August would be a key period for several referendum pushes in Taiwan at present. Both the Formosa Alliance’s push to achieve a referendum on Taiwan participating in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics under the name “Taiwan” instead of “Chinese Taipei” and an alliance of anti-gay groups hoping to hold a referendum against gay marriage and sexual education they see as encouraging homosexuality aim to reach 280,000 signatures by the end of the month...
A Taiwanese indigenous middle school choir prevented from being allowed to perform in the United Nations office in Vienna would be the latest incident of international bullying of Taiwan by China. The cancellation came after pressure from the Chinese embassy...
Protests have broken out in Shenzhen among workers for the Shenzhen Jasic Technology Corporation. Jasic workers sought to form a labor union, in accordance with rights they claim according to Chinese law, but were denied union representation by the company and by official, state-run labor unions...
News that a bug in Apple’s iOS caused phones to crash when they typed the word “Taiwan” raises that Taiwan should become more aware of technological threats from China going forward, as well as from western tech companies that self-censor to please China...
Outrage over vaccines distributed by Changchun Changsheng Bio-technology Ltd. has broken out in China in the past month. It was announced on July 15th that state regulators had discovered that Changchun Changsheng had falsified production data for a human rabies vaccine. Several days later, it was announced that diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough vaccines distributed by Changchun Changsheng in 2017 had been substandard...
An unusual amount of moral outrage from those who should know better has followed suit against youth activists who recently defaced the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial with red paint...
Once again, it seems that an unusual, outsider political candidate is shaking up mayoral elections in Taiwan. Tainan mayoral candidate Mark Lin’s meteoric rise from obscurity to fame proves revealing about some of the dynamics of Taiwanese politics at present...
It proves of little surprise that American airline carriers would cave in to demands from the Chinese government to list Taiwan as part of China. Yesterday was the deadline that Chinese officials gave airline carriers to comply on the name change...
Chinese pressure on Taiwanese participation in sporting events continues. This can be seen in two recent incidents, with China successfully forcing Taiwan out of hosting the East Asian Youth Games through pressure on the East Asian Olympic Committee and attempts to force Taiwan out of participating in the 2018 Gay Games in Paris next month under the name “Taiwan”...
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.
