The Edge of Night proves a deft, enthralling depiction of a crucial moment in the Sunflower Movement—the attempted occupation of the Executive Yuan that took place on the night of March 23rd and in the early morning hours of March 24th, 2014...
The results of four by-elections that took place last week have been used as an early metric of political sentiment in Taiwan, with less than a year to go until 2020 elections. Elections will take place in January of next year...
Our Youth in Taiwan, the winner for best documentary at this year’s Golden Horse Awards would be a highly personal character study of two participants in the Sunflower Movement. The first would be Chen Wei-ting, one of the two most recognizable student leaders from the movement, and the second is Cai Bo-yi, a Chinese participant in the movement. However, the film ultimately becomes the personal story of the director, too, by the film’s conclusion...
Former premier William Lai declared yesterday that he intends to compete with current president Tsai Ing-wen for the DPP’s presidential nomination in 2020 elections. As such, Lai’s announcement, which caught many off-guard, has led to worries that this challenge could contribute to growing splits within the DPP...
Five years after the 2014 Sunflower Movement, triumphalist narratives about the legacy of the movement may require some qualifiers. The results of nine-in-one elections last November, for one, showed that the KMT remains a viable political party in Taiwan...
Controversy in Okinawa last month regarding the construction of a contested American military base should be well-noted in Taiwan, given Okinawa’s proximity to Taiwan...
A pledge last month by Taiwan to donate 500,000 USD to Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who declared himself interim president of Venezuela in January with American backing, is quite telling about Taiwan’s priorities in diplomatic affairs...
The death of three Vietnamese migrant workers in a warehouse fire in early February should remind of the unsafe working conditions which continue to face migrant workers in Taiwan...
Members of the Daguan Community—a military dependents’ village in New Taipei city currently facing eviction—and supportive youth activists demonstrated at the Veteran’s Affairs Office today, with one hospitalized after becoming ill during the protest. Following the arrest of twenty demonstrators, Daguan residents declared an overnight sit-in outside the Taipei District Prosecutor's Court until those detained were released...
Several hundred marched in the rain to commemorate Tibetan Uprising Day today. Tibetan Uprising Day commemorates a 1959 uprising against China’s military occupation of Tibet. This year is the 60th anniversary of the uprising, making this year’s commemoration an especially significant one. Notably, a campaign to petition for the Dalai Lama to visit Taiwan was announced at the commemoration...
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.