An annual cross-strait forum, the 14th Straits Forum in Xiamen, resulted in the KMT again vowing to uphold the 1992 Consensus. The Straits Forum normally takes place in May or June, but COVID-19 in past years have led the forum to be postponed to September 2020 and December 2021...
Seven Hongkongers that attempted to flee to Taiwan were sentenced to between seven and ten months of imprisonment earlier this week, for an escape attempt that took place in August 2020. On the same day, four Hongkongers were arrested for an attempt to flee to Taiwan...
5,000 motorcycle and scooter riders demonstrated last weekend on Ketagalan Boulevard for a rally organized by the Formosa Motorcycle Rights Association. The riders assembled by the Taipei Expo Park on July 9th before driving to Ketagalan Boulevard, where they held a rally. Other counts have the number of participants in the rally as closer to 3,000...
Pan-blue media personality Jaw Shaw-kung, one of the leading figures of the “Fighting Blues” within the KMT, recently took a strong stance against the Tsai administration’s energy transition policy. Jaw criticized the Tsai administration as overly reliant on LNG terminals and instead called for the extension of Reactor No. 2 and Reactor No. 3’s operational lifetimes, as well as the restart of the controversial Lungmen Reactor No. 4. Jaw’s comments are worth examining for how this sheds light upon the pan-Blue camp’s framing of Taiwan’s current energy issues...
Legislative speaker You Si-kun recently visited an exhibition held at the National Taipei University of Technology featuring prospective designs for a future legislature. In comments made at the exhibition, You emphasized that a country’s legislature to reflect the values it holds, seeing as it is iconic of that country...
Trade tensions continue between Taiwan and China in the wake of China’s grouper ban last month. China moved to ban Taiwanese grouper, claiming that it had found oxytetracycline and other prohibited chemicals in excessive amounts in grouper imports from Taiwan. For its part, the Taiwanese government has denied this, calling on China to provide proof for its claims...
The shooting death of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe drew international headlines yesterday. The incident took place while Abe was on the campaign trail in Nara, Japan, with much disinformation, misinformation, and rampant speculation in the wake of the incident. It may not be surprising to note that views in Taiwan of Abe have been rosy, turning a blind eye to his right-wing historical revisionism, nostalgia for Japanese empire, and actions seen as authoritarian in a Japanese context...
Three serving legislators and a former legislator were found guilty on corruption charges by the Taiwan Taipei District Court earlier this week. The case serves as a reminder of the deeply-rooted nature of corruption charges in Taiwan, as well as how such charges can cut across party lines ...
Hsinchu city mayor Lin Chih-chien was accused by the KMT of plagiarism earlier this week. Lin, who is a DPP politician that won in Hsinchu in 2014, is running as the DPP’s candidate for Taoyuan mayor in elections later this fall...
Brian Hioe is one of the founding editors of New Bloom. He is a freelance journalist, as well as a translator. A New York native and Taiwanese-American, he has an MA in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University and graduated from New York University with majors in History, East Asian Studies, and English Literature. He was Democracy and Human Rights Service Fellow at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy from 2017 to 2018 and is currently a Non-Resident Fellow at the University of Nottingham's Taiwan Studies Programme.
