became the ascendant force, pushing its way relentlessly into those territories that had been off-limits while the Cold War was in full swing, with capital as its driving front and free market its maneuvering field. In short, without the obstacles previously put up by the socialist camp, capitalist globalization was now finally given the go-ahead. Looked at from this perspective, globalization represents a

lulling of the Cold War,5 as formerly segregated regions began to link up with one another.

It is also within the context of this shifting greater environment that the mode of academic production began to undergo tremendous change. If American universities and academic production had been controlled by state ideology during the Cold-War period, beginning after the 1990s, the hegemonic force was instead exerted by the dictate of the global compet-itive market. As Masao Miyoshi, the eminent professor at University of California at San Diego, pointed out in a 2000 article,

Aside from such vicissitudes in specific disciplines, the impact of global corporatization is clearest in the radical change in the general outlook and policy on academic productivity. The University is reexamined in terms of cost and output. Course enrollment, degree production, and Ph.D. placement are closely watched and policed, as if all such figures were industrial statistics. Scholarship is measured by quantified publication and citation record. More importantly, the development office dealing with grants and endowments is one of the most active parts of university. (Miyoshi 2000: 19)

In other words, specialization of an unprecedented degree started to occur within American universities, and the logic behind this development was none other than the unrelenting drive toward privatization and marketization. This being the state of affairs, it could only come to pass that some seemingly objective quantified scales would be proposed for the evaluation of academic performance. The image of the university and its social role also underwent a rapid transformation. For instance, the election of a university president, which has been determined by such factors as academic achievement, vision, and public esteem, is now no different from choosing the CEO of a big corporation. Nowadays, the forte of a university president is the skill to raise funds from the corporate sector; more than that, he or she must have the entrepreneurship to run the university as a moneymaking machine. Once the force of privatization and marketization is at full tilt, with an unfettered global system in place, there will come a day when only those famous brand-name

universi-ties can survive the onslaught.6 We can envision a scenario whereby Harvard University, in

the manner of McDonald’s, is able to establish so many branches across the world by dint of its well-known brand name. Or, we can just look around and see what has already happened: in a gambit for survival some universities from around the world have entered into so-called strategic alliances and engaged in logrolling with their better-known counter-parts – the long-distance cooperation program established between National Singapore University and the MIT being a case in point.

The lately developed countries are not simply being tugged along by the US-steered drive toward neo-liberal marketization; in fact, they have been knowingly imitating and adopting the American model. Under pressure to out-compete one another, countries such as Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, and even China have incorporated academic produc-tion into the calculaproduc-tion of their naproduc-tional competitiveness – which, it goes without saying, means that a system for quantifying and rewarding academic production has already been set up. Thus, for each school and institution, budget allocation and even its likelihood to remain ‘in the market’ are determined according to this system. In order to make the grade

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for global competition, some universities in Taiwan have signed up for various excellence-in-achievement projects to be awarded by the government, hoping to use these projects to

boost their international standings.7_{Alternatively, some universities have opted to combine}

their operations, attempting thereby to gain more weight in the international rating scale.8

With regard to individual researchers and teachers in the humanities and social sciences, evaluation systems pegged to such simplified and quantifiable databases as SSCI, A&HCI, TSSCI, etc, are used for the sake of uniformity and, as it were, safety in numbers. As these fields have been recently unsettled by a general post-colonial paradigm shift, and more specifically by a nativist assertion predicated on the uniqueness of Taiwanese history and society, we would have expected Taiwan’s academia to have carried out extensive debates on these issues and, more importantly, to have gone on to re-examine the relationship between knowledge production in Taiwan and American post-colonialism. But this has not been the case. As things stand, the frenzy for academic internationalization would only lead

to the facile equating of ‘Americanization’ and ‘internationalization.’9

Our discussion so far serves to trace the vector of the dynamic driving the latest wave of change in academic production; it should be clear by now that it has been propelled by forces coming from outside Taiwan, especially the ripple effects of the change in American academic system. This said, there is no denying that post-1990s cross-strait competition has also been an accelerating factor, as pressure was put upon Taiwan while China was

invest-ing enormous resources in key research universities.10 A further question, then, needs to be

addressed: how is the logic of neo-liberal globalization redefining academic production, particularly in relation to the humanities and social sciences? If everything is to be arbi-trated by market, productivity, and profit, the inevitable outcome will be as follows. While previously national universities have been financed by taxpayers’ money and thus able to maintain a relative degree of independence in research and teaching without kowtowing to the command of market, now, subject to the sway of privatization, these same universities will need to rearrange their priorities – as, when deciding what to put on the front burner of academic development, they will have to ponder such questions as which courses are draw-ing the largest numbers of students, which fields and faculty members can brdraw-ing in the

larg-est amounts of funds, etc.11 In a quid pro quo, universities are becoming in effect the R&D

arms of the industrial sector, which in return provides monetary contributions, and this is

one of the ways in which academic production is being redefined.12 Under such

circum-stances, the faculties in the humanities and social sciences are called upon to deliver any manner of goods to the corporate sector: to serve as public or private think tanks or research departments for industry; to do packaging jobs for industry through socio-cultural analysis of market potential; even to subject themselves to the paradigm hegemony of business administration schools. In connection with all this, the long-assumed responsibility of the humanities and social sciences in conducting reflexive/progressive social discourse has been sidestepped. Whether such and similar trends will continue to hold in the future, we

have no ready answer;13 nor do we feel at ease to offer any forecast as to how the academic

world would account for itself if the university is to forfeit its autonomy in humanistic pursuits and become a mere research adjunct to government and industry. In any event, we cannot neglect to call attention to what is happening before our eyes: those academic disci-plines (or sub-fields within discidisci-plines) which are able to rise to the new tasks have readily joined the game; as for those incapable of immediately catching up with the flow, they are doing everything to find a way in. The voicing of critically reflexive thinking – especially with regard to the nationalization and industrialization of knowledge – is deprived of almost every channel and legitimacy. Therefore, without the benefit of in-depth analysis of the matter and with the power of allocating budgets, the government and a small clique of academic leaders are now dictating the way of doing research and teaching, and usurp-ing the right to decide the character and future of the whole academic community.

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This brings us to a series of interrelated questions of similar magnitude: with regard to academic production in the era of neo-liberal globalization, is there any change in the role of the state as the appropriator/distributor of societal resources? Under the circumstances described above, how does the state go through the process of arriving at comprehensive policy decisions? How is the state redefining knowledge production? What are the contents of the state’s policies? What proclamations is it making to the academic workers? Are these policies predicated upon the consensus of the academic community at large? Again, we do not have ready answers to any of these questions; worse, we have yet to encounter any fore-sighted analysis of them. We have been inundated, instead, by a deluge of promulgation and stipulation, with no one being able to clarify the general direction. This same situation has beleaguered Taiwan’s recent education reform, the undertaking of which was enacted without extensive discussion among qualified scholars, with the result that grass-roots teachers are at a loss as to their charge while still having to bear all the onus. More impor-tantly, once these foregone policy decisions are implemented through all sorts of adminis-trative orders, what will be the effects at various levels? One of the more immediate outcomes is unmistakable. In the name of national economic development, the administra-tion will devote huge resources to areas where the three-way cooperaadministra-tion among industry, government, and academia is most effective, and attempt to steer the direction of research by means of various reward mechanisms. Within the framework of the nation-state, it will strive to integrate and dictate knowledge production in universities and research institu-tions; alternately, it will marginalize those spheres of knowledge deemed to be lacking in ‘productivity’ by the industry-government-academia triumvirate.

Oddly enough, though, the subjugation of knowledge production to the logic of the nation-state – or, to put it another way, the commandeering by the state of academic production for the cause of ‘industrial competitiveness’ – is for various reasons at logger-heads with the marketization/internationalization actively promoted by the administration. On second thoughts, this may not be odd at all, for the conflict of purpose is the expected result of a policy-making process without accounting for long-term effects and auxiliary measures. In any event, we are already seeing the impact of the new trend in both research and teaching. With regard to teaching, universities are compelled by the imperative to compete internationally, and for this mandate they are seeking ways to attract and enroll foreign students, to raise English proficiency of the student body, and so forth. The curric-ula of the humanities and social sciences are redesigned to tailor to the needs of foreign students, and, most emphatically, English is to be the medium of teaching. This objective, however, goes against the grain with the nation-state’s apotheosis of its own language. Consider, for instance, the teaching of Taiwanese literature and Taiwanese history, two academic subjects which are all the rage in contemporary Taiwan. We are not in the least certain about the prospect of these subjects being taught in English – at a Taiwanese univer-sity, that is. And we have to wonder: how much curricular material is available in English translation? How many instructors are proficient enough to teach in English? (more to come on the language issue). As for research, the problem is even more complicated. On the one hand, academic research, in the state’s ruling, must be directly addressed to Taiwan’s

specific immediate necessities as entailed by the industry-government-academia complex; on the other, researchers in the humanities and social sciences are required by the need for internationalization to engage with the existing and primarily Euro-American-defined

para-digms, whose parameters are non-specific to Taiwan. In order to publish in the international

forum, many scholars have to adopt the analytic frameworks and attend to the ‘problema-tiques’ prevalent in the Euro-American-dominated international academic arena – a situa-tion at odds with the intensitua-tion of the industry-government-academia complex. Meanwhile, another mode of internationalization is the setting up of cross-national research teams, which presupposes the formation of common concerns. Furthermore, within social sciences,

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such common concerns are usually pursued in the manner of comparative studies. As is to be expected, for any cross-national research team to be harnessed by Taiwan’s own inter-ests, a large amount of resource has to be expended to attract foreign scholars to join the team. This, once again, goes beyond the legitimate undertaking of the nation-state; in any case, academic research should not be subsumed under the rubric of the industry-govern-ment-academia complex to begin with.

With the rapid ascendancy of this complex, the long-lasting effect for the humanities and social science is abundantly clear: ‘research and development’ and ‘policy relevance’ are upheld as the primary objectives for academic production. At present we do not know for sure whether this trend will become more entrenched so as to deprive the humanities and social sciences their autonomy, or even to strangle the free spirit of academic production itself. But worry we do, as any sensible person should. And no one can fail to ask: are the criticalness and reflexiveness of the humanities and social sciences, two of their most valuable aspects, to be so easily sacrificed in the name of globalized academic production?

The effects of current evaluation systems

In our framework of analysis, we see the system of academic evaluation as a mechanism for raising and managing the competitiveness of academic production under the regime of neo-liberal globalization. As practiced in Taiwan, academic evaluation has been executed on several levels:

(1) comprehensive evaluations of the universities and separate evaluations of their component units;

(2) evaluations of the various disciplines and academic fields;

(3) evaluations of the performances of individual scholars, which are in turn hinged upon – (4) evaluations of scholarly journals.

Our discussion here will focus on the last two, particularly with reference to recent controversies in the aftermath of the implementation of SSCI- and TSSCI-based criteria.

As far as we can determine from documents available to us, the consensus to institute an SSCI-based evaluation system was probably reached at the 1999 National Conference on the Humanities and Social Sciences. In his paper ‘The Nation-wide Evaluations of Research

and Teaching in the Humanities and Social Sciences,’ Professor Cheng-Sheng Tu,14_{who had}

played a pivotal role throughout the conference, incorporated the opinions from various fields and arrived at the following general points:

In light of all sorts of assessments, commentaries, and scholars’ public or private statements, we are led to conclude that within the humanities and social sciences there is a prevalent call for periodical evaluations of research and teaching performance – with the proviso that objective criteria must be used for the sake of credibility. This is just for a starter. Secondly, personnel training for academic research and higher education, especially at the graduate school level, should attain a high degree of compatibility; accordingly, research institutions and graduate schools should be brought under a highly coordinated and mutually enhanc-ing partnership. Thirdly, most of the above-mentioned assessments and commentaries are of the opinion that the familiar division of academic fields has out-lasted its purpose, and new exigencies require an urgent academic reorganization toward interdisciplinary integration and the promotion of foreseeing and innovative research fields. With respect to the ecology of the humanities and social sciences, I would like to point out a pervasive phenomenon: We have been all too eager to follow western theories while neglecting to delve into the intellec-tual basis of the making of those theories; over a long period, the intellecintellec-tual scope of our humanities and social sciences has been too restricted, too localized, lacking an ecumenical or ‘imperial’ outlook. (Tu 1999: 102)15

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On the basis of these observations, Tu proceeded to suggest some concrete measures of evaluation. In his view, some scales should be established for rating periodicals and mono-graphs, with the aim of assuring some of these publications to be included in SSCI and A&HCI. Currently, scholarly writings are divided into three major categories: journal arti-cles, books and monographs, and conference papers. Each academic field may have its own way of assigning different weights to these types of publication, but in light of the prevalent tendency, journal articles should be given primary consideration in academic assessment. The rationale, according to Tu, is as follows: most of the well-regarded journals have already put in place some sort of refereeing system, though there may be varying degrees in adhering to the rules; in Taiwan’s present publishing practice, there is still no commonly agreed procedure for determining the worthiness of books and monographs; as for confer-ence papers, they should be given the least weight in evaluation, since conferconfer-ences, either in Taiwan or abroad, are so routine and unexceptional. Thus, with this three-tier rating grada-tion, we will have a less equivocal way for ordering the academic world (Tu 1999: 103).

Because there is no refereeing system for the publication of books and monographs, it is consequently decided that journal articles are more worthy of consideration. With reference to academic periodicals, Tu continued to point out:

In hope of attaining some degrees of internationalization, many periodicals in the humani-ties and social sciences have recently shown eagerness to be included in the compilation of SSCI. This is commendable. Nevertheless, [SSCI] is mainly concerned with publications in English. Given this, our crucial task is to follow its example and set up a Chinese-based Humanities and Social Sciences Citation Index, or one Index each for the humanities and for the social sciences. (Tu 1999: 104)

And so, crucial steps toward establishing TSSCI were initiated. Since Tu’s suggestions mostly touch upon: (1) the exclusion of books and monographs from evaluation consider-ation; and (2) the rating of periodicals, we will accordingly discuss these two issues in detail.

(1) It is undeniable that, under the prevailing trend of neo-liberal globalization, publication of scholarly books and monographs has been on a downslide as a result of rapid marketization. Furthermore, we are obliged to point out that the so-called consensus regarding the superiority of periodical articles over books and monographs is a mere reflection or even a direct consequence of this circumstance; as such, it has nothing to do with the supposed effectiveness of refereeing mechanism. Looking at the matter in a worldwide perspective, we can see that the essential criteria for publishing scholarly books and monographs have been their theoretical merit and research quality. Among the significant works in the humanities and social sciences which have made long-last-ing worldwide impact, an overwhelmlong-last-ing proportion were published in the format of book or monograph. Within the new order of neo-liberal globalization, however, the main consideration for book and monograph publication is not strictly their scholarly value, but rather their marketability. In contrast, the impetus for journal publishing has resulted from the favorable condition that these publications are mostly purchased by libraries through pre-paid subscriptions, thereby reducing investment risks and raising profit margins for the publishers. The idea that in the humanities and social sciences journal articles should carry more weight than books and monographs, then, is basically an entailment of the logic of market. But the fact is that, even in today’s much-expanded global arena for scholarly enterprise, books and monographs still retain their signifi-cance as the media of academic discourse. A few cases in point: scholars still prefer to use these formats for systematically presenting their research results; these formats are deemed necessary for more comprehensive treatments of scholarly issues; and rarely have members of the academia themselves dared to denigrate the value of these types of

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publication. Or, to give a more concrete example: at many top-notch universities across the world, the publication of a book or monograph is still considered the threshold requirement for the associate professorship. All these more fundamental considerations are not included in Tu’s calculation; instead, the worthiness of books and monographs is depreciated simply for the absence of an objective refereeing mechanism – a reason-ing that is hardly convincreason-ing. As a matter of fact, an effective, if informal, system of evaluation has always been in existence, whereby the scholarly quality of a book or monograph is inevitably subjected to the assessment by relevant academic circle. For instance, since the establishment of the Chinese Republic there must have been a stag-gering number of books and monographs published in the field of history, and regard-ing this we are led to ask: even if all these works have not gone through any refereeregard-ing processes, could historians have failed to separate the wheat from the chaff among them? Given that Taiwan has yet to set up a better-designed, more objective evaluation system with quantitative measurement, it is all the more urgent to take steps in this direction. Regrettably, as we try to show here, the conclusion reached by Tu is a non-sequitur: namely, to resign oneself to existing circumstances, to belittle the importance

of books and monographs.16

(2) As to the assessment of the setting up of periodical citation index, we will leave it to our colleagues for a more detailed account. Here, our discussion will concentrate on analyz-ing the external effects, without goanalyz-ing into the internal intricacies of its workanalyz-ing. For a starter, the service provided by the American company Thomson ISI only covers publi-cations in English, excluding other important international languages such as Spanish, Chinese, Malayan, Arabic, and French – let alone national languages like German, Japanese, Korean, etc. Resorting to an expedient while unable to institute better quanti-tative criteria, the academic administrations in lately developed countries have adopted SSCI and A&HCI as ready references. Understandable though this may be, we have nevertheless to urge the academic community to seriously consider the ill effects of such a lopsided approach in dealing with the matter. Specifically, the purpose of Thomson ISI’s indexing system is to provide service; as such, its inclusion or exclusion of any periodical does not hinge upon its scholarly merits. As a matter of fact, even within the United States itself, where the ISI is compiled and marketed, the academic community has not chosen to use publishing in the periodicals covered by SSCI and A&HCI as the sole criterion for evaluating scholarly achievement – at most, the frequency of citation may be considered an indirect indication of the perceived significance of a piece of research. Obviously enough, the international reach of these indices and therefore their general applicability are all too limited, since they cover only a relatively small number of English periodicals, unable to even begin to show the cross-references among publi-cations in non-English languages. Suffice it to give a case in point here. Suppose a paper has been written in Chinese, translated into Japanese and Korean, published in notable Japanese and Korean periodicals, and widely cited: now, surely this paper won’t be covered by the above indexing systems, whose international significance is thus severely restricted. Meanwhile, as we cannot fail to notice, researchers in many disci-plines of the humanities and social sciences are encouraged to publish their papers in non-English periodicals. If, say, an American, Japanese, or Korean scholar specializing in Chinese thoughts can write in Chinese and have his or her research results published in related periodicals in China or Taiwan, surely this will be praised as an exemplary endeavor in internationalization. But this worthy trend will not obtain within the context of Taiwan’s current academic administrative guidelines. Even though there are a significant number of Taiwanese scholars who have done advanced studies in Japan and are capable of writing in Japanese, they are not sufficiently motivated to do so; rather, they are effectively forced to depreciate their language specialty and to publish

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in English periodicals covered by SSCI, which are regarded as the only legitimate media for internationalized scholarship.

Broadly speaking, an SSCI-determined evaluation system will bring about the following unintended adverse consequences.

(1) It will lead to the wholesale assertion that publishing in English counts more than in Chinese or other languages. In thrall to the dictates of career security and advancement, (junior) scholars are driven to publish as much as possible in English, instead of

present-ing their research results in local Chinese publications17 or other influential non-English

periodicals. Now, to be realistic, we must beg to differ from the idea that publishing in ISI-referenced periodicals amounts to an indication of national strength in scholarly performance. It is a simplistic equation; further, it gravely encroaches upon the autonomy of academic development, and it nips in the bud the incipient trend toward multifaceted internationalization. As it happens, not a negligible portion of Taiwan’s (government-financed) overseas-educated scholars have been trained in non-English-speaking countries; if nothing else, this diversity in academic training should be treasured as an important asset in any nation’s attempt at cultural pluralization. Regret-tably, these scholars are treated unfairly under the present system with its undue emphasis on English publications. In the long run, if this situation does not get redressed, it may discourage young scholars from seeking advanced trainings in non-English-speaking countries, which can only be a serious setback in the development toward academic pluralism in Taiwan.

(2) Given the inducement to publish in English journals, it can be expected that research projects addressing locally significant issues will be put on the back burner. It is requi-site for most research ‘problematiques’ in the humanities and social sciences to be framed with clear and direct reference to a history-specific context; it is also inevitable that, while local scholars are driven to present their publications in the so-called global arena, this concern for local context is either dismissed outright or given inadequate consideration. In the mean time, if the likelihood of getting published comes to hinge upon the necessity of doing research within a theoretical framework and presenting findings in a language familiar to the English world, then the concern for social, politi-cal, cultural, and historical contexts in the humanities and social sciences will gradually wear thin, and research in these fields will eventually become as monolithic as that in natural sciences. This, ironically, goes against the current global trend of academic plurality and diversity.

(3) The evaluation mechanism based on SSCI and A&HCI has the further effect of creating within the academic community a new hierarchy determined by non-academic

crite-ria.18 Those able to write in English and get published in ISI-covered periodicals are

deemed an echelon higher than those using their own local language – and yet, nobody has managed to explain why these English publications, by dint of being presented in English and not necessarily as a result of their scholarly quality and actual merit, should confer upon their authors a ‘higher’ status. This is a snub to locally trained scholars, particularly those in the humanities. Even if we are to accept English as the primary language of scholarly communication, there should be all sorts of accompanying measures. In the case of departments of Chinese literature, for example, the faculties must include enough members who can use English in teaching and supervising, and the state has to provide massive funds for all textbooks used by these departments to be translated into high-quality English. In another scenario, we may as well dismantle all master’s and doctorate programs in the humanities and social sciences, sending our future scholars to English-speaking countries to be trained for higher degrees. And why not, if we really want to follow the logic of English

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supremacy? What is the point of having our own graduate programs, if they are just a waste of time? But all this is absurd. Sadly, we have to resort to this ludicrousness just to remind those in charge of academic administration the silliness of the whole scheme they are setting up. Their priority is utterly misplaced; its grave consequence will be the ruination of what has been achieved by Taiwan’s academic community over a long time. Their idea of the supremacy of English is untenable; any policy based on this misconception will lead to the erosion of what Taiwan has accomplished in higher education and research since the end of the Second World War. It is not for nothing that we have endeavored to use Chinese to train our higher-level researchers; now that we have done this, why are we going to require these same people to write in English, to compete with Taiwanese scholars trained in English-speaking countries and scholars from those countries? We can only see any such action as self-belittling, as a slap in the face to locally trained higher-level researchers.

(4) To deal with the problems caused by this ill-conceived design to give English language the top place under the sun, TSSCI (Taiwan Social Science Citation Index) was estab-lished as a specific remedy. In practice, however, TSSCI has become something quite different from what was originally proposed by Cheng-Sheng Tu. While Tu has called

for an indexing system based on publications in Chinese, the scope of TSSCI has been

restricted to the single locality of Taiwan, thus excluding those covered by Mainland China’s CSSCI (Chinese Social Science Citation Index). Most incredibly, TSSCI has been used in such a questionable manner as to defeat its original purpose as a citation index; to all intents, it has become just a grading system for Taiwan’s scholarly journals. As there is a grading system for journals, so there inevitably follows a corresponding grading system for journal articles: once a journal is given the TSSCI treatment, then all articles published in it are mysteriously ‘midasized,’ as it were. These articles are given higher ‘scholarly value,’ a value assigned with a grade point. But is there a way to grade journals? Technically feasible, perhaps. Still, if we want to get into the business of grading journals, we ought to give the last say to those most directly involved, that is, the scholars in various fields and specialties, who already have a consensus regarding the quality of the journals in their domains. But this is not what has come to pass; instead, the privilege to make scholarly judgment has been usurped by an administra-tive regime, whose purpose is to rate and discipline academic work, doing this by resorting to a formalistic quantitative scale that has largely to do with certain aspects of the editorial procedures of the journals involved. As a matter of fact, the flaw of the current grading system for journals goes beyond this formalistic rationality; it has the further pernicious effect of leading to ruthless infighting within the academic commu-nity. The scholars entrusted with the authority to do the rating usually belong to the top brass of the academic apparat. Ensconced in the citadel of power and prestige, they have vested interests to tend to. They are in favor of the prevalent viewpoints of their respective fields; with self-serving prejudice, they denigrate non-mainstream academic pursuits, make little of journals committed to interdisciplinary integration, and exercise their influence to stifle the growth of innovative, new-fledged critical journals. Yet these publications, it should be kept in mind, are often the spearheads of scholarly paradigm shifts; they provide the incentive for interdisciplinary dialog and bring about mutual fertilization across academic boundaries.

(5) Finally, the present TSSCI-based evaluation system has a seriously detrimental effect on the advancement of interdisciplinary research. It was at the same previously mentioned 1999 National Conference on the Humanities and Social Sciences convened by the National Science Council that Cheng-Sheng Tu assured us of the confirmed commit-ment to promote interdisciplinary integration and innovative subfields – a decision, Tu also assured us, congruent with the conclusions of pre-conference meetings and in

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agreement with the general attitude of the academic community. To quote Tu’s statement on that occasion: ‘On the whole the above assessments and reviews maintain that the customary division of academic fields has lost its usefulness in relation to new demands. Therefore, they emphatically call for interdisciplinary integration and the establishment of trailblazing, innovative fields’ (Tu 1999: 102). In an attempt to encour-age cross-disciplinary research, the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences of the National Science Council set up such academic subfields as gender studies, religion studies, and culture studies; subsequently, the Research Center for Social Sciences and the Research Center for Humanities were established, all seemingly intended to keep in step with the general international trend toward multidisciplinary integration. But good intention does not automatically translate into sound practice. In practice, as evident in the evaluation of research projects and journals, what happens is the overly self-protective entrenchment of the traditional academic fields, making it impossible for any multi-disciplinary field to come into its own; furthermore, the absorbed, self-aggrandizing propensity of each and every long-standing field has effectively suppressed interdisciplinary knowledge production. To reiterate our misgivings about TSSCI, as long as the various academic fields are dictated by partisan politics, which will see to it that only the more conventional journals are included in the TSSCI data-base, then those adventurous, non-conformist journals without an ‘academic rampart’ will rarely be recognized as publications worthy of indexing.

All the problems described above have long been widely known in the academic commu-nity, but we have yet to hear any clarification or refutation from the agencies responsible for the administration of TSSCI (the National Science Council’s Department of Humanities and Social Sciences and Research Center for Social Sciences). In frustration, we are reduced to asking these rhetorical questions: is it a democratic way to serve the academic community when the same community’s skepticism and questioning are disregarded? Has the so-called academic autonomy come to mean that the arbitrary measures prescribed by the adminis-trative leadership must be complied with, whereas the voice of the rank and file can be ignored? While we are reading in newspapers and journals a lot of dissenting opinions regarding SSCI-related issues, is it too much to expect the involved policy makers and administrators to come forward and give an account of their reasoning and action? But what have we actually got from them, if not just a show of disdain and ineptitude? We are virtually in thrall to an academic leadership that is arrogant and imperious in exercising its self-claimed authority but will not deign to engage in open discussion with the general community when its policies are questioned. A leadership so nonchalant about democratic procedure, so lacking in academic vision, and so incapable of public discourse – does it deserve any laurel from the grove of Academe?

These questions regarding the indexing system may appear to pertain only to issues of technicality, but in fact all of them can be subsumed under a fundamental inquiry: are we living in a monolithic, English-dominated neocolonial world, or are we living in a culturally pluralistic, diversity-affirmative postcolonial one? Is globalization nothing but American-ization, a ruthless process to eradicate and consign to oblivion all non-English-speaking cultures? This is not just an urgent question of the normative sort; in many real-life situa-tions it is also a cultural-political question concerning one’s self-definition. Chinese is indeed an international language: it is not only used in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macao, it is also used in Singapore, Malaysia, and in the populous Chinese communities in the Americas, Europe, and Africa. Just because the indexing operation of an American company (ISI) fails to include publications in Chinese, must we then take it that Chinese does not qualify as an international language, and that the interactions among Chinese-speaking communities does not count as internationalization? Many Chinese scholars

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staying on in the English-speaking world, especially those in the fields of history and the humanities, have chosen to continue writing in Chinese, because they have come to the real-ization that only in the Chinese-speaking world can their views and ideas acquire an imme-diate relevance and attract a wide readership, while writing in English will not broadcast

their words beyond a tiny group of professionals.19 Here we must stress that granting

supremacy to the English language, as intended by Taiwan’s current academic regulations, is untenable; worse, it is inexcusable, for it is a denial of Chinese as an international language, a false and self-belittling confession of inferiority. As far as we can tell from global trends, Chinese is in no danger of disappearing from the earth; on the contrary, all indications augur for its increasing importance as a world language. We do not in any way object to scholars writing in whatever foreign language of their choice, but we must take exception to the manner in which Chinese is denigrated by Taiwan’s academic regime.

We bring the above discussion to a conclusion with three major observations.

(1) ISI is first and foremost a commercial operation without academic authority, but its indexing system has been adopted by Taiwan’s academic bureaucracy and used as the litmus test for scholarly performance. However weird this may be, there is a simple reason for it: namely, the academic bureaucracy is mostly controlled by scholars in the natural and engineering sciences. Given their trainings in these fields, they tend to see all academic issues and research strategies as having to conform to a universal frame-work; they believe that all scholarly discussion can be presented in simple English, and consequently all researchers should be able to publish papers in that medium; finally, they are led blindly to accept the authority of ISI’s indexing system, using it as the yardstick for scholarly evaluation. What disturbs us most is that all this will deliver an unprecedented threat to non-English academic enterprise, thereby obliterating the cultural diversity so emphatically called for by the new global order.

(2) We absolutely agree that, for the sake of academic advancement, there should be a mechanism for evaluating scholarly performance. But we also maintain that, with regard to the matter of evaluation criteria, the consensus formed over time within each separate field must be respected. In some fields, for instance, monographs are given more weight than journal articles. Periodicals of different stripes are variously appraised by different fields and specialists, a situation much more complicated than that resulting from the heavy-handed standardization by means of SSCI or TSSCI. In other words, we should not attempt to apply a single yardstick to all fields, for this will not only deal a deathblow to academic development, but more generally destroy the necessary diversity of any knowledge system. In our view, the purpose of TSSCI resides in the service it provides as a database to the academic community. To the extent that this goal is to be achieved, as many academically worthy journals as possible should be included in the TSSCI database; nevertheless, it should not be linked to any mechanism for grading journals. In addition, the grading of journals should offer incentives to the independent publication of non-institutional, trailblazing journals, so as to invigorate Taiwan’s academia.

(3) In this age of neo-liberal globalization, the academic apparatus and practice of the United States are not transferable to all places; more specifically, its sheer size and enor-mous resource are far beyond what we in Taiwan can manage to attain and obtain. Taiwan’s academic community, just like those of all other areas and countries, must have a clear sense of its asset and potential, and accordingly embark on its own journey and develop its distinctiveness – only by doing so can we earn respect from the interna-tional community. Even if we want to adopt the American system, the proper way of doing it is to first cultivate in Taiwan an environment conducive to the development of that system, instead of making a direct transplant. And then we have to recognize that

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there are many languages and knowledge traditions outside of the English-speaking world that deserve our great attention. A world left with one single language of English and one single academic tradition is one devoid of vitality, one deprived of creativity. More importantly, we need not and must not denigrate ourselves – Chinese has come down to us as a heritage through a long line and by all means it is an important interna-tional language.

An alternative vision of Taiwan’s academic internationalization in the context of globalization

If it can be said that the objective force of neo-liberal globalization has been the impetus to Taiwan’s recent push for a new kind of knowledge production, and that the subjective eagerness for academic globalization and internationalization has led to the subsequently instituted system of academic evaluation, then we must point out that so far these tasks have been done in such a manner as to ridicule the true intents of globalization and interna-tionalization. Here is our general position: in no way do we object to the internationaliza-tion of Taiwan’s academic enterprise; we would wholeheartedly pitch for it as a way to open up our hitherto relatively restricted academic vista. Having said this, we want to emphasize that any program for internationalization should be based on a clear-headed assessment of Taiwan’s internal reality.

We do think that the overall trend of ‘de-linking with Asia/joining up with America’ in post-Second World War Taiwan has left long-term historical impacts. In the spheres of politics and culture, the force of these impacts has been tremendous for a long time; in knowledge production, it has not been much different. Total Americanization has endan-gered the continuing existence of a locally fostered historical consciousness; in the mean time, because of the dearth of reflective examination of the goings-on, Taiwan has muddled through its ‘de-linking with Asia/joining up with America’ in a manner that is absent of critical assessment, injurious to subjective integrity, and contrary to the striving for the enhancement of local tradition. But all this is not what should have been; rather, it has come about as a consequence of the incompleteness of de-colonization, de-Cold War, and de-imperialization. It can be a different picture if these processes continue to move forward.

In this sense, to rebuild a subjectivity with critical consciousness in Taiwan does not mean a simple de-Americanization and ‘returning to Asia.’ Fifty years’ Americanization is not necessarily a wrongly imposed burden; it can be transformed into an asset, with the precondition that we need to develop a subjectivity with critical consciousness to offset the obsessive dependence on the US as the single reference model. We have to return to the fold of Asia in order to reappraise the place in objective history where Taiwan’s subjectivity is located, and clarify all the issues neglected in the historical process. Only by doing so can

we deal with our historical legacy with a highly critical self-consciousness.20

We maintain that Taiwan’s academic production must be examined within the broader context of Taiwan’s geography and history; hence, before imagining any vision of globaliza-tion and internaglobaliza-tionalizaglobaliza-tion of Taiwan’s academic producglobaliza-tion, it is necessary to make clear the basic historical context within which Taiwan is located. In comparison with the

Taiwan-centric discourse, wherein Taiwan is considered as the center of the world,21 a more realistic

– historically, geographically, and global-structurally – approach is to see Taiwan’s subjec-tive location as a nodal point: essentially at the conjuncture of several overlapping, mutually influencing networks of life; that is to say, as an imaginative entity in geographi-cal-historical space, Taiwan is situated at the meeting point of several different networks. We now proceed to give a brief account of these networks. The order in which they are listed below is not meant to reflect their priority, as these are interlocking networks.

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(1) Taiwan itself as a spatial entity. Taiwan, as a geographical space with historical depth, has been from the beginning a complex entity closely linked to and impacted by all the networks we are examining here; throughout the whole period of modern history, it has never existed in shut-in isolation. During a certain historical period, one of the networks may have had more impact than the others, but none of them have completely lost its influence on Taiwan. Indeed, the diversity accumulated as a result of the interplaying of networks has come to constitute the modernity of Taiwan’s subjectivity. Taiwan’s heter-ogeneous subjectivity is a complex historical legacy, and just because we are currently captivated by some contradictions in the political arena, does not mean that in any way can it be comprehended within the simplistic framework of ethnic binarism/five major ethnic groups, or considered in the restricted context of China–Taiwan antagonism. To recognize the multifarious diversity, to refuse to regard Taiwan as a shut-in entity: this is the sine qua non of rebuilding subjectivity.

(2) Cross-strait relationship. When it was ceded to Japan after the 1895 Sino-Japanese war, Taiwan became China’s first and only territory to be ruled by a foreign colonial

power.22 Taiwan was returned to China in 1945 after the defeat of Japan, but before

long it was separated from China again as a result of the civil war on the mainland and the subsequent retreat to Taiwan of the Kuomintang (Nationalist) government. Thus, Taiwan and China have been separated in effect for over 100 years. Since the end of the Second World War, the Kuomintang regime’s total anti-communist, pro-American stance has nurtured among the people of Taiwan an ingrained animosity towards China/communists. Because of this, cross-strait relations will be normalized if the anti-communist, pro-American ideology left over from the Cold-War period continues to have any sway. Cross-strait relationship is doubtless the primary contradiction in the present political situation of Taiwan, and the non-governmental and academic interac-tions between the two sides are to a great degree contingent upon changes in political situation. On the other hand, we may unfetter ourselves and take a broader view of the matter. As it happens, post-reformation China has become a strong magnetic field, attracting attention from all over the world. There seems no justification for Taiwan’s academic community to absent itself from this newly significant partnership with China; more positively, the Chinese-speaking academic world should strive for inde-pendence from the politico-economic forces, break through the shackles of the existing politico-economic circumstances, and develop a more autonomous, broader academic space.

(3) The international Chinese-speaking communities. The subjectivity of Taiwan, as popularly conceived, has a self-restricting tendency, often obliterating the consciousness that Chinese is an international language. In emphasizing here the existence of the interna-tional Chinese-speaking community, one of our aims is to call attention to and even challenge this ideology, which in our view has led to a narrow conceptualization of the networks within which Taiwan’s self-defined position should have been situated.

The network of the international Chinese-speaking communities has a scope far larger than the politically envisioned entity consisting of China and Taiwan, or one consisting of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. While these two are historically valid entities, both China and Taiwan have to make an effort to acknowledge Chinese as an international language, and cease to take the egocentric position that those in the Chinese communities of Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia are seen as ‘our people

abroad’ (overseas Chinese).23_{The people of Chinese descent in Singapore, Malaysia,}

Indonesia, etc, have acquired their own nationalities and undergone quite different historical experiences, they could have served as important reference points in the construction of identity in China and Taiwan – but this has not happened. Some of these ethnic Chinese communities have had deep-rooted relations with Taiwan, as in

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the case of the Malaysian Chinese: throughout the whole Cold-War period they were not permitted to establish their own universities and not allowed to go to Communist China for advanced studies; therefore, most of the Malaysian Chinese with higher degrees were trained in Taiwan, and Taiwan was an important reference point for their thinking and culture. There has been, however, no reversed influence; regrettably, the historical experience of the Malaysian Chinese has not become a significant part of Taiwan’s reference framework and cultural resource. But certainly an understanding of the Malaysian Chinese experience will enhance our awareness of our own situation and problems.

Furthermore, the international Chinese communities go beyond the boundaries of the nation-state and ethnic identity; or, to put it another way, Chinese is not the exclu-sive possession of the Chinese. In South Korea, for instance, departments of Chinese are of great importance in the universities; most of the scholars now occupying influential positions in these departments have received their higher academic degrees in Taiwan,

and some of them now still write their papers in Chinese.24_{Since the 1990s, with the}

relaxation of the Cold War and the rising influence of China, Korean scholars in depart-ments of Chinese have gone to China for further studies, and Koreans learning Chinese have increased apace, making Chinese the second most popular foreign language after English.

Besides these examples, there are Chinese-using populations and communities all over the world. The existence of this axis of common language is an objective fact; a lot of connections are brought into being along this axis, and it far exceeds the geographical imagining of the economic sphere of ‘Greater China.’

(4) The Asian regions. In terms of historical and geographical relationships, Taiwan has never been external to Asia; indeed, it has occupied a very important nodal point, link-ing up Northeast and Southeast Asia. Especially since the 1990s, the Asian connection has been an inescapable feature of life in Taiwan. The so-called foreign (nationalized) brides, alien workers, and healthcare givers have all become important fixtures in daily life. It is not happenstance that these predominantly Southeast Asian women and laborers have come to Taiwan. If, in this supposedly globalized age, Taiwan’s foreign labor is still supplied by its neighboring areas, then it goes to demonstrate that there are simultaneously strong regional forces within the overall globalization. As a matter of

fact, in the irreversible general trend toward globalization,25 regional integration has

served as a very significant linkage. The European Union, the ASEAN Plus Three, the Latin-American Integration Association, the African Union, etc, can all be regarded as the products of globalization. In other words, regional integration is an inevitable move-ment; Taiwan has not only to realize this inevitability, but also to participate actively in the process of Asian integration. To this extent, we must rethink the cross-strait relation-ship, and do so by ridding the old unification-versus-independence imagining and adopting the vision of Asian integration. In particular, as a measure to thwart American over-aggressiveness and maintain world peace within the new post-9/11 global order, regional integration has been a concerted effort in all parts of the world. Of course, our region cannot be an exception.

(5) The global arena. By ‘global’ we certainly do not mean just the United State. Although North America has been the major force behind the current wave of neo-liberal global-ization, there is no denying that all the above-mentioned international Chinese-speaking communities and Asian regions have also been significant fields of globalizing opera-tions. Surely Taiwan developed relations with Europe, Latin America, and Africa after World War Two, but these have been less significant, and they have less often entered into our vista. In the strict sense of academic production, the ‘de-linking with Asia/join-ing up with America’ of post-Second World War Taiwan may appear to have provided

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us a shortcut to the process of globalization. But since this globalization has been defined in the context of a unilateral relationship with the US, without acknowledging the multilateral nature of true globalization, we have in effect become the academic vassals of America. In short, we have lost our autonomy and forfeited the opportunities of making new quests. It will be more advisable for Taiwan to go along with the regional forces of globalization, and insert itself in the international Chinese-speaking communi-ties and Asian regions in its pursuit of academic internationalization.

We must stress once more that the various networks described above are inter-refer-ring, dynamic and mutually influencing, multi-level and multi-dimensional spatial networks. In actual historical process, none of them has operated in isolation. So far as the subjectivity of Taiwan resides in these objectively existing networks, the direction of Taiwan’s academic internationalization and globalization – even the development of insti-tutional structures for academic evaluation and knowledge production – should be deter-mined with serious attention to these networks. In fact, the networks of cross-strait interactions, international Chinese-speaking communities, and Asian regions all provide routes and channels for globalization.

Once it is realized that Taiwan’s subjectivity is indeed located at the intersection of the globalizing forces coming from these objectively existing networks, what insight do we gain from this realization about the direction of Taiwan’s academic internationalization and globalization?

(1) Taiwan’s academia must position itself within the Chinese-speaking world, recognize the existence and importance of the various Chinese communities, and actively get involved with them. It is our blessing that we are familiar with a language that is international, that with Chinese we can participate in the process of internationalization and globalization. Therefore, those of us in academia who can write in Chinese should treasure this capability, and use Chinese as both an obligatory and a convenient medium in all sorts of contexts related to the Chinese-speaking communities. If scholars in social sciences insist that TSSCI is helpful to academic advancement, then it is all the more important for us to be broad-minded and to incorporate CSSCI into our indexing system without fear of losing our status, so as to encourage our colleagues to reach beyond the boundaries of Taiwan. At the same time, the academic journals of Taiwan must strive to become significant international Chinese-language journals by offering their space to Chinese-writing scholars from around the world.

(2) Taiwan must consciously position/re-position itself within Asia to become one of its members. In Korea, Japan, Singapore, etc, there is no hesitation about this assertion of

geographical allegiance,26 and Taiwan should be even more assertive, if anything. These

places, Taiwan included, can only enter the global arena by simultaneously returning to the fold of Asia. The vigorousness of Taiwan’s subjectivity and the guarantee for Taiwan’s future hinge exactly on this. Therefore, we are in much agreement with Profes-sor Yun-Han Chu’s proposal, made at the 1999 National Conference on the Humanities and Social Sciences, that ‘Taiwan cannot exclude itself from the configuration of East Asia’s historical development,’ because ‘for all East Asian countries the greatest chal-lenge in social development of the 21st century is to find and maintain the subjectivities of the development of their societies under the impact of globalization’ (Chu 1999: 56). Taiwan must strengthen its exchange and cooperation with East Asian academic communities; new channels for academic interaction across the strait are worth explor-ing, with the aim of inserting both Taiwan and China into the East Asian world.

(3) Globalization is not to be simplistically equated with the use of English or Americaniza-tion; even more emphatically, it cannot be reduced to the institutionalization of SSCI or A&HCI. The academic community of Taiwan ought to encourage its members to make