Dec 3, 2018
Last Saturday, voters in Taiwan went to the polls in an election
widely seen as a referendum on President Tsai Ing-wen. Her party,
the Democratic Progressive Party, suffered numerous electoral
defeats in crucial local races. The opposition party, the
Kuomintang, capitalized on voter frustration with a stagnant
economy, rocky relations with the Mainland, and a conservative base
that was energized by a referendum on the legalization of same-sex
marriage.
The National Committee convened a teleconference call on November
30 with Taiwan experts Jacques deLisle and
Margaret Lewis to discuss the ramifications of the
election results for Taiwan, cross-Strait ties, and U.S.-Taiwan
relations. Professor deLisle called in from Taipei, and Professor
Lewis has recently returned from a year in Taiwan.
Jacques deLisle is the Stephen A. Cozen
Professor of Law, professor of political science, director of the
Center for East Asian Studies, deputy director of the Center for
the Study of Contemporary China, and co-director of the Center for
Asian Law at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also
the director of the Asia Program at the Foreign Policy
Research Institute. His writing focuses on China’s engagement with
the international legal order, domestic legal reform in China, and
Taiwan’s international status and cross-strait relations.
He is the co-editor of China’s Global
Engagement (2017), New Media, the Internet,
and a Changing
China (2016); China’s
Challenges (2014); Political Changes in Taiwan
under Ma Ying-jeou (2014); and China Under Hu
Jintao (2005). His work has appeared
in Orbis, theAmerican Journal of
International Law, American Society of International Law
Proceedings, Journal of Contemporary China, and many
other law reviews, foreign affairs, and policy journals. He is
a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.
Margaret Lewis is a professor of law at
Seton Hall University. Professor Lewis’s research focuses on law in
mainland China and Taiwan with an emphasis on criminal justice. She
has been a Fulbright senior scholar at National Taiwan University,
a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Public
Intellectuals Program fellow with the National Committee on
U.S.-China Relations, and a delegate to the U.S.-Japan Foundation's
U.S.-Japan Leadership Program. She has participated in the State
Department’s Legal Experts Dialogue with China, has testified
before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, and is a
consultant to the Ford Foundation.
Before joining Seton Hall, Professor Lewis served as a senior
research fellow at NYU School of Law’s U.S.-Asia Law Institute.
Following graduation from law school, she worked as an associate at
the law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen &; Hamilton in New York
City. She then served as a law clerk for the Honorable M. Margaret
McKeown of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San
Diego.