The results of the national referendum that took place today resulted in a defeat for the KMT and victory for the DPP, with all four referendum proposals voted down. This was what was called for by the DPP, with the DPP advocating four “Nos”...
The annual Autumn Struggle labor protest has historically been one of the two major annual labor protests in Taiwan. The other major labor protest is usually International Workers’ Day, also known as May Day. The two labor protests are spaced roughly half a year apart, with International Workers’ Day taking place in the springtime and Autumn Struggle taking place in the fall or winter...
With the referendum vote scheduled to take place on Saturday, the KMT has been on the campaign trail. In particular, even if the referendum no longer takes place on the same date as elections, the KMT hopes to use the referendum as an opportunity to electorally benefit in the future, as well as an opportunity to attack the DPP...
For the nineteenth episode of Radio New Bloom, we feature an interview with Coen Blaauw, a Dutch lawyer and Senior Policy Advisor to the Formosan Association for Public Affairs, a US non-profit promoting Taiwan’s right to self-determination. He joined FAPA in 1989 and has since become a central figure in the Taiwan independence movement in the United States. He specializes in connecting with members of the U.S. Congress, drafting Taiwan-related legislation, and recruiting support for these legislations....
Reports have stated that Digital Minister Audrey Tang’s video seemed to be cut during the Biden administration’s Summit for Democracy last week. If the video was cut, it is believed that this took place due to a map that appeared during Tang’s presentation which displayed Taiwan in a different color than China, with concerns that this would be perceived as support for Taiwanese independence...
It has proven odd that leftist thinkers, such as Marxian economist Richard Wolff and Marxist geographer David Harvey, have proven unusually praising of China in recent comments. Wolff and Harvey have both expressed the view that China’s economy represents something fundamentally different from western capitalism; this view is based on the claim that socialist legacies in China persist from the Maoist period, and this has pushed contemporary China to become something qualitatively different from western capitalism...
It is possible that Taiwan will soon have a surplus of vaccines on its hands. As international consensus has increasingly moved towards the view that booster shots will be necessary, the Tsai administration has made preparations to secure booster shots for Taiwan...
Nicaragua has announced that it will be severing relations with Taiwan, following a televised speech by Nicaraguan Minister of Foreign Affairs Denis Moncada. During the speech, Moncada asserted that there is only one China, which is the PRC, and that this includes Taiwan...
Efforts to vaccinate undocumented migrant workers or migrant workers who have left their employers and overstayed their visas in Taiwan are likely to encounter difficulties after police arrested a migrant worker from the Philippines who had overstayed her visa. This took place after she went to be vaccinated, despite promises by the Central Epidemic Command Center that undocumented migrant workers who wish to be vaccinated can do so without fear of arrest...
A criminal suspect surnamed Huang who fled to China from Taiwan earlier this month will be extradited in an agreement between Taiwan and China. The deportation proves an unusual incident at a time in which cross-strait relations between Taiwan and China are poor, probably signaling that the Chinese government did not think it could gain anything politically from the incident...