RUODAN XU

When did you write the piece that you submitted? What drove you to write this piece?

I actually have a pretty long history with this idea. In my first semester at Brown University, I took a course called Land and Conflict, and [for an assignment] I wrote about this topic for the first time. I gave three factors at that time, it was not a research article at all, but it was just a final paper assignment for this freshman seminar. And then, this past summer, I actually transformed it into an article on The National Interest, and it received quite a lot of attention. The editors seemed to like it, and they put it on the front page. It got a lot of criticism as well. With the limited space at that time, I couldn’t really expand on my arguments [or] address those criticisms in depth, so in the semester after that, which was last fall semester, I made it into an independent research project and my senior capstone. So, I’ve had the opportunity to focus on [one] independent variable and really expand on it, as well as control other variables to truly make a compelling argument in a scientific way, or at least try to.

And do you plan on extending this beyond your undergraduate experience, after you graduate?

Yeah, totally. I’m planning to do a PhD in Political Science [starting] in the fall, still at Brown. Part of my interest is in Chinese foreign policy and U.S.-China relations, so this subject is very much a big part of it. So if I have the opportunity, I definitely look forward to further expanding on it and making this… more scientific, and maybe one day potentially publishable in [more] scholarly peer-reviewed journals.

Drawing from the article you wrote or even on the general topic, what do you believe are the most important issues in U.S. and China affairs?

Well, it’s pretty obvious that Taiwan is the big topic in U.S.-China relations. I think it is safe to say that neither country [the U.S. and China] wants a conflict with the other, it’s something that people should know, but not many people want to acknowledge, but if, imagining the unimaginable, to paraphrase Kevin Rudd, competition is inevitable but conflict is a choice, neither country wants war, so if war were to happen between the two countries, it would come from either miscalculation or a third party, perhaps. And I think in IR research, scholars mostly focus on Great Powers, for good reason, but I think particularly in U.S.-China relations and [the] potential of conflict over Taiwan, people don’t pay enough attention to the agency that Taiwan has [in] the future of the stability of the two largest economies of the world.

In a couple sentences, explain the significance of what your article discusses.

I think it’s the same as before. I think this article discusses how Taiwan’s preferences for reunification have changed over time, and through an IR perspective, which I think is… there’s not much scholarship on it because Taiwan is such a unique case. There are already very few cases–especially contemporary cases–of two governments officially claiming the same country, and one of them showing a decreasing preference for reunification, so it’s an attempt to explain it through an IR perspective, but there’s definitely more work to be done in there.

If you could select one point from your article to share to an audience of people who are unaware of what it discusses, what would you say?

It’s important when people think about the preferences of states or state actors. It’s one thing to look at the proximate factors, but also it’s important to look at the ultimate factors because what we see from the news and media of the popular press may not be the end of the story. There might be deeper things there. I think particularly in IR, this paper discusses power discrepancy as an independent variable. I think a lot of state’s preferences do depend on that.

Now moving on to your experience publishing your work with our team, what were your opinions about IUCJ when you first heard about us, and how did they change over time?

I was actually a member of the Coalition (i.e., U.S. China Better Relations Coalition), so I heard about IUCJ through that. From what I’d heard, it was a rising journal, and at the same time, I think IUCJ had only published one or two issues before [I submitted my work], so I didn’t expect it to be such a prestigious journal. It was my first time publishing an academic work, so I thought I should just start somewhere, and I think as the editorial process started, I really realized that people take this very seriously and I’m very glad that the editors found my work to be adequate for the publication because I read the other works and I think they’re all brilliant. The editorial rigor and feedback were all very valuable to me, so yeah I really appreciated that.

It’s a really good experience. I think, right now, this article is as good as I want it to be. In the future, I might want to add new things in there, but I am proud of what I’ve done with my editors.

Thinking back to when you were considering submitting to platforms like IUCJ, what would you have wanted to hear? What would have drawn your interest not only in doing more research on U.S.-China relations, but in sharing your ideas?

That’s a tough question because I’m new to this as well. I think the idea is to gather feedback from other people about our work because they have different takes. Not even just professionals–just your friends, who might not actually study this, they provide different perspectives on our work. I was just showing this to a friend of mine the other day, and she mentioned something that I had not really thought about before, and I think I will look a little deeper into that. I think it’s a good idea to gather as much feedback as possible. It is scary sometimes to anticipate criticism about your work, but if we want to become rigorous scholars, that is inevitable, so ultimately it’s good for us.