Derecognition: How Americans in Taiwan surmounted multiple crises and helped shape the Taiwan Relations Act when the U.S. broke diplomatic relations with a loyal ally

Robert P. ("Rob") Parker is an international lawyer, pilot, and venture capitalist. He lived in Taiwan for 19 years. Robert is a former president of Taiwan's American Chamber of Commerce and the only American in the private sector to receive Taiwan's highest civilian honor, the Order of the Brilliant Star. ROC President Lee Teng-hui awarded him that honor in 2000 for his role in shaping the U.S. federal Taiwan Relations Act and founding Taiwan's English-language radio network ICRT.In the 1970's and '80's, Parker founded and managed two international law firms in Taiwan. Prior to his retirement from active law practice, he was senior counsel for one of the world's largest law firms. He is a collector of Taiwan art and Chinese ceramics. Robert is a former director of the U.S.-Taiwan Business Council in Washington, D.C. and served on the board of directors of numerous other business and educational organizations in the U.S. and Taiwan, including Taiwan's largest private university and the Foundation for Scholarly Exchange. He is currently a trustee of the China Foundation for Promotion of Education and Culture, based in Taipei.A native of Longview, Texas, he is an honors graduate of both the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Texas Law School, where he led the national championship team in international law moot court. He studied international relations as a Rotary International Fellow at the graduate school of the University of Sydney, Australia.Parker served on the national campaign staffs of U.S. President Lyndon Johnson and Vice President Hubert Humphrey in Washington, D.C. and attended the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He testified several times before committees of the U.S. Congress. Robert holds a commercial pilot's license with instrument, multi-engine and seaplane ratings. He has flown in several countries, and served as mission pilot and advocate for two aviation-related U.S. charities, Angel Flight and Wings of Faith. In 2016-17, he planned and led an award-winning Rotary project that donated and installed solar-power street lighting in a remote village of Haiti.He is the father of three children and grandfather of three. He and his wife Yachien live in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Don Shapiro has lived in Taiwan since 1969 when he arrived expecting to stay one year under an East Asian Journalism Fellowship and Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and Weatherhead East Asian Institute. Now morethan half a century later, he is still in Taiwan as Senior Adviser to the American Chamber of Commerce in Taiwan (AmCham Taiwan). In the intervening decades he reported for such U.S. publications as The New York Times and Time Magazine, served as president of the publishing company Trade Winds Inc., and was Senior Director at AmCham Taiwan and editor-in-chief of its Taiwan Business Topics magazine. In 2019 he was awarded the Friendship Medal of Diplomacy by Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.