It surprised few when the formation of an informally organized “Progressive Youth Alliance”, consisting of young, progressive politicians across party lines was announced earlier this week...
China's military escalation toward Taiwan has visibly escalated in past weeks. Apart from military exercises conducted in the region, a visit to Taiwan by American Undersecretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Keith Krach saw multiple consecutive days of warplanes sent into Taiwanese airspace...
A recent blog post by writer Tanner Greer entitled “Why I Fear for Taiwan” argues against less ambiguous policy by America regarding Taiwan. As Greer would have it, Taiwan is not sufficiently committed to its own defense to warrant more direct commitments by the US toward Taiwan. And so the US should continue to maintain an ambiguous attitude regarding whether it is committed to defending Taiwan...
A three-day to Taiwan by American Undersecretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Keith Krach ended yesterday, though not without some controversy...
A political spat between high-ranking KMT and DPP politicians broke out last month after comments by former president Ma Ying-jeou of the KMT regarding Taiwan’s national defense. According to Ma, in the event of a Chinese invasion, Taiwan’s military would not last for more than several days, as a result of which the “first battle would be the last battle.” Consequently, Ma referred to current president Tsai Ing-wen’s cross-strait policy as overly provocative of China, as having brought Taiwan to “the brink of war”...
The KMT unexpectedly reversed course on plans to conduct a cross-strait forum with the CCP earlier this week, citing anger over news reports from Chinese state-run media as the reason for doing so...
One of Taiwan's largest English-language domestic media outlets, Taiwan News, continued its record of publishing news reports actively endangering Taiwan's national security yesterday. This took place after the publication of an article entitled “China fires Long March rocket directly over Taiwan”, written by senior editor Keoni Everington...
Controversy has broken out after claims that the Taiwanese government has been holding five Hongkongers that fled to Taiwan under detention for the last two months. The Taiwanese government was, for the most part, opaque over past weeks about whether it is, in fact, holding the five Hongkongers—with questions having been raised about whether they have been allowed to see lawyers or contact their families...
If there is any doubt that contemporary China is a Han ethno-state, they should be quelled regarding new policies introduced by the Chinese government in Inner Mongolia intended to stamp out the use of Mongolian. There are over four million residents of inner Mongolia of ethnic Mongolian descent...
A wave of backlash has ensued against the KMT after comments by a party representative at the party’s recent national congress arguing that the contents of the National Palace Museum’s collection belong to the party and can be considered a party asset. In particular, the comments are seen as reflective of the authoritarian views of the KMT, in that despite Taiwan’s democratization, some members of the party still view the KMT as synonymous with the state...
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.
