Pro-democracy legislator Eddie Chu has been blocked from running in an election for the village head of Yuen Kong Sun Tsuen, a small, rural village in Hong Kong’s New Territories...
Political contestation regarding gay marriage continues in Taiwan, with pro-marriage equality groups and anti-gay groups still contesting the issue. The legal terrain has become further complicated since late November...
The Han Kuo-yu phenomenon continues full-steam, with constant coverage of Han in the Taiwanese media after his victory in the Kaohsiung mayoral election in late November. However, at the same time, a number of scandals have since emerged about Han’s past actions. And some controversy has begun regarding his early actions as Kaohsiung mayor...
Recent actions by the Chinese government against the governments of America and Canada are highly likely to be retribution for the current detention of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Canada at America’s behest, with Meng set to eventually be extradited to America. This includes the detention of Canadian ex-diplomat Michael Kovrig in China, the detention of Canadian entrepreneur Michael Spavor, and the banning of most iPhone models from sale in China on intellectual property grounds....
Anger has broken out after the KMT disrupted a meeting of the Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee confirming the budget of the Transitional Justice Commission and its plans for the upcoming year. A picture of KMT members knocking over a table and looking as though they intended to attack Yang Tsui, the chair of the commission and a family member of a White Terror victim, subsequently went viral on the Internet, further stoking outrage...
Shock has broken out in Taiwan after baker Wu Pao-chun made an online statement that he was born in “Taiwan, China” and that he was proud of being Chinese. Wu is currently seeking to expand his chain of bakeries to China, hence why his remarks may not surprise. However, Wu’s remarks were shocking because his achievements as a baker had previously made him an object of national pride...
Efforts to realize transitional justice and to address the KMT’s illicit party assets have encountered a significant obstacle in the form of a ruling by the Taipei High Administrative Court that the assets of the Chinese Women’s League must be unfrozen...
A surprise development in US-China trade relations has been the arrest of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou in Canada. Meng is slated to be deported to the US on charges of violating sanctions, with allegations that Huawei sold goods to Iran in knowing violation of trade sanctions. Does this mean that the US-China trade war is back on? The results of the arrest were immediate, with the Dow Jones crashing 800 points in its fourth-largest drop in history...
After the referendum on nuclear energy held concurrently with nine-in-one elections on November 24th, shifts in Taiwan’s treatment of nuclear energy-related issues are likely to take place. The referendum called for the overturning of current provisions in the law which stipulate that Taiwan is to be nuclear-free by 2025...
Taiwan can breathe a sigh of relief after the Trump-Xi meeting which took place on the sidelines of the G-20 conference in Argentina on Saturday. Namely, Taiwan did not come up in any substantive manner during the meeting, with economic tensions between America and China being the main object of negotiation between Trump and Xi...
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.