Current Issue
Vol.68 No. 4
December, 2025
Soft Spatial Rupture and Urban Identity: Cross-Border Migration among Taiwanese Youth in Shanghai
Ke Zhang
In recent years, cross-border migration to global cities in emerging economies has become an important phenomenon in global migration patterns. Although existing research has examined its macro-political and economic context, the everyday practices, cultural experiences, and urban identity of migrants in destination spaces remain underexplored. This paper focuses on Taiwanese youth who are long-term residents of Shanghai, revealing how the city attracts them through its symbolic capital, cultural resources, and experiences of modernity. Drawing on a middle-range theoretical approach, the study proposes a“city–media–migrant”analytical framework and introduces the concept of“spatial soft rupture,”arguing that migration is sometimes not a radical, one-way break but rather a gentle, interwoven process of reconstruction involving cultural identity, spatial practices, and symbolic order.
The findings indicate that, compared to traditional migration narratives emphasizing economic motivations, Taiwanese youth in Shanghai prioritize comprehensive benefits and tend to choose cities with long-term opportunity structures and potential for global capital conversion. The research further suggests that, as a global city, Shanghai’s pace, cultural atmosphere, and diverse lifestyles enable migrants to gradually reshape their identities through the localization of global lifestyles. This process strengthens their sense of urban belonging and symbolic identification; the combined experiences of modernity and cosmopolitanism serve as significant attractions. Moreover, migrants are not merely passive subjects under structural forces but active agents equipped with risk-avoidance strategies and cultural selection tactics
This paper expands the theoretical perspective on cross-border migration to central cities in developing countries and regions and provides empirical support for understanding the interaction between youth migration and urban identity. From a regional studies standpoint, it not only analyzes the migration experiences of Taiwanese youth but also, in the current context of stagnating cross-strait academic exchanges, responds to real-world divides through empirical research, offering a cross-boundary endeavor that transcends institutional and epistemic barriers.
Keywords:Soft Spatial Rupture, Cosmopolitan, Urban Identity, Taiwanese Youth, Cross-border Migration
Understanding the CCP’s United Front Logic from the Perspective of “Diaspora Community”: An Analysis of Kinmen
Pin-hsuan Wu
This paper adopts the concept of the “diaspora community,” integrating a dual framework of cultural and political identity to analyze the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) classification of united front targets. Using Kinmen as a case study, it explores the mechanisms behind the CCP’s united front operations in this specific context. The CCP adopts differentiated strategies based on the identity positions of diaspora communities. Although Kinmen and Taiwan are both viewed by the CCP as “to-be-unified” diaspora regions, the growing divergence in their cultural identities has led the CCP to reassess Kinmen’s strategic significance and apply an approach distinct from that used toward Taiwan. It attempts to maintain routine cross-strait exchanges and the “China image” of Kinmen residents, while also precisely targeting their economic demands with relevant policy initiatives and manipulating their emotions to divide Kinmen from Taiwan. Kinmen residents tend to interpret the united front as a resource to be strategically utilized, highlighting their agency and self-interest in navigating these political overtures. United front work, therefore, should be understood as a complex, interactive process. Despite the CCP’s attempts to ease identity tensions through the united front work, the efforts face inherent limitations. As either “secondary enemies” or “united front force,” diaspora communities may not necessarily comply with the CCP’s directives and agendas.
Keywords:Kinmen, United Front Work, Diaspora, Cultural Identity, Political Identity
【Research Note】The Strategies to the U.S.-China Trade War and Covid-19 by Taiwanese Firms in Inland China: A Fieldwork in Chongqing
Kung-chi Li ; Yung-shing Guo
Since the mid-2000s, the industrial transfer has been the important issue related to the development of the inland region and manufacturing’s growth in China. Authors have focused on the influence of the U.S – China trade war and Covid-19 on transferred Taiwanese firms by the fieldworks in inland cities in recent years. After the survey in Hunan in 2023, authors visited Chongqing in the summer of 2024. Their fieldwork in Chongqing discovered that even with severe lockdown, the closed-loop management helps Taiwanese factories in Chongqing supply goods as usual and there no Taiwanese factories that move production lines out of China because of the pandemic. By contrast, Taiwanese suppliers of laptops in Chongqing moved some production lines to Southeast Asia since the trade war even though laptops are not on the list for products to be charged with extra tariffs. Furthermore, comparing the significant decrease of laptops production in East China in recent years, the trade war did not cause the similar change of laptops production in Chongqing. This shows that the manufacturing in the inland region is more resilient to the impact of the trade war.
Keywords:U.S. - China Trade War, Covid-19, Industrial Transfer, Taiwanese Firms in China, Chongqing
Understanding Leadership-Elite Dynamics in CCP Politics: The Coalition of the Weak
Book Review：Shih, Victor C. (2022). Coalition of the Weak: elite politics in China from Mao’s stratagem to the rise of Xi. Cambridge University Press.
Wei-feng Tzeng