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Chris Horton, a Taiwan-based journalist, says his new book Ghost Nation is about giving Taiwan’s story the attention it deserves after centuries of colonization and decades of diplomatic invisibility.
“Well, originally it was going to be called Ghost Island,” Horton said. “It was a term that the Japanese used … because you came over here back then, prior to colonization, there were diseases that were invisible, diseases that would kill people. And also, you know, it was … less welcoming than it is today.”
He said his editors encouraged a change. “In my book, I call it a country. … International media, a lot of it refuses to call Taiwan a country. It calls it the island, the self-ruled island, the democratic island. So my editors were like, you know, maybe we should call it Ghost Nation.”
Horton explained the theme. “Taiwan it’s kind of invisible to the rest of the world because of its diplomatic situation. … Not only is it important to democracy and … a bulwark against authoritarianism, but also … people are carrying stuff … devices that have technology from Taiwan in them. … Taiwan has been ghosted by the world, but especially by democracies who should be … standing up for one of their own.”
He began the book with former President Tsai Ing-wen’s 2016 apology to Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples. “They’re the original inhabitants of Taiwan, so that makes them important just for that. But also they’ve influenced Taiwan’s culture quite a bit. … They’re living proof that Taiwan’s not, you know, historically Chinese, no matter what people say.”
Horton argued that Taiwan’s Japanese era is too often ignored. “People don’t know too much about Taiwan. The Japanese period … was very formative for Taiwan’s identity. … Presenting Taiwan as this place that, you know, maybe rose up out of the sea in the 1940s … that’s almost how it feels like it’s presented.”
He criticized the framing of cross-strait history. “One of the big kind of misleading tropes … is, you know, in 1949, Taiwan and the mainland split. And … historically, that’s just never been the case. … You really only had four years … that a China-based government has controlled all of Taiwan. And that was 1945 to 1949.”
On international coverage, Horton noted progress. “There are a lot more reporters who are based here. And that has definitely improved coverage. … Ten years ago … most of the international media coverage of Taiwan [was] being written from Hong Kong or Beijing or Shanghai.”
The change accelerated after 2020. “A lot of journalists that had been based in China … got kicked out by the government of China, and many of them landed here. … Just having people … feet on the ground really, really has changed things.”
Reflecting on the book, Horton said: “It’s not saying, you know, these stories are more important than those. I was just trying to address the lack of Taiwan’s story … because usually everything’s been viewed through a Chinese lens. And, you know, Taiwan’s been around a lot longer than … since the 1940s. And that’s really shaped what it is today.”
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