The revelation earlier this month that Shih Cheng-ping, 56, a retired professor who formerly taught at National Taiwan Normal University and a member of the KMT, has been detained in China for over a year once again points to China’s arbitrary detention of Taiwanese...
The Chinese government announcing 26 new measures aimed at attracting Taiwanese firms is clearly a measure aimed at influencing Taiwanese elections, with just over sixty days left before January 2020 elections. However, what may be noteworthy is to what extent the Chinese government is falling back on tactics it has tried before in the past to influence elections, rather than coming up with new tactics...
Kiribati broke ties with Taiwan in favor of establishing diplomatic relations with China last week, making it the second diplomatic ally to break ties with Taiwan in a week...
The revelation that Taiwanese academic Tsai Chin-shu has been detained by China for over 420 days should be highly worrying. That Tsai was detained for over 400 days with no information coming to light about his imprisonment suggests a higher number of Taiwanese currently detained by the Chinese government than was previously known. Likewise, Tsai was a known advocate of unification with China, suggesting that China will not only target pro-independence activists for arbitrary detention...
It may be of little surprise that Taiwan was blocked from participating in the annual summit of the World Health Assembly, the governing body of the World Health Organization, for a third straight year...
Concerns regarding Chinese influence on Taiwanese media have again been raised in the past week through a number of incidents. However, it generally should not surprise that large elements of the Taiwanese media remain firmly beholden to China...
With a recent proposal by Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu to create free economic zones within Kaohsiung, one observes the unusual revival of a Ma era political idea: the establishment of special economic zones within Taiwan. Perhaps this should not surprise...
Chinese exchange student Lee Jia-bao continues to face the possibility of deportation back to China, with his current visa status set to expire in July, and Lee still seeking asylum in Taiwan due to his criticisms of Chinese president Xi Jinping...
It may be ironic that five years after the Sunflower Movement’s monthlong legislature of the Legislative Yuan in 2014, one of the demands dating back to the movement has floated up again as a public issue. Namely, one of the key demands of the movement was that a cross-strait oversight bill be passed in order to strengthen civic oversight over the passage of future cross-strait bills...
Two Chinese J-11 fighter aircraft crossed the median line of the Taiwan Straits at 11 AM yesterday morning, provoking strong reactions from within Taiwan and prompting the Taiwanese air force to mobilize five fighter planes in response. The incident was a break from precedent, seeing as while Chinese regularly fields planes in the Taiwan Straits, they do not usually cross the median line of the Taiwan Straits...
