Taiwan and Southeast Asia

Abstract Inspired by the late historian Aaron Moore's work exploring the continued legacies of the Japanese Empire in postwar Southeast Asia, this article examines a similar trajectory for Taiwan in Southeast Asia. Propelled by both nascent economic growth at home and a desire to seek anticommunist allies, the Republic of China on Taiwan launched development missions throughout Southeast Asia. Taiwanese development in Southeast Asia was conducted in the name of postcolonial economic uplift and “free world” solidarity, but it also represented a colonial ambition, centered on the superiority of Taiwanese technology and modernity in a postcolonial world and the benefit that would bring for the ruling authoritarian Guomindang regime.