Brian Hioe

Questions Raised About Normalization of Chinese Military Drills, Following Live-Fire Exercises Around Taiwan

Brian Hioe
It remains opaque as to whether military drilling by China around Taiwan will continue in the coming days. Namely, although the People’s Liberation Army initially announced that its four days of live-fire drills would end on Sunday, yesterday it announced that military exercises in the area would continue. The drills are an escalation for the Chinese military, seeing as they take place closer to Taiwan than took place during the Third Taiwan Straits Crisis...
August 2022EnglishInternationalRegional Tensions7 min read

First Day of Chinese Live-Fire Drills Around Taiwan See Missile Launches, Relative Calm in Taiwan

Brian Hioe
Today was the first day of live-fire drills conducted by the People’s Liberation Army in maritime areas around Taiwan. The drills are as close as 20 kilometers to metropolises such as Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s major southern port city, and are nine kilometers away from the island of Little Liuqiu. Another zone was added by the Maritime and Port Bureau for ships to avoid during the drilling, which is to last until Sunday, bringing the number of such zones to 7...
August 2022EnglishFeaturedInternationalRegional Tensions7 min read

Comments on Draft By Former NSC Official Gesture Toward Pan-Green Criticisms of Draft Length

Brian Hioe
Former National Security Council secretary-general Ting Yu-chou criticized the four-month draft in recent public comments. The comments were made by Ting, who served as secretary-general of the NSC under the Chen administration, at a book launch by Chang Rong-feng. Chang was a former Lee Teng-hui administration security official...
EnglishInternationalJuly 2022Regional Tensions5 min read

Efforts to Hire Fishing Inspectors Unlikely to Improve Conditions for Migrant Fishermen

Brian Hioe
The Fisheries Agency has announced that it intends to recruit 79 inspectors, as part of an initiative to increase the number of inspections carried out of migrant fishing vessels conducting deep sea fishing. This takes place, then, as part of an attempt to improve the labor conditions for migrant fishermen. The labor inspectors will primarily work in Pingtung, Kaohsiung, and Yilan...
August 2022EnglishLaborSocial Movements5 min read

Chunghwa Express Workers Strike Earlier This Month Over Wages

Brian Hioe
Chunghwa Express workers struck earlier this month over low pay. The strike was nationwide and began on July 4th, with workers that first began striking in Hsinchu, Taipei, Taoyuan, and Yilan. The strike would have expanded beyond just northern Taiwan if there had been no response from company management, with workers staging a sit-in in front of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC). However, the strike ended on July 10th after workers’ demands were agreed to by the company administration...
EnglishJuly 2022LaborSocial Movements5 min read

Taipower and Atomic Energy Council Clash Over Orchid Island Ruling

Brian Hioe
Taipower, Taiwan's state-run energy utility, won out in a recent ruling by the Supreme Administrative Court that exempted it from needing to pay 30 million NT for failing to remove low-level nuclear waste from Orchid Island. Low-level nuclear waste refers to items that have become contaminated with radioactive material or become radioactive through exposure, as distinguished from intermediate-level nuclear waste, high-level nuclear waste, spent fuel rods, or other nuclear waste materials...
EnglishEnvironmentalIndigenousJuly 2022Social Movements5 min read

Brian Hioe

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.

丘琦欣，創建破土的編輯之一，專於撰寫社會運動和政治的自由作家偶而亦從事翻譯工作。他自哥倫比亞大學畢業，是亞洲語言及文化科系的碩士，同時擁有紐約大學的歷史，東亞研究及英文文學三項學士學位。