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

在世界范围内推广中医药--最突出的是由中华人民共和国--作为一种文化外交工具，其明确目标是获得软实力。然而，利用这种外交工具对边缘化政府也特别重要，例如中华民国在台湾，它在很大程度上被排除在联合国或世界卫生组织等国际机构之外。在此背景下，台湾在这方面的举措特别针对“全球南方”国家，以便在不稳定的情况下建立新的伙伴关系--从而建立新形式的政治合法性。本研究将透过长期的民族志田野调查，检视新南向政策下台湾中医药的书法合作，并探讨在全球政治权力关系不对称的情况下，“传统”医学如何被纳入书法影响力的项目中，如何积极参与并塑造社会与政治关系;以及它本身是如何在实践中转化的，以及如何通过这个过程传递的。在台湾的医疗体系，其中整合中医药在很大程度上，但仍然把它放在相对于生物医学的从属地位的背景下，我们预计从业者在跨国交流的背景下工作的挑战，与导航自己的专业的利益，以及，同时，由国家（外交）利益的潜在的增选。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，公共和日常外交和全球健康的人类学概念，本项目探讨了新兴的跨国关系和实践，在“特别是台湾”和全球霸权的医疗和外交倡议和话语的界面。这一做法为台湾在南南合作背景下通过中医药传播和临床实践的透镜参与（跨国）政治利益谈判，在全球卫生方面发挥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.