Recent comments by Hau Lung-Pin, a KMT party heavyweight and a major contender in the upcoming race for party chair, illustrate how the KMT has largely failed to reckon with its authoritarian past...
The possibility of conflict breaking out between Taiwanese youth activists and the DPP seems quite likely in the near future, with discussion of an oversight bill for cross-strait trade deals scheduled for late next week. But although the passage of such a bill was one of the significant demands of the Sunflower Movement, the DPP has stalled and even reversed course multiple times on the issue....
A recent scandal concerning the murder of a 22-year-old Taiwanese model is revealing of the vacuousness, misogyny, and sensationalism of much of Taiwanese media...
Indigenous demonstrators have occupied Ketagalan Boulevard for 22 days now. Demonstrators are demanding the return of traditional lands and more comprehensive action by the Tsai administration to realize transitional justice for indigenous in Taiwan...
Many questions remain to be answered in coming days with the indictment of former president Ma Ying-Jeou on charges over leaks of classified information regarding the 2013 wiretapping of Ker Chien-Ming...
Recent declarations by the Islamic State that it will target China in retaliation for its oppression of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang will probably only be met by further Chinese restrictions on the region. But China's responses are illustrative of to what extent China uses the discursive terms of America's War on Terror to justify its suppression of the Muslim majority Uyghur population in Xinjiang and other parts of China...
The annual anti-nuclear march in Taiwan, commemorating the Fukushima incident in Japan, took place yesterday, with environmental groups, Third Force parties, youth activists, and other civil society groups marching through the streets of Taipei, Taitung, and Kaohsiung...
One of the paradoxes of uncritical pro-Americanism on the part of some Taiwanese independence advocates is that sometimes they do not actually know the most about American politics. One finds that assessments of Donald Trump remain wildly off the mark, due to lack of knowledge about the political forces which have arrayed themselves behind him and the man himself...
The war on drugs under the Tsai administration seems set to continue, with recent public scandals regarding drug use on army bases, the scandal caused by a drug-related death after a party at the five-star W Hotel in Taipei, and major drug crackdowns. Very likely, the Tsai administration is determined to make harsh drug policy enforcement one of its political achievements...
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.
