S4 – INTERVIEW: The Island: a personal account of Taiwan’s extraordinary transformation by Mark O’Neill

<p>John chats with veteran Hong Kong-based journalist and author of The Island (2024) Mark O'Neill, who tells us what Taiwan was like in the early 1980s, when he first came to study Chinese.</p> <p><br></p> <p>Despite a mysterious knife attack and various authoritarian elements (such as “mail boxes” for reporting spies and subversives), he loved the country. </p> <p><br></p> <p>Over the next four decades, he made numerous trips back, witnessing and reporting on Taiwan’s transformation from one party rule to an admirable democracy. </p> <p><br></p> <p>The Island is not Mark’s first...