Concerns in Taiwan that it will be severely affected by steel and aluminum tariffs by the Trump administration are ironic, illustrating in a nutshell what the perils of placing one’s faith in the Trump administration are. Perhaps Taiwan could learn something from this...
With the replacement of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson with Mike Pompeo, head of the CIA, it appears that the protectionist wing of the Trump administration is again ascendent. As such, fears prevail that individuals within the Trump administration viewed as stabilizing of it will similarly depart the Trump administration in the near future...
With the recent removal of term limits that a Chinese president can serve, possibly paving the way for Chinese president Xi Jinping to move towards lifetime rule, bluster by China against Taiwan has increased...
Anger has broken out from Taiwanese activists after the forced removal of the Alliance of Referendum for Taiwan/Free Taiwan Party’s occupation encampment outside the Legislative Yuan by the Taipei city police...
Relocation plans in Kaohsiung which mandate the eviction of Taiwanese indigenous of the Ljvaek community to build a monument to Formosa Plastics founder Wang Yung-ching would be a dreadfully ironic example of developmentalism at work in Taiwan...
A scandal has broken out within the Legislative Yuan due to allegations of sexual harassment by a male legislative assistant directed at female legislative assistants and other female co-workers. The man in question, referred to in the media as “H.”, is a middle-aged legislative assistant who has worked in the Legislative Yuan for over ten years, during the course of which he harassed at least seven women...
The passage of the Taiwan Travel Act has been hailed as a triumph by pro-Taiwan groups in the US as representing a step forward in advancing US-Taiwan relations. On the other hand, media coverage of the passage of the Taiwan Travel Act by western media has oftentimes acted as though the move is dangerously provocative of China. Both polarized positions may miss part of the point...
It has been an strange fact that, with the removal of term limits that a Chinese president can serve, the elevation of Chinese president Xi Jinping has been rapid enough that Xi has already been claimed to have reached level of deification by some. However, this has a very simple explanation...
Reports of a planned merger of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office with its Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Offices to form the “Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office of the State Council” were later denied by China. But, either way, this does gesture towards recent acts by China which make it appear as though China seeks to streamline and make uniform its policies towards Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau...
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.
