Professor Chen Jie, a political scientist teaching at Adelaide University and Monash Asia Institute in Australia, has spent several decades studying the governments on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, which has helped him to write expertly about the evolution of relations between mainland China and Taiwan.

"Foreign Policy of the New Taiwan" presents insights about one side of the strait, but by explaining Taiwan's long march toward democracy and its economic achievements on a world scale, Chen Jie exposes the policies of mainland China as well. Chen takes readers on a journey that allows them to comprehend the interaction between a giant and a small country. The political and democratic evolution in Taiwan has captured world attention, but since the DPP was installed as the ruling party in 2000 and President Chen Shui-bian took power, the search for a national identity, recognition of sovereignty and a place in the international community have taken on greater dimensions. Taiwan today is continuing along the trajectory launched by former President Lee Teng-hui to break out of China-imposed isolation and become more assertive in international affairs. Chen Jie said Taiwan has achieved through various diplomatic programs at least a fragmented recognition from many states, which prefer to maintain semi-official relations apart from the handful of governments that officially establish and maintain diplomatic relations.

"For a long time to come, Taiwan will probably remain a nation-state with full diplomatic recognition from countries in which it has little substantive interest," he says. He contends that the politico-diplomatic position of the government in Taipei will be somewhere between Hong Kong and a normal state, the latter being Taiwan's goal for the future as it struggles to become a globally recognized sovereign state.

Taiwan's relations with Southeast Asia and ASEAN, an organization devoted originally to forming economic ties, which now has a political voice to be reckoned with, have gone through various phases under different governments in Taiwan, from Chiang Kai-shek to the present. Taiwan has developed a consciousness about Southeast Asia and has challenged mainland China in various fields in that vast region of the world where ethnic Chinese communities play an important role, both in the local economies as well as in politics.

Singapore, more than others in the region, stands out as the country with long-term interests in Taiwan. Taiwan's economic prowess and impressive achievements have helped it gain some successes in its pursuit of diplomatic recognition around the world.

The role played by the ethnic Chinese communities scattered throughout Southeast Asia and the Americas is explored in the study of overseas Chinese emigrants, called Huaqiao, and the policies towards those communities, called Qiaowu, or affairs of Huaqiao. It is both entertaining and academically satisfying to read what Chen Jie says about the overseas Chinese community, which is estimated at more than 33 million people, including more than 27 million in Southeast Asia and about 3 million in the United States.

Qiaowu has become state policy for both mainland China as well as Taiwan and the competition for the hearts, minds, and financial backing of overseas Chinese has become fierce over the years, particularly so for Taiwan which needs all the support it can muster. During the reign of Chiang Kai-Shek and his son, Qiaowu was used in the conception of a political and cultural "Great China on Taiwan." Taiwanese emigrant communities also play an important role in Qiaowu.

But Chen Jie states that both Lee Teng-hui's administration and the current government's desires for a Taiwanese nationality during the identity crisis have diminished the high profile and practices of Qiaowu policy in Taipei. Qiaowu nonetheless remains an important component of Taiwanese policy, particularly in the "Go South Policy" to gain diplomatic and political influence on Chinese communities in Southeast Asia.