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Soft power and the role of art in the development of Taiwan–mainland China relations 1

Focusing on the transformative period during Taiwan president Ma Ying-jeou’s (Ma Yingjiu) leadership (2008–16), this book chapter explores how culture, and the visual arts specifically, played a crucial, though under-explored, role in the development of Taiwan–mainland China relations. This is exemplified in the museological representation of art and by the growing number and size of exhibitions and exchanges organised by public museums on both sides of the strait that sought to emphasise Taiwan and mainland China’s shared cultural heritage. This book chapter explores how museums and exhibitions were deployed by both governments as vehicles for cultural diplomacy and soft power, used to forge economic, cultural and, perhaps, political ties between these two former arch-rivals. Three major exhibitions presented by the Taipei Fine Arts Museum of works by the prominent Chinese contemporary artists Cai Guo-Qiang, Ai Weiwei and Xu Bing are the focus of this discussion. These exhibitions signified a critical shift in museological practice in Taiwan, and this paper examines some of the issues, anxieties and tensions these exhibitions and Taiwan’s rapprochement with mainland China more generally, triggered within Taiwan’s art community.