What does it mean to conduct ethnographic fieldwork in a territory where sovereignty is not only contested but suspended—where diplomatic ambiguity, imperial entanglements, and historical wounds saturate every conversation, every silence, and every refusal?

In 2023, I undertook 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Taiwan as part of my PhD in anthropology at the University of Ottawa. Supported by a fellowship from the Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this research forms a core component of my thesis, titled ‘Navigating Sovereignty in a Hostile World: Strategies and Representations of Diplomats in Taiwan and Somaliland’. The research seeks to understand competing narratives and strategies of sovereignty in a context in which the state exists in practice but is not universally recognised in law. Yet, beyond the intellectual challenges of theorising ‘suspended sovereignty’, I encountered a cascade of methodological complications—each revealing how geopolitics seeps into the very fabric of research practice.

Having earned my PhD in sociology at Shanghai University in 2022 thanks to a dual scholarship from China and Cameroon, I brought to this fieldwork a diverse network of social, academic, and personal connections in mainland China. However, once it became known that I was conducting research in Taiwan under the auspices of its Foreign Ministry, many of those ties began to unravel. Some former colleagues grew distant, likely viewing me as politically compromised. One professor who had initially agreed to be interviewed quietly withdrew and instead sent me a copy of his book. Another collaborator—who had never questioned the content of our co-authored article—later expressed hesitation, citing fears of retaliation from Chinese authorities, and ultimately pulled out, saying co-authoring with someone doing research in Taiwan was ‘too risky’. My African background, shaped by pan-Africanism and anti-imperialism, and my current affiliation with the University of Ottawa in Canada—a Nato/Western bloc member—further complicated these dynamics, adding layers of suspicion, tension, and misinterpretation from both sides of the geopolitical divide.

However, suspicion was not confined to my Chinese networks. Within Taiwan itself, the field was marked by tension, anxiety, and coded distrust. During an interview with a retired US Army colonel, what began as a cordial conversation quickly turned confrontational. ‘Are you a spy for China?’ he asked, visibly agitated. My questions—intended to probe how the American military presence shapes local imaginaries—were read as provocations. In academic conferences, where the spectre of war with China loomed large, discussions often took on an apocalyptic tone. Scenarios of invasion, resistance, and ‘defending democracy’ dominated. When I raised ethical questions about the militarisation of scholarly discourse—why speak only of war and not of the structural and historical conditions that make it thinkable—I was met with polite dismissal, awkward silence, or open hostility.

Even institutional diplomacy, I discovered, is layered with silence and guardedness. My repeated attempts to secure an interview with representatives of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), which functions as the de facto US embassy, went unanswered. Scholars affiliated with the AIT, who had initially exchanged cards with me at public events, declined all further communication once the topic of a formal interview arose. The geopolitical ambiguity that defines Taiwan’s international status was palpable throughout my fieldwork, as echoed in the ambivalence, caution, and non-responses I received from all sides.

My experience closely aligns with Derek Sheridan’s (2016, 2022) analysis, which argues that the legacy of US imperialism in Taiwan—manifested through military presence, legal liminality, and strategic silence—continues to haunt contemporary Taiwanese political imaginaries, shaping sovereignty claims and activist movements within a condition of ‘hauntology’, following Jacques Derrida’s theorisation of the term. In this condition, the unresolved and unacknowledged traces of empire linger, influencing current sovereignty claims and activist movements long after the formal structures of domination have receded. However, my analysis extends Sheridan’s framework by situating the ‘hauntology of American empire’ alongside two emerging forces: the resurgence of China’s ancient tributary logic as a counter-sovereignty discourse, and the nascent articulation of Indigenous Austronesian sovereignty ontologies, which challenge both Sinocentric and Western geopolitical imaginaries.

This was fieldwork in a context of suspended sovereignty, where identities, alliances, and even conversations are tentative, performative, and frequently recalibrated. Conducting ethnography in such an environment demands more than methodological flexibility; it requires attunement to affective atmospheres, to strategic silences, to the costs of being misread or misunderstood. It means walking a tightrope between perceived allegiances and contested truths.

Yet, amid these challenges, I was able to navigate a fragmented field and collect five distinct narratives of what Taiwan is and could become. These accounts—legalist, pro-American, diplomatically sceptical, de-imperial, and Indigenous—do not cohere into a unified theory of sovereignty. Instead, they reflect what I call ‘suspended sovereignty’: a condition in which political belonging is not merely deferred but also actively negotiated, disavowed, and remade through lived experience.

In what follows, I situate these five perspectives within a theoretical framework informed by Yarimar Bonilla’s (2015, 2017) notion of non-sovereign politics and Frantz Fanon’s (1963) view of anti-imperial violence as a necessary instrument of resistance, revolution, and liberation. But above all, I offer this essay as a methodological reflection on what it means to do fieldwork in geopolitical liminality, where research is not only about observing power but also about navigating its invisible, omnipresent currents.

Taiwan at the Crossroads

Taiwan, perched precariously within the United States–China imperial matrix, has long been reduced to diplomatic shorthand shaped by shifting global priorities and imperial anxieties. As early as 1853–54, during his expedition to ‘open’ Japan, US Commodore Matthew Perry envisioned Formosa—as Taiwan was then called—as an ideal ‘American outpost guaranteeing peace and order along the Western Pacific rim’ (Kerr 1965: 5). This vision laid the groundwork for a century of strategic interest in the island, not as a polity with its own sovereign identity, but as a foothold for regional control.

During the Korean War (1950–53) and amid the broader backdrop of the Cold War, US General Douglas MacArthur depicted Taiwan as an ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ (TIME 1950; Lee and Liff 2024)—a metaphor that framed the island as an immobile military asset. Two years later, historian Samuel Eliot Morison (1967: 439) characterised Taiwan as ‘a fulcrum of American strategic power in the Orient’, reinforcing the idea that Taiwan’s significance lay in its service to US geopolitical interests.

These Cold War framings have since evolved, but their logic persists. Today, Taiwan is frequently described as a ‘geopolitical flashpoint’ (Anderson 2014), a ‘democratic beacon’ (EU Political Report 2023), a ‘chip foundry for the Borg’ (Solomon 2023), and, most ominously, ‘the most dangerous place on Earth’ (The Economist 2021). These labels, while evocative, tend to obscure the lived experience of people in Taiwan and the complexities of its political status.

From the other side of the imperial equation, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) casts Taiwan as an ‘inseparable part of its sovereign territory’, invoking a narrative of national reunification that portrays any Taiwanese move towards independence—or even ambiguity—as a direct challenge to China’s national dignity and historical continuity. This perspective, anchored in the ‘One China Principle’, fuels Beijing’s diplomatic and military pressure and further entangles Taiwan in a web of contested recognition.

Complicating this geopolitical framing is the island’s internal demographic and historical landscape. In addition to the Indigenous Austronesians (approximately 2 per cent of Taiwan’s total population), Taiwan’s main ethnic groups include the Hoklo or bun-seng-lang (approximately 72 per cent), whose paternal ancestors migrated from Fujian during Dutch colonial rule in the 1600s; the Hakka (approximately 13 per cent), who came from Guangdong in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; and the ‘mainlanders’ or goa-seng-lang (approximately 13 per cent), who arrived with Chiang Kai-shek in 1945 (Simon 2010: 727). Two events marked Taiwanese identity: Japanese rule (1895–1945) and the 1947 massacres perpetrated by the Kuomintang. Many native Taiwanese (Hoklo and Hakka) whose families were in Taiwan before 1945 viewed Chiang’s regime as authoritarian and corrupt (Wong 2001: 187), describing the transition from Japanese rule as the time when ‘the dogs left, and then the pigs came’ (Simon 2003: 116). The Kuomintang imposed a policy of ‘national unity’ and ‘Sinicisation’ (Chang 2007), suppressing local identity and promoting the ‘Chinese race’ as universal through education, social policy, and nationalist propaganda (Simon 2010: 116; Tseng 2016: 231; Wong 2001: 187). Narratives of ‘Free China’ (Chang 2015: 37) and the ‘great Chinese nation’ (Wang 2013) were promoted through state ideology and the idolisation of Nationalist heroes.

Thus, beneath the surface of missile diplomacy, trade wars, and semiconductor supply chains lies a more fundamental question: what is sovereignty when it is perpetually suspended, mediated by colonial legacies, legal ambiguities, and the strategic calculations of competing empires? Rather than representing a unified ‘Taiwanese consensus’, the perspectives to be presented below reveal the island as a site of overlapping sovereignties, unsettled allegiances, and unresolved historical debts. They enrich the discourse by introducing voices often marginalised in official narratives, challenging the dominant binaries rampant in the media of PRC versus Republic of China (ROC) or independence versus unification.

The Legalistic Perspective: Richard Hartzell and the Taiwan Civil Government

I met Richard Hartzell in March 2023 during one of the breakfast club debates hosted by Linda Arrigo, a key figure in Taiwan’s independence circles. Hartzell is an American of German origin, long-term Taipei resident, researcher, columnist, and writer fluent in Mandarin, with nearly five decades of experience in the region. His research interests span Chinese and Western cultural norms, the Chinese language, the legal relationship between the United States, Taiwan, and the PRC, customary laws of warfare, international treaty law, Chinese and international law, territorial cession law, US insular law, constitutional law, and Supreme Court jurisprudence. He is also the author of a detailed legal analysis titled ‘Understanding the San Francisco Peace Treaty’s Disposition of Formosa and the Pescadores’ (Hartzell 2004).

In a calm but assertive tone, Hartzell explained: ‘The ROC was never the legitimate government of Taiwan.’ He added:

It was a subordinate occupying power and a government in exile … Taiwan does not belong to the PRC … [T]here is something called the successor government principle. But in order for the PRC to invoke that, it would have to be shown that the ROC originally held Taiwan’s sovereignty … To this day, no government officials have yet offered definitive proof of that.

For Hartzell, the San Francisco Peace Treaty, signed in 1951, which officially ended the state of war between Japan and the Allied Powers after World War II, never transferred sovereignty over Taiwan to the ROC. Instead, he argues, ‘the US is holding it, but the problem is that the US doesn’t admit that’. His view is that Taiwan remains under US military jurisdiction, like Guam and Puerto Rico. He insisted: ‘Taiwan is like Puerto Rico—a US-administered territory without full acknowledgement.’

Hartzell supports the idea that US statehood is economically beneficial for Taiwan. ‘Look at Hawai`i,’ he said. ‘The US bases bring in so much money to Hawai`i. It became rich because of that … If Taiwan becomes a US state, we will gain stability, security, and prosperity. Independence brings uncertainty, and China brings domination.’

Together with a group of followers, Hartzell helped create in 2008 the Taiwan Civil Government (TCG), a self-styled transitional administration that operated as though Taiwan was already under US military governance. As described by Derek Sheridan (2016), the TCG issued its own passports, national identity cards, and vehicle registrations—often against payment from sympathisers and members—under the claim that these were preparatory steps for formal US administration.

The Formosa Statehood Movement: David Chou

I met David Chou in a Starbucks near Taipei Main Station in September 2023. A founder of the Formosa Statehood Movement, Chou was a candidate for the Legislative Yuan, but he discontinued his campaign following an assassination attempt and was therefore never elected. Unlike Hartzell, Chou proposes a political, rather than legalistic, pathway to sovereignty. His movement, initiated in 1994, views US statehood as a non-military solution to cross-strait tensions and a corrective to the historical injustices endured under both the ROC’s and the PRC’s claims over Taiwan.

A staunch supporter of what he calls ‘Pax Americana’, he began our conversation with a blunt declaration: ‘We need to stop pretending. Taiwan should become the fifty-first state of the United States.’

Chou considers American values and systems ‘inherently superior’. ‘Since I was a child, I believed in the superiority of Western culture,’ he declared. ‘It’s organised, fair, and it respects rules. American exceptionalism is real. Taiwan has a future only if it becomes part of that system.’

He referred to historical figures to support his case. ‘Commodore Perry understood Formosa’s value,’ Chou explained. ‘He saw the enormous natural wealth and strategic location. That vision is still valid today.’

He cited the Foster family as heroes of Taiwan’s diplomatic past: ‘John Foster Dulles deliberately left Taiwan’s status undetermined. He knew it would keep the communists out and preserve Taiwan for the US.’

Chou believes colonialism, in some forms, has brought progress. ‘People say colonialism is bad but look at what the US did for Hawai`i,’ he argued. ‘Hawai`i is now wealthy and safe. Taiwan can have the same path.’

He links his vision to Taiwan’s democratic movements: ‘The DPP, the Sunflower Movement—they all show we belong to the democratic world. But being democratic is not enough. We need structure. We need a nation. The US can offer us that.’

In our most recent conversation, in 2024, Chou expressed his intention to transform the Formosa Statehood Movement into a fully fledged political party, aiming to mobilise support for a referendum on US statehood and eventual congressional recognition. His approach is deeply political and future-oriented, contrasting with Hartzell’s retrospective, treaty-based argumentation grounded in international law.

Between ‘Strategic Diplomacy’ and ‘Strategic Hypocrisy’: Caribbean Diplomats’ Perspective

In November 2023, I had lunch with three Caribbean diplomats in a quiet restaurant in Tianmu, Taipei. Over a meal of grilled fish and rice, the diplomats spoke candidly about Taiwan’s diplomatic posture and their role within it.

‘Few people here even know our countries exist,’ one diplomat said. ‘But when they find out we’re diplomats, suddenly we are respected. It’s all about the image.’

When asked who Taiwanese people considered Taiwan’s real allies, one diplomat responded: ‘They think of the US, France, Germany—not us.’

Another expanded: ‘We are the ones who formally recognise Taiwan, but the real relationship is with the US and its allies. We’re just a cover. That’s strategic diplomacy. Or should I say, strategic hypocrisy?’

The conversation turned to history. One diplomat remarked: ‘This isn’t new. It goes back to 1492, the Alhambra Decree, the Romanus Pontifex … Colonial scripts have always used small states to do the bidding of big empires.’ The Alhambra Decree, issued in 1492 by Spain, ordered the expulsion of Jews and marked the consolidation of Christian imperial power in Iberia—just as Columbus embarked on his voyage to the Americas. Romanus Pontifex, a 1455 papal bull, granted Portugal the divine right to colonise non-Christian lands, laying a theological foundation for European imperial expansion and the ‘Doctrine of Discovery’. These references framed the Caribbean diplomats’ critique of Western imperialism as rooted in centuries-old structures of domination and racialised world-ordering, which was reproduced in Taiwan.

During a later follow-up call, one of the diplomats explained further: ‘The US has recognised Taiwan de facto since the 1950s but chose the PRC for strategic reasons. They still want both. It’s a dangerous game.’

Towards a De-Imperialised Asia: Professor Chen Kuan-Hsing

On 22 October 2023, I met Professor Chen Kuan-Hsing at National Taiwan University. Chen is a Taiwanese scholar and co-editor of the journal Inter-Asia Cultural Studies. Best known for his 2010 book, Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization, he advocates using intra-Asian perspectives to decentre Western epistemologies in cultural studies. We walked to a student canteen to continue our conversation over lunch. Calm and composed, Professor Chen began: ‘Sovereignty is a Western fabrication—a deceptive assurance given to weaker countries to make them believe they’re equal.’

‘Taiwan is a subcolony of the United States. We think we are independent, but we are still caught in empire.’

Reflecting on Asia’s future, Chen stated: ‘It’s time to reject both Western imperialism and the Chinese tributary system. Asia must be for Asians. We need to reclaim our voice.’

He believes de-imperialisation must begin internally: ‘It’s not just about foreign powers. It’s about removing the empire inside us—our institutions, our mindsets.’

Critiquing Taiwan’s outreach to Southeast Asia, Chen added: ‘The Southbound Policy is just another imperial project; we are doing to others what was done to us. That’s not liberation.’

In its formal version, Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy (NSP), launched in 2016, is a key strategy for strengthening ties with South and Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. It aims to diversify Taiwan’s economic partnerships, reduce dependence on China, and foster a sense of regional community. The NSP focuses on economic and trade cooperation, talent exchange, resource sharing, and regional connectivity.

Reclaiming Roots: Austronesian Indigenous Voices

In a small restaurant in Taipei, I dined with three Taiwanese friends: a Bunun woman, a Paiwan man with mixed Hoklo heritage, and a Paiwan man whose grandfather is Han and came to Taiwan with the Kuomintang. The conversation shifted towards Taiwan’s contested status.

The Bunun lady looked me in the eye and said: ‘For us, all non-Indigenous people on this island are invaders.’

She added: ‘This land belonged to our ancestors for thousands of years. No matter who claims it now—the native Taiwanese, the ROC, the PRC, or the US—they are all outsiders.’

I mentioned former president Tsai Ing-wen’s 2016 apology and efforts to meet Indigenous peoples’ claims. She replied: ‘It was a step forward. But without returning the land, it means little. True respect means giving back what was taken.’

The Han-descended man reflected: ‘I acknowledge they were here first. But calling everyone else an invader—I don’t think that helps us move forward.’

The Paiwan man, visibly uneasy, said: ‘I’m torn. My mother’s Han. I can’t call her an invader. But we do need a new way of thinking about sovereignty.’

The Bunun woman concluded firmly: ‘My friend is being polite. The truth is, this land doesn’t belong to China, or America, or the ROC. It belongs to us. And that’s the truth people don’t want to hear.’

Sovereignty Visions in Tension

Chou and Hartzell envision Taiwan’s future through refined, consent-based iterations of imperialism. Their proposals—whether advocating for integration into the United States as the fifty-first state or for a legalist reframing under American trusteeship—illustrate what Abdelwahab El-Affendi (2023: 98) describes as ‘DIY colonialism’, where colonised actors replicate colonial systems in pursuit of perceived advantages. They also reflect what Bruce Gilley (2018: 145), drawing on Hechter’s notion of a ‘market in transnational governance’, terms ‘colonialism for hire’: a dynamic in which subordinated groups align with colonial powers in exchange for protection from perceived threats. These perspectives rebrand colonial dependence as voluntary and even beneficial, while remaining firmly embedded in historical structures of domination. In so doing, they minimise longstanding critiques of imperialism and expansionism as an economically driven ‘tragedy’ (Hobson 1902; Beard 1913; Williams 1959), and recast sovereignty as a transactional arrangement, hinging on external recognition rather than internal self-determination or Indigenous legitimacy.

In sharp contrast, the Caribbean diplomats in Taiwan offered a grounded, postcolonial critique of what they described as ‘strategic hypocrisy’. While their remarks implicitly questioned Taiwan’s tendency to prioritise informal relationships with powerful states over its formal diplomatic engagements with smaller Caribbean allies, their deeper critique targeted the broader system of US and Western-led geopolitical instrumentalisation. Their reflections resonate with Stephen Krasner’s (1999) concept of ‘organised hypocrisy’, which highlights the persistent gap between the declared principles of the Westphalian system—such as sovereign equality and non-interference—and the realpolitik-driven behaviour of states that frequently undermines those very norms. Although many small nations enjoy formal recognition within the UN system, their sovereignty and diplomatic ties are often exploited as pawns in larger strategic calculations rather than being respected on their own terms. Taiwan’s alleged neglect of its small-state partners thus reflects not just a domestic strategy but also its embeddedness in an international order marked by structural asymmetries of power. This critique parallels Dibyesh Anand’s (2009) analysis of ‘British imperial scripting’ in the China–Tibet relationship, where the narrative of ‘Chinese suzerainty/Tibetan autonomy’ is managed to appease and extract legitimacy from both sides. It also echoes Gang Lin and Wenxing Zhou’s (2018: 179) discussion of the United States’ ‘strategic manipulation of the Taiwan card’, revealing how Taiwan itself is positioned within overlapping imperial logics that continue to subordinate the sovereignty of smaller actors.

A more radical break with both ROC and PRC narratives—and, indeed, with Western and Confucian models of sovereignty altogether—emerges from Indigenous voices. The Bunun woman’s powerful assertion that ‘all non-Indigenous people on this island are invaders’ centres Austronesian land rights and ontology as the only legitimate basis for sovereignty. Her position aligns with Fanon’s (1963) vision of decolonisation as rupture rather than reform—a complete dismantling of colonial frameworks, not their repurposing. While Bonilla (2015, 2017) proposes ‘unsettling sovereignty’ by destabilising and reworking the Westphalian/Confucian system from within, Fanon insists on radical opposition, even through militaristic means, as he demonstrated through his alignment with the Algerian struggle (led by the Front de Libération Nationale) against French colonialism in 1954.

Similarly, Professor Chen Kuan-Hsing’s concept of de-imperialisation calls for a deep epistemic shift—one that critiques Western imperialism while also urging critical reform of China’s tributary legacies, which he distinguishes from Western imperialism in both scale and structure. Echoing the American ‘Monroe Doctrine’ of 1823—which asserted ‘America for Americans’—Chen (2010) envisions an ‘Asian Monroe Doctrine’: a vision of ‘Asia for Asians’ grounded not in externally imposed state models, but in regional memory and solidarity. Yet, Chen openly acknowledges that his notion of ‘Asia as method’ is adapted from Takeuchi Yoshimi (2005) and influenced by Mizoguchi Yuzo’s ‘China as method’ (2016). While Chen insists that Mizoguchi does not seek to replace Eurocentrism with Sinocentrism, but rather promotes a pluralistic, egalitarian, and multicultural world view, his de-imperial framework can nonetheless be interpreted as clearing an epistemic path for Chinese regional dominance—especially in contexts like Taiwan. As Chen (2010: 253) explains, Mizoguchi’s aim is to avoid the analytical error of mapping European history on to all societies and to deconstruct the self-Orientalising mindset that treats Europe as the normative standard. However, when it comes to China’s claim over Taiwan, Tonio Andrade (2007) reminds us that Taiwan ‘became’ Chinese; it was never inherently or ancestrally so. For both Chen and my Bunun interlocutor, the notion of sovereignty cannot simply be re-formed within colonial frameworks; it must be fundamentally reimagined from intra-Asian or Indigenous perspectives.

Meanwhile, the Hoklo ‘settler’ and the mixed-heritage Paiwan interlocutor offer more ambivalent voices. The Hoklo man’s call for unity—‘calling everyone else an invader—I don’t think that helps us move forward’—embodies Bonilla’s adaptive notion of sovereignty, where historical acknowledgement and negotiated belonging offer alternatives to rigid dichotomies. The Paiwan interlocutor’s self-described torn identity reflects the performative and fragmentary nature of sovereignty as lived experience. These positions resist Fanon’s binary of coloniser and colonised, suggesting instead a spectrum of belonging that complicates claims to purity and singular legitimacy.

Taken together, these five perspectives represent a faisceau—a bundle—of potential futures for Taiwan: from recolonisation masked as protection, to reformist compromise, to radical decolonial rupture. My own position is that the Austronesian Indigenous peoples, as the original custodians of the island, must be recognised as its sovereign core. Yet, this sovereignty need not be exclusionary; rather, it can be extended through a relational ethic, allowing others to ‘rent space’ in Taiwan—metaphorically and politically—provided they respect Indigenous land rights, ontologies, and the plural foundations of political community. This model of relational sovereignty offers a decolonial path that honours ancestral depth, acknowledges spiritual complexity, connectivity, and continuity, and opens the door to a more just and situated futurity.

For ethnographers working in similarly liminal spaces, this study offers three methodological imperatives. First, affective attunement: researchers must attend to the emotional undercurrents—distrust, fear, hope—that shape interactions. Second, strategic opacity: in contexts where direct inquiry risks alienation, indirect methods (such as analysing silences, observing ritualised diplomatic performances) become vital. Third, ethical reflexivity: acknowledging that the act of research itself may exacerbate vulnerabilities for interlocutors, particularly under authoritarian surveillance.

Ultimately, this project argues that suspended sovereignty describes not merely a political condition but also an ethnographic one. It demands methodologies that are as provisional, adaptive, and multivocal as the realities they seek to capture. By foregrounding these challenges, I hope to contribute not only to debates about Taiwan’s status but also to a broader disciplinary conversation about the stakes of fieldwork in an era of escalating geopolitical fractures, in which the ethnographer must learn to tread lightly in the shadows of power, ever mindful of the ground that cannot be named.

Dwelling in Ambiguity

This essay, while anchored in the contested terrain of Taiwan, ultimately transcends its thematic boundaries to offer a methodological reckoning with the challenges of conducting ethnography in spaces of suspended sovereignty. Such contexts—where legal ambiguity, geopolitical tensions, and historical wounds permeate every interaction—demand not only theoretical innovation but a radical reimagining of ethnographic practice itself. Here, the how of research becomes inseparable from the what: methodological choices are inevitably entangled with the political fissures that define the field.

My fieldwork revealed that suspended sovereignty is not merely an abstract condition but also a lived methodological reality. Political sensitivities forced constant recalibration: maintaining relationships with Chinese academic networks required navigating perceptions of betrayal, while in Taiwan, questions of allegiance haunted interviews and conferences alike. The refusal of AIT representatives to engage, the withdrawal of collaborators, and the accusatory tensions with interlocutors such as the retired US colonel underscored how geopolitical liminality manifests as institutional guardedness, strategic silences, and affective volatility. These were not incidental hurdles but constitutive elements of the research landscape, demanding what I term ethnographic diplomacy—a practice attuned to the performative, provisional, and often perilous nature of trust in such settings.

Theoretical frameworks like Bonilla’s non-sovereign politics and Fanon’s colonial critiques proved indispensable not only analytically but also methodologically. Bonilla’s emphasis on agency within constrained political horizons guided my approach to narratives that resisted binary categorisations (such as ‘independence’ versus ‘unification’), while Fanon’s insistence on interrogating the psychic residues of empire sensitised me to the unspoken anxieties underlying discourses of militarisation and resistance. These lenses allowed me to reframe silences, evasions, and confrontations not as obstacles but as data—revealing how sovereignty is negotiated in the interstices of speech and refusal.

Critically, this work underscores that suspended sovereignty destabilises the ethnographer’s positionality. My multidimensional identity—as a Canadian researcher embedded in Taiwanese diplomatic circles, maintaining academic and personal ties to China, and originating from Africa, where the rise of the Sahel States Alliance (AES) challenges French neocolonialism and US/Western imperialism—became a site of layered tensions. It required ongoing reflexivity as I navigated how I was perceived, interpreted, and at times instrumentalised across intersecting geopolitical fault lines. This liminality, however, also granted unique access to the fragmented narratives that define Taiwan’s contested status. By embracing ambiguity rather than resolving it, the research illuminated how sovereignty is not a fixed category but a dynamic, contested performance.