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This chapter first looks at parliamentarians and parliamentary institutions as actors (agents). It then analyses the participation of Taiwanese parliamentarians in international relations and their contribution to the development of Taiwan's parliamentary diplomacy, individually or as members of their parliament, the Legislative Yuan (LY). Since international parliamentary relations have become increasingly complex with various parliamentary institutions participating, particular attention is paid to the participation of Taiwanese parliamentarians with and within those institutions: national parliaments, international parliamentary associations, parliamentary organs of international governmental organizations, and party alliances. From the perspective of international relations, the chapter studies how these institutions respond to the initiatives and/or preferences of Taiwanese parliamentarians whose mission is to promote inter-parliamentary cooperation and advocate Taiwan's foreign policy interests. In this regard, two inter-connected questions are discussed.

This chapter discusses factors that have an impact on the capacity of members of the Legislative Yuan (LY) to act internationally and in this way contribute to parliamentary diplomacy of Taiwan. It finds that, at international level, there is no doubt that the People's Republic of China's (PRC's) One China principle and the insistence on the 1992 Consensus are the biggest hurdles LY members face as they try to participate in international (parliamentary) relations. From the perspective of the PRC, the tightness of the grip on Taiwan depends on whether Chinese Taipei accepts that the unification with Taiwan is the only option acceptable for the PRC. Everything is negotiable, Beijing says, if Taipei takes the road to unification. On the other hand, as long as the government in Taipei does not accept that and is unwilling to talk to the PRC, Beijing says, everything is possible, even taking Taiwan by force. This ominous communication from Beijing, which has intensified at the time of writing this study, is just one of the many manifestations of the ‘China factor’.

This concluding chapter returns to the lessons discussed in previous chapters before focusing on Taiwan's case, providing some recommendations on how to improve its international parliamentary relations. It returns to how parliamentarians might fill in the gap in communication between recognized and unrecognized states. In the concrete case of Taiwan, the Legislative Yuan (LY) members are revealed to be active and seek to contribute to easing Taiwan's isolation. They are not always able to do so, however. Restricted access to prominent international parliamentary associations (IPAs) prevents LY members from networking with parliamentarians across the globe; it affects their ability to forge inter-parliamentary cooperation and does not allow them to participate and share good practices in inter-parliamentary activities aiming to address regional and global problems.

This chapter details how Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government entertained three plans to settle European Jewish refugees on Chinese soil during the war against Japan. In early 1939, Sun Ke, president of the Legislative Yuan, formulated a plan to settle European Jewish refugees in southwest China. At the same time, the German Jewish businessman Jakob Berglas and the politically active American Jewish dentist Maurice William presented plans to both the Nationalist and U.S. governments to transplant European Jews to China. The Nationalists have been harshly criticized for not confronting the invading Japanese with enough determination. However, their Jewish policy demonstrates that the Chinese Nationalists were determined not only to fight the war but also to use every possible tool, domestic and international, to win. It also illuminates how the “Jewish issue” complicated the relationships between China, Japan, Germany, and the United States before and during World War II.

This chapter analyses the relationship between the government, military, and fishing industry in postwar Taiwan, as the level of state intervention and military control over fishing authorities in this period was unusually high. It discusses the roles of the Kuomintang Government, the China Fishing Company, Mainland Chinese parliamentarians, and the Legislative Yuan in relation to fisheries, and explores topics such as political brainwashing, military mobilisation, military surveillance, and governmental monitoring of the fishing industry. It concludes that the Taiwanese fishing industry struggled for three decades to gain national representation and to enter the political sphere independently.