The exhibition, Spectrosynthesis: Asian LGBTQ Issues And At Now, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei, billed as the first major LGBTQ exhibition in Asia, features works by ethnic Han artists from Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Singapore, and North America...
The defeat of a recent push by language and literature scholars to reform the teaching of Chinese in Taiwan has had surprising implications. Namely, despite the defeat of a push by the Association for Taiwan Literature to reduce the amount of classical Chinese currently taught in Taiwanese, this drew comment from high-ranking Chinese government officials including An Fengshan of the Taiwan Affairs Office. It seems, then, that the debate over the teaching of classical Chinese in Taiwan has become significant enough to draw attention from China...
With the announcement that the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China will take place in mid-October, speculation runs high about what this will mean for Taiwan...
Outrage broken out in Taiwan with the appearance of detained Taiwanese human rights advocate Lee Ming-Che in Chinese courts yesterday. Lee pled guilty to “subverting state power” and undermining the authority of the CCP in attempting to encourage multi-party in democracy. But what now for efforts to secure Lee's release?...
Debates have broken out in Taiwan following the death of a “runaway” migrant worker from Vietnam after he was shot to death by Taiwanese police on August 31st. Yet too much of this has focused on whether police actions were justified, rather than considering broader questions of the labor conditions facing migrant workers in Taiwan...
Contention regarding competing pro-independence and anti-independence posters on the "Democracy Wall" at Chinese University of Hong Kong reflects the high political tensions which exist in Hong Kong at present...
With recent nuclear testing by North Korea, following claims by the rogue nation that it has manufactured a hydrogen bomb, times are highly dangerous not only for the Asia Pacific, but the world at large. North Korea was rocked by strong tremors on Sunday, with North Korea claiming that this was hydrogen bomb testing. This was North Korea’s sixth nuclear weapons test and was ten times more powerful than its fifth weapons test, making the test on Sunday North Korea’s most powerful weapons test yet...
With Lin Chuan's resignation as premier and his replacement by William Lai, as well as an impending cabinet shuffle, changes would be afoot in the Tsai administration. As has been pointed out, very likely the Tsai administration has its eye on midterm approval ratings with its reshuffle, but the switch is probably also aimed at turning over a new leaf in the public eye...
In comparing the Tsai administration’s attempt to target illegal KMT party assets in Taiwan and the current anti-corruption campaign undertaken by the Xi administration in China, perhaps we can draw out some of the differences between the Taiwanese and Chinese political systems...
A recent lawsuit filed alleging racial discrimination at Harvard against Asian-Americans due to affirmative action programs purports to be in the interest of Asian-Americans, but this would in fact be the attempt of white conservatives to repeal affirmative action programs to deny black and Latino students access to institutions of higher education...
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.
