Chinese Tourists in Taiwan: Tourism and State Territoriality

After years of travel bans and despite an ongoing dispute over sovereignty and territory, Chinese tourists have poured into Taiwan since 2008. In this thesis, I develop an argument, based on theories of governmentality and performativity, that treats borders and territories as dynamic processes rather than places. I use this theory first to argue that tourism should be treated as a technology of state territorialization in general, and then to analyze the spatial politics of tourism between China and Taiwan in particular. I apply this analytical framework to ethnographic data collected during fieldwork in tourist sites in Taiwan in summer 2012. I conclude that tourism is producing multiple sensations of stateness in Taiwan, and exacerbating contradictions between China and Taiwan's programs of state territorialization.