Taiwan’s precarious partnerships: Chinese medicine as a form of public and everyday diplomacy in South-South cooperation

中医在世界范围内的推广——最突出的是由中华人民共和国——作为文化外交的一种工具，其明确目标是获得软实力。​在这种背景下，台湾在这方面的倡议特别针对“全球南方”国家，以便在不稳定的情况下建立新的伙伴关系，从而建立新的政治合法性形式。通过长期的民族志田野调查，本项目将研究新南向政策下涉及台湾中医药的外交合作倡议，并探讨在不对称的全球政治权力关系下，“传统”医学如何嵌入外交影响项目；它如何积极参与和塑造社会和政治关系的形成；以及在实践和传播过程中它本身是如何转变的。在台湾医疗保健系统的背景下，中医在很大程度上与生物医学相结合，但相对于生物医学而言，它处于从属地位，我们预计在跨国交流背景下工作的从业者将面临挑战，包括他们自己专业利益的导航，以及同时，国家（外交）利益的潜在合作。这些利益可以是一致的，可以促成合作，但也可能充满矛盾和冲突，例如在生物医学监管制度的范围方面。考虑到对中医的批判（医学）人类学观点，公共和日常外交以及全球健康的人类学概念，本项目在“特别台湾”和全球霸权的医学和外交倡议和话语的界面上考察了新兴的跨国关系和实践。在南南合作的背景下，通过中医药的传播和临床实践，在国家和民间社会行动者参与（跨国）政治利益谈判方面，这种做法为台湾在全球卫生方面的作用开辟了全新的视角。

The promotion of Chinese medicine worldwide is carried out – most prominently by the People's Republic of China – as an instrument of cultural diplomacy with the explicit goal of attaining soft power. The utilization of such diplomatic tools, however, is also of particular importance for marginalized governments, for example the Republic of China on Taiwan, which is largely excluded from international institutions such as the UN or the World Health Organization. Against this background, Taiwan's initiatives in this context are particularly directed at countries in the "Global South" in order to establish new partnerships – and therefore new forms of political legitimacy – under precarious circumstances. Using long-term ethnographic fieldwork, this project will examine initiatives of diplomatic collaboration involving Chinese medicine in Taiwan under the New Southbound Policy, and inquire how "traditional" medicine is being embedded in projects of diplomatic influence under asymmetric global political power relations; how it actively participates in and shapes the making of social and political relations; and how it is itself transformed in practice and transmission through this process. In the context of Taiwan's healthcare system, which integrated Chinese medicine to a large extent but nevertheless places it in a subordinate position relative to biomedicine, we expect practitioners working in contexts of transnational exchange to be challenged with the navigation of their own profession's interests as well as, simultaneously, the potential co-optation by national (diplomatic) interests. These interests can be congruent and enable cooperation, but may also be fraught with contradiction and conflict, for instance in relation to the purview of biomedical regulatory regimes. Considering critical (medical) anthropological perspectives on Chinese medicine, anthropological conceptions of public and everyday diplomacy and global health, this project examines newly emerging transnational relations and practices at the interface of "specifically Taiwanese" and globally hegemonic medical and diplomatic initiatives and discourses. This approach opens up fundamentally new perspectives on Taiwan's role in global health in the context of South-South cooperation with regards to state and civil society actors' participation in the negotiation of (transnational) political interests through the lens of the transmission and clinical practice of Chinese medicine.