Rumors that former president Lee Teng-hui had died swept across social media late yesterday night, with many online influencers posting tributes to and eulogies for Lee. Although Lee's health is poor and he is currently hospitalized, such rumors were unfounded. However, as rumors regarding Lee's death were primarily amplified by social media influencers, this gestures toward how online influencers prove a weak link where issues regarding disinformation and misinformation in Taiwan are concerned...
Taiwan marked one hundred days since the last case of domestic transmission of COVID-19 on July 17th, with the last case of local COVID-19 transmission having taken place on April 8th. It appears as though the COVID-19 situation is still under control in Taiwan, Taiwan having managed to avoid the expansive lockdowns that the rest of the world has seen. However, with the second and third waves of COVID-19 taking place globally and five new imported cases added today, Taiwan is likely to see an uptick in imported cases going forward...
Following allegations that KMT Kaohsiung mayoral by-election candidate Jane Lee, also known as Li Mei-jhen, plagiarized 96% of her master’s thesis, an unusual political spat has broken out between the pan-Blue and pan-Green camps. Members of the pan-Blue and pan-Green camps are now slinging allegations of plagiarism against members of the other political camp...
Judicial reform proponents came into conflict with the Tsai administration over its plans to introduce a lay judge system in Taiwan, rather than a jury trial system, earlier this month. However, the results of a vote by the Legislative Yuan earlier this week resulted in the implementation of a lay judge system, rather than a jury system...
The KMT’s Kaohsiung mayoral by-election candidate, Jane Lee, also known as Li Mei-jhen, has come under public scrutiny after accusations that she plagiarized her master’s thesis...
President Tsai Ing-wen signaled a renewed focus on constitutional reform for her second term earlier this week in public comments at the DPP’s national congress. Tsai gave these comments in her capacity as chair of the DPP. Likewise, Tsai emphasized that the next major electoral task ahead of the DPP was winning the Kaohsiung by-election, which she phrased as “restoring the glory of Kaohsiung”...
Chinese asylum seeker and political dissident Li Jia-bao, age twenty-two and only until very recently a student, continues to face the possibility of being deported from Taiwan...
Issues of forced eviction are back in the news, with outrage from activists and others after attempts by the Taiwan Railways Administration to evict residential households in Tainan for the sake of developing the Tainan Urban District Railway Underground Project...
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.