| 371 Taiwan Independence as Critique, Strategy, and Method toward Decoloniality © 2021 The American Studies Association From Independence to Interdependence: Taiwan Independence as Critique, Strategy, and Method toward Decoloniality Wen Liu T aiwan’s precarious sovereignty has been centered on the discourse of being caught between the two imperial powers—the US and the ris- ing Chinese Empire. 1 The modern nation-state formation of Taiwan today, the Republic of China (ROC), would not have existed without the following: first, US imperial domination over Asia-Pacific during the Cold War, and second, the Chinese Kuomintang’s (KMT) rule on the island after the Chinese civil war in 1945, with the military and financial support from the US. 2 Historically speaking, Taiwan is inevitably entangled between Han Chinese settler colonialism and Americanism, and their continuously com- peting yet coexisting influences over the country’s political economy, cultural practices, and national identity. To resist centuries of colonial rule on the island, Taiwan Independence, as multifaced movements that consist of heterogeneous ideologies from both the left and the right, is not necessarily equal to the present expressions of ROC nationalism. Whereas the stance on anti-Chinese imperialism, particularly on China’s territorial claims of Taiwan, is generally shared among the Taiwanese Independence milieus, the defense of Taiwanese sovereignty in the current “New Cold War” global order continues to turn toward a conservative alliance with the US military and economic power. This tendency not only feeds into an increasingly right-wing US Empire but also marginalizes and erases the possibilities of leftist international support for Taiwan Independence. 3 In seeking de facto independence from China’s annexation attempt, the fetishism surrounding the nation-state form in the right-wing of the Taiwan Independence milieu often limits the vision of sovereignty within a Westpha- lian definition of modern nationalism and reproduces a Sino-American Cold War competition between democracy and authoritarianism. This dwelling discourse of being “between two empires,” in fact, reproduces the normative