The Taipei High Administrative Court ruled against laws requiring transgender people to provide proof of surgery to change their legal gender this afternoon. The announcement was made shortly after 4 PM, with a decision in favor of the plaintiff, known as Xiao E...
The second KMT chair debate, which took place on September 18th, had five rounds. The first round consisted of opening comments, while the second round allowed candidates to field questions from a panel of commentators that they were allowed to choose from. The third round involved questions asked by a panel of media experts, the fourth round allowed for cross-examination between candidates, and the last round consisted of closing comments. The four candidates are current chair Johnny Chiang, former party chair and New Taipei mayor Eric Chu, Sun Yat-Sen School head Chang Ya-chung, and former Changhua magistrate Cho Po-yuan...
A recent report by the Financial Times stated that the US government was considering whether to allow Taiwan’s representative office in the US to include the word “Taiwan” in its name. Since news broke of this, there has been much debate on the matter...
Protests regarding the Zhiben photovoltaic farm took place again late last month, with demonstrations against a government survey of the land that the farm is planned to be built on. These protests were not widely reported on, however, probably due to the fact that they took place in Taitung. Protests that take place outside of Taipei sometimes fail to receive coverage, with much of the media industry based in Taipei, and because Taiwan is small enough that protesters can frequently travel to Taipei to protest even for local issues. This has not been helped by COVID-related stories still continuing to take up a large part of the news cycle...
Efforts by Hong Kong authorities to crack down on political freedoms continue, with Hong Kong’s largest non-state affiliated union announcing that it was in the process of dissolving, and a journalists’ organization facing pressure from authorities to reveal information on members...
The Supreme Administrative Court ruled against extending the mining rights of Asia Cement’s mine on Truku Indigenous land on Thursday, dismissing an appeal filed by Asia Cement. The decision has been seen by some as a victory in the struggle against the mine. The Hualien city council had previously levied an ore tax of 70 NT per metric ton on the mine and rejected the extension. A lower court had previously also found Asia Cement’s actions to be in violation of the Indigenous Basic Law....
Workers for the Chunghwa Express, a subsidiary of the Chunghwa Post, demonstrated outside of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications earlier this week. The workers were part of the Chunghwa Express Labor Union, which is threatening to strike at the end of the month if a pay raise is not approved...
The Tsai administration announced a donation of 637 million NT to Eswatini last week. The donation is earmarked for a fund for reconstruction work in Eswatini that will take place under the auspices of King Mswati III, following some of the largest protests to take place in Eswatini in its 53 years of independence. The donation was the largest contribution to the fund, with other donations coming from state-operated enterprises in Eswatini and the military...
Police cracked down on a party at a Vietnamese restaurant in Taoyuan on Sunday, finding that 102 migrant workers were gathered on the premises. While four of the individuals present were restaurant workers, 98 were customers—most of which were migrant workers. Police found the party while conducting door-to-door inspections, patrolling on the search for runaway migrant workers...
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.
