Taiwan Legal: What Do Trade Agreements Say About Taiwan?
Thursday, November 6, 2025
7:30 - 8:30 pm (Eastern)
Online only via Zoom
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This event is co-sponsored by the APEC Study Center at Columbia University.
About the event:
The contested polity of Taiwan is poor in official diplomatic relationships but rich in economic ones. Although the Republic of China, the official name of Taiwan’s government, has diplomatic relations with only twelve states, it has investment agreements with thirty-three states and free trade agreements with nine. It’s also a member of the WTO and several multilateral economic rule-setting bodies. In this installment of our occasional speaker series, “Taiwan Legal,” Professor Pasha Hsieh of Singapore Management University will discuss whether trade and investment agreements convey “implied recognition,” and whether Taiwan’s strong economic ties make its legal identity more robust.
For earlier talks in this series, see Richard Bush on “What does US law say about Taiwan?” (recording here and written excerpts here); Peter Dutton on “What does international law say about Taiwan?” (recording here and written excerpts here); Jacques deLisle on “What does the United Nations say about Taiwan?” (recording here and written excerpts here); Yu-Jie Chen on “What does ROC law say about Taiwan?” (recording here and written excerpts here); Bing Ling on “What does PRC law say about Taiwan?” (recording here and written excerpts here); and Julian Ku on “What does international law say about defending Taiwan?” (recording here).
About the speaker:
Pasha Hsieh is the Lee Kong Chian Professor of Law at the Singapore Management University Yong Pung How School of Law, where he also holds the Jean Monnet Chair in EU-ASEAN Law and Relations. His teaching and research focus on international economic law, public international law, EU-ASEAN law, and Asian legal studies. In addition to numerous scholarly articles, he is the author of New Asian Regionalism in International Economic Law (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and co-editor of ASEAN Law in the New Regional Economic Order: Global Trends and Shifting Paradigms (Cambridge University Press 2019). Professor Hsieh holds an LL.B from National Chengchi University in Taiwan and LL.M and J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. His Ph.D. in political science is from the Free University of Brussels. He began his career as an attorney in a New York law firm and has served as a legal affairs officer at the WTO Appellate Body Secretariat.