Island Biocultural Assemblages — The Case of Kinmen Island

ABSTRACT A growing mass of research contributes to our understanding of how biological and cultural diversity are related in complex and important ways. This paper presents an assembling process of biodiversity and cultural diversity on an island, Kin‐men (Quemoy), based on 1600 years of its environmental history. The study shows that the island's biocultural assemblages are a result both of external relations with the island's surrounding environment and internal relations within the island's changing human ecology. Distant political powers and economic forces are the two major external influences that have affected the flow of natural and cultural elements to and from the island, while ‘screening effects’ and ‘isolation effects’ are two factors that explain internal interactions. The island's biocultural assembling processes reveal that the openness of the island facilitates increase in the diversity of biocultural elements, while its less disturbed isolated condition fosters natural succession and co‐evolution. The study suggests that biocultural assemblages and the associated processes of co‐evolution and nature–society interactions are accomplished through the intermittent opportunities purposively provided by or inadvertently found in the openings and closures of boundaries, setting the scene for both boundary crossings and bounded shelter, by intent or chance.     

In Search of an Innovative State: The Development of the Biopharmaceutical Industry in Taiwan,South Korea and China

Recent developments in the biopharmaceutical industry in Taiwan, South Korea and China bear witness to the transformation of these states in nurturing an innovation‐based industry. This article argues that the segmentation of the value chain of the biopharmaceutical industry has provided industrializing countries with a window of opportunity. These East Asian states have modified their former catching‐up approaches by establishing a more effective institutional platform that can attract knowledge‐creation players to the industry. Through case studies, the authors show that the Taiwan state's promotion of the biopharmaceutical industry has been based on an incremental approach; existing state policies have been modified to cope with the demands of the industry, which has resulted in the continuation of its SME‐based industrial structure. The methods of the Korean state have been more radical, in that the policies that previously favoured the chaebols have gradually been reoriented toward the promotion of smaller, science‐based firms that now co‐exist alongside the chaebols. Finally, the Chinese state and local governments have sought to promote this innovation‐based industry by building biotech parks. This approach has resulted in a boom in new science firms, which have become increasingly isolated from the flourishing domestic SOE‐led market.     

The Inspector General's Last Prize: The Chinese Native Customs Service, 1901–31

The roles of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service (CMCS), particularly the role of the inspector general (IG) have most frequently been discussed in the context of Sino-foreign relations. The relationship between the CMCS and the Chinese Native Customs establishment has seldom been studied. It is worth noting how, after the Boxer Uprising, the CMCS, dominated by the British, successfully, and much more quietly, extended its power to the Chinese domestic arena through its assumption of control over the Native Customs Service. The thirty-year period during which the CMCS controlled the Native Customs before the latter was abolished in 1931 actually tells us a great deal about the nature of the CMCS and the limits it faced to the exercise of its power. This paper's case study of the Native Customs provides a wider opportunity to re-examine the structure of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service on the ground, in localities away from Shanghai and the more visible world of the treaty ports.     

Perceptions of tourism impacts and community resilience to natural disasters

Evidence since at least the 1990s suggests that global climate patterns have undergone dramatic changes, often resulting in weather-induced natural disasters that have caused widespread environmental damage. Such conditions raise serious threats to communities that are dependent on natural resources and ecosystem services for tourism development. Communities located in high-risk disaster regions face greater challenges in developing a tourism economy that is both resilient and sustainable. Residents in these communities live with a constant awareness of external threats and try to build a degree of resilience that includes traditional disaster prevention measures and a long history of post-disaster reconstruction. It is necessary to understanding the relationships between tourism and community resilience to address planning and development goals in an era of increasing climate uncertainty.

Three communities are examined that are regularly exposed to the threats of typhoons and flooding and are located within National Scenic Areas in Taiwan. In-depth interviews with community leaders and surveys of residents were undertaken. Residents with high potential to experience natural disasters generally have high degrees of awareness of various forms of tourism impacts. Their perceptions of tourism impacts are positively correlated with community resilience. The strongest relationships are between a perception of the positive economic impacts from tourism and the local capacity for undertaking adaptive responses; and between an awareness of the environmental impacts of tourism and the perceived fragility of their environment. Empowering community resilience usually requires long-term capacity building and is correlated with all three types of perceived tourism impacts. Deconstruction of the special experiences of disaster-prone tourism destinations provides a more nuanced insight into the relationships between community knowledge and awareness of resilience needs and the role and impacts of tourism. This, in turn, facilitates understanding of community tourism development in the face of contemporary changes in weather and climate.     

Geotechnical Reconnaissance of the 2016 ML6.6 Meinong Earthquake in Taiwan

On February 6, 2015, a local magnitude (M_L) 6.6 earthquake struck southern Taiwan, devastating the Tainan area. A field investigation was conducted by a survey team from the National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering immediately after the earthquake. This paper summarizes the observed geotechnical damage features caused by the earthquake, including liquefaction, slope sliding, levee failure, and dam performance. Several liquefaction sites were observed despite the intensity of ground shaking being moderate (peak ground acceleration, ~0.2 g). Most of these sites were originally old ponds that were backfilled during different periods in the last three to eight decades. Two significant types of damage to the levee of the Tseng-wen River were observed. At the Jianshan site, a typical type of levee damage was observed, in which the level crest subsided and the side slope developed several cracks. At the Rixin site, a flow-type of failure caused tremendous loss of levee (~400 m in total) at three adjacent locations. The levee embankments had “flowed” up to 60 m into the river.