A dispute regarding COVID-19 testing recently broke out between the Changhua county government, and the Centers for Disease Control, the national body under the Ministry of Health and Welfare that coordinates Taiwan’s fight against COVID-19...
The NPP has continued to see controversy, with the departure of city councilor Tseng Wen-hsueh after a purported recording of an internal meeting was leaked on a Facebook page...
The KMT continues with its efforts to tar the DPP as an authoritarian party, as reflected in a number of recent actions. This is, of course, highly ironic for the KMT, which itself ruled over Taiwan for decades during the authoritarian period, which once saw the world’s longest martial law period...
The Tsai administration continues to face challenges regulating Chinese OTT providers, as observed in recent legislation that will ban Taiwanese companies or individuals from acting as local agents for Chinese OTT providers. OTT providers are online streaming services such as Netflix, as distinguished from traditional cable or satellite networks...
Changhua became the first city in Taiwan to declare a climate emergency earlier this month following an announcement by Changhua mayor Lin Shih-shen. The announcement was made at a march to call attention to climate change organized by ten NGOs and twenty different medical groups on August 8th...
Plans for Taiwan to set up a representative office in Somaliland and, in turn, for Somaliland to set up a representative office in Taiwan have continued apace, despite pressure from China and Somalia. Taiwan’s representative office in Somaliland opened earlier this week, while Somaliland’s first representative to Taiwan, Mohamed Omar Hagi Mohamoud, arrived earlier this month...
After the defeat of the KMT’s candidate, Jane Lee, also known as Lee Mei-jhen, in the Kaohsiung mayoral by-election last Saturday, the KMT has seen some internal contestation from party members that have called on the party leadership to take the results of the by-election to heart...
Members of the Taiwan Railways Union protested outside of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications earlier this month. Workers called for the Taiwan Railways Administration to pay overtime it owes its workers for the months of May and June and demonstrated against a new work schedule that would begin to be implemented next year...
A solidarity rally for the ongoing protests in Thailand was held in Taipei Main Station today. Many participants were Thai residents of Taiwan, particularly students...
It took few by surprise that Chen Chi-mai of the DPP was the winner of the Kaohsiung mayoral by-election today. Chen won by large margins, winning 70% of the vote, and defeating KMT candidate Jane Lee and TPP candidate Wu Yi-jheng. The by-election was the first by-election to replace a mayor who had been recalled from office in Taiwanese history...
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.
