方方的小角落 Fang-Yu's Corner

Personal History

    My name is Fang-Yu Chen. I am from a family in Hsinchu City, Taiwan, and my parents are both in the education sector. My father currently serves as the President of National Hsinchu University of Education, and my mother teaches Chinese in a junior high school. Since my childhood, my parents have always urged me to keep an open mind and read widely. Instead of setting a course for my future, they encouraged me to excel in whatever I put my mind to. Influenced by my parents’ attitudes, I have developed strong confidence in my ability to achieve my goals, as well as curiosity about things in life and new kinds of thinking.

I have always had good grades. I graduated with Honors from the Department of Diplomacy (International Relations), at National Chengchi University (NCCU) in 2009. After that, I was conscripted into the army and served as a platoon leader in Hualien’s Military Police, during which I improved further my leadership and communication skills. In Fall 2010, I became a graduate student in the Department of Political Science at National Taiwan University (NTU), majoring in comparative politics.

I am very passionate about research in political science and international relations and thus I have always worked very hard for my studies. I am particularly keen to apply these insights to studies of China’s political development. In my third year at NCCU, I started to study Chinese politics by taking a seminar course on Chinese elite politics. As a college student, I presented my paper at the Annual Conference of Chinese Association of Political Science (CAPS) in October 2008 in Chiayi, Taiwan. My Professor, Dr. Chien-Wen Kou and I co-authored and amended this paper and it was later published in the Chinese Political Science Review in June 2009. This experience inspired me to conduct a comparative study of the relationship between elite recruitment and economic development in Taiwan. I decided to apply for graduate institute of Political Science at NTU to extend my studies in comparative politics. In this August I finished research on Taiwan’s elite mobility of economic technocrats and the paper I wrote was submitted to Political Science Review. Also, I attended the 2011 Annual Conference of CAPS in 16^th October, Taichung City, presenting a paper about attitudes of China’s mass media toward Taiwan-related issues.

This April I attended the Strait Talk Symposium 2011 held at the University of California, Berkeley, as one of the five delegates from Taiwan. This experience of exchanging views with Chinese and American delegates strongly motivated me to learn more about and compare economic and political developments in China and Taiwan. To further engage with studies of China, I am currently working as a part-time Research Assistant in the Center for China Studies at NTU.

Besides Chinese politics, I became interested in quantitative research approaches in my senior year and carried out several survey studies concerning the attitudes towards democratic system among Taiwanese people. I attended the Training Program for Quantitative Methods in Political Science held by the Institute of Political Science of Academia Sinica in 2010. Also, I received training from the Statistics Center of NTU to become a teaching assistant for the applied statistics course. I have to teach two hours a week for that course.

In addition to my studies, I had participated vigorously in extra-curricular activities. During my undergraduate studies at NCCU, I joined the debate team of my department and became the captain. I had been awarded the distinction of “Best Debater” in the Democracy Cup (2008), Politics Cup (2009), and Financial Cup (2010) debate contests. For me, these experiences had been extremely rewarding. Not only did I learn how to quickly deal with difficult topics from various fields, I also gained much insight into the art of persuasion, which I believe will be of much use in my future studies.

With my interest in political theories, I had served as the Chief Editor of the Department Magazine of Dept. of Diplomacy for three years. I also worked for The Easybook Publication and co-authored Major Affairs of the World (Jianming　shijie　jushi). This book introduced the international politics and conflicts, economy, environment and cultural issues and I was in charge of the chapters on international politics. I became the chief reviser for the 2011 edition published in December 2010 and the forthcoming 2012 edition.

Besides my studies in college, I also involved in social activism. I co-founded the group “Youth Hoya” in March 2011, and joined the “Anti-poverty Union”. Our chief goal is to raise awareness about issues of social inequality, labor and student rights, tax reforms, and social housing. I conducted a study, “Special Survey on Student’s Loan”, with a sample size of more than four hundred college students. The survey results formed the basis for a petition that pressed for reforms of Taiwan’s higher education sector. In addition, I have participated in various press conferences, lobbies and demonstrations in order to call attention to poverty issues. These unique experiences taught me that knowledge can indeed be a means of social change; hence, the need to deepen my understanding of relevant subjects. Specifically, I am keen to understand the structural reasons behind the widening of social gaps that often accompany the process of political and economic liberalization, and to explore ways that might help curb this trend. In my view, comparative studies of Taiwan and China shall yield interesting insights into the transformations of societies across the Taiwan Strait. By conducting advanced studies in political science in your program, I hope to immerse myself in leading-edge research training, and to make significant contributions to society by conducting excellent academic research in the future.